Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2008 - (Page 4)

4 NEWS By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe IN BRIEF CIA invests in RF chip startup WiSpry Inc., a developer of programmable RF semiconductor products for the wireless industry, announced the closing of an additional $7 million of Series B ﬁnancing. This brings the total of the Series B round to $18 million. The round was led by present WiSpry investors American River Ventures, Blueprint Ventures, and L-Capital Partners. The company also announced DoCoMo Capital has made a strategic investment in the company. Participating in the round was another new investor, Arkian, WiSpry’s Korean sales representative, as well as existing investors, Hotung Capital Management, In-Q-Tel, and Shepherd Ventures. InQ-Tel is the venture arm of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). www.mwee.com/206903932 Telematics reaching for 44 percent market penetration Telematics systems are quickly becoming standard equipment on new passenger vehicles, according to ABI Research (Oyster Bay, New York), which predicts that 30 million new cars will have onboard telematics units by 2013. Telematics, such as General Motors’s OnStar and Ford’s Sync, beneﬁt consumers by combining global positioning systems with wireless communications technologies for remote diagnostics, concierge services and remote door unlocking, thereby increasing safety and providing infotainment and convenience. OnStar and Sync are slated to become standard equipment on U.S. automobiles, and in Europe eCall (an automated emergency reporting system) is being proposed as mandatory in vehicles by 2011. In the Asia-Paciﬁc region, Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Hyunda offer optional solutions via OEMs. www.mwee.com/206905047 Skyworks captures key design wins with its low-power ISM portfolio Skyworks Solutions, Inc. has announced key design wins and production ramps for its growing line of PAs, synthesizers, switches, and silicon VCOs. Skyworks’ design wins in the industrial, scientiﬁc and medical (ISM) bands are supporting a host of applications ranging from professional special mobile radio (SMR), radio frequency identiﬁcation (RFID), automatic meter reading (AMR), and industrial control. With respect to AMR, according to The Scott Report on AMR Deployments, only 34 percent of the 300 million existing electric, gas and water meters in North America. Outside of North America, just six percent of the 2.5 billion meters utilize AMR solutions. As a result, there is pent-up demand for an economical RF solution to more efﬁciently collect, report and monitor utility usage by both service providers and consumers. www.mwee.com/206905447 ST teams with Israeli startup for RFID Startup PowerID Ltd. (Petah Tikva, Israel), a provider of RFID technology, has teamed with STMicroelectronics (Geneva, Switzerland) to develop and market battery assisted passive (BAP) RFID technology for existing and new markets. They also plan to co-market EPCglobal Class 1, Generation 2 technology to customers that demand RFID where the performance of passive RFID is limited and where active RFID technologies are too expensive or bulky. The companies estimate that general availability of PowerIDs BAP EPCglobal Class 1, Generation 2 label would occur in Q2 2008. Ahead of co-developing the integrated circuit for PowerIDs BAP label, STMicroelectronics released a product line for use with regular passive RFID technology. Both ST and PowerID are members of working groups that are deﬁning BAP and sensor-enabled BAP RFID standards. PowerID is a privately-held company backed by investors such as Partech International, Apax Partners, Clal Industries and Investments, Amadeus Capital Partners, Inﬁnity Venture Capital, and Bank of America. www.mwee.com/206903939 FlatWire aims to short-circuit WPANs Copper-wire maker FlatWire Technologies claims it can solve the same problems as complex, expensive wireless technologies like 60 GHz wireless personal-area networks (WPANs) — such as cutting the “rat’s nest” clutter behind equipment and obviating the need to pull cable through walls — with a simpler, cheaper solution that is available today. FlatWire is a division of Southwire Company (Carrollton, Ga.), North America’s biggest manufacturer of electrical wire and cable. Its eponymous product is a ﬂat copper wire that can be glued to walls and ceilings, then made nearly invisible with a simple coat of spackle and paint. The wiring — composed of thin strips of copper encapsulated in transparent insulators — was recently written into the National Electric Code (NEC), thereby making it eligible for widespread adoption. FlatWire had earlier met NEC specs for low-voltage signal wiring, but the new listing, under article 382, claims FlatWire is also safe for carrying 110-V line current. (NEC article 382 classiﬁes FlatWire as “concealable nonmetallic extensions” — in this context, the product is nonmetallic in that it does not require a metal conduit.) FlatWire is also undergoing the voluntary listing process with Underwriters Laboratories. That process is expected to be completed by the end of 2008. Robb Sexton, president of FlatWire Technologies, claimed the product is the “safest wiring ever created,” adding that the “trick was to make a ﬂat wire that is essentially invisible on a wall’s surface, but safe to carry 110 V at 15 A.” “Power-cable replacement was our biggest challenge; we’ve been through three iterations to get it right,” said Sexton. “What we had to do was invent a whole new design. It’s still like one wide copper strip, as are our other models, but actually it is a stack of ﬁve conductive layers.” The two outside layers are grounded, and the next two layers are neutral, leaving the “hot” conductor encapsulated in the middle. www.mwee.com/206904597 Microwave Engineering Europe ● April 2008 ● www.mwee.com 004_MWEE.indd 4 28/03/08 17:44:54 http://www.mwee.com/206905047 http://www.mwee.com/206903932 http://www.mwee.com/206905447 http://www.mwee.com/206903939 http://www.mwee.com/206904597 http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2008

Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2008 News Contents Comment Test and Measurement: Comprehensive WiMAX and Wi-Fi Product Design Demands Effective Channel Emulation Military/Aerospace Focus: Hardware Needs Limit Software Radio Interview — Mitsubishi Electric Europe: GaAs Technologies Spanning High-End Space and Radar Through to Cost-Sensitive Handset and LNB Applications How Do You Test ZigBee Transmitters? Advanced Receiver Design Boosts Performance CMOS PAs Pave the Way for One-Chip Phones Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2008

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