Dutch wireless ODM, System Designs, has developed a wireless musical instrument jack that Systec claims at sub-2.3ms offers the world's lowest latency for a wireless audio adapter of its kind, and has resulted in a wireless solution that is actually superior to a traditional trailing cable, hard-wired link in audio quality and physical convenience. The devices use Nordic Semicondutor’s wireless transceiver technology.
RF Micro Devices (RFMD) has announced that it has teamed with Silicon Laboratories to produce a reference design for a broad range of smart grid applications. The reference design gives developers an accelerated path to boost output power to 1W in a small form factor without sacrificing exceptional low-power operation.
Integrated Device Technology (IDT) has announced what it claims is the world's first true single-chip wireless power transmitter, accompanied by a single-chip receiver solution that can deliver 7.5W output when used in a proprietary configuration with the transmitter.
The wireless power transmitter and IDTP9020 receiver together comprise a solution designed to meet the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) Qi standard, which ensures interoperability with other devices meeting the Qi standard. Both transmitter and receiver are capable of 'multi-mode' operation, supporting both the Qi standard and proprietary formats for added features, improved safety, and increased power output capability.
At the IMEC Technology Forum earlier this week, Kathleen Philips presented the results of a project to create an impulse radio that uses the ultra wide band spectrum. Philips foresees this technology, which uses minimal power, will be used in wireless headphones of the future. The IMEC- and Holst Centre-developed impulse radio operates in the 6-10GHz band, extends a smartphone’s battery life by 3x compared to a comparable Bluetooth solution and does not suffer from fading or interference.
Cypress Semiconductor’s latest 2.4-GHz WirelessUSB Radio-on-a-Chip, the WirelessUSB NL, boasts low power consumption for wireless keyboards, mice, remote controls and other human interface devices. The device features very low active and standby current (less than 1 uA), enabling battery life to be more than a year for normal mouse usage.
Meaco has designed LPRS’s wireless modules into its environmental monitoring systems for protecting antiquities in museums, art galleries, castles, libraries and stately homes around the UK. These devices monitor temperature and humidity as well as lux and UV and are used in a variety of applications. LPRS is supplying Meaco with the Circuit Design CDP-TX05M-R transmitter and CDP-RX03BS-R receiver modules for Meaco’s monitoring systems, which are used as far afield as Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and Edinburgh Castle.
The first device in Freescale Semiconductor's MC1323x family is now available in production quantities – the MC13233C. Freescale says the ultra-low-power MC13233C includes all of the functionality needed for ZigBee remote controls, keyboards, touchpads, mice, 3D glasses and many other applications outside of the consumer market, such as the residential, industrial and medical markets.
Silicon Laboratories has introduced a wireless IC designed to reduce the cost and complexity of one-way wireless links used in applications such as remote keyless entry (RKE), garage door openers, building automation and security devices, while still ensuring one-way link integrity.
Shortlink, the Swedish manufacturer of wireless M2M modules, has been divulging details of its latest developments in miniature, ultra low power radio modules for use in short-range applications such as in-ear hearing aids. The modules are custom-designed, but each incorporate an RF ASIC based on a portfolio of standard CMOS building blocks, to enable rapid and efficient product development.
It is an often-repeated mantra that the pressures on RF products are for smaller size, lower cost and reduced power consumption. But while the first two of these seem to broadly move in the required direction over time, following the RF version of Moore's Law, the truth is that although RF transceiver subsystems have become more sophisticated and more highly integrated over the past 5 years, no real improvement in power consumption has been achieved.
Now Energy Micro, founded in 2007 by former Chipcon CEO and co-founder Geir Førre, has pledged to disrupt this trend in 2011 by launching devices that equal present standards of integration while offering energy consumption figures four times lower than those available today. This is a feat that the young company has already achieved with its range of low-energy ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers, and Førre sees no obstacle to repeating this in the RF domain.
