Microwave Engineering Europe - December 2008 - (Page 4) 4 NEWS By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe IN BRIEF TI, Fulton team up for wireless power Texas Instruments has started working with Fulton Innovation to accelerate the latter’s development of wireless power technology that can charge portable devices without power cords. Fulton, a subsidiary of the giant Amway Corporation (Ada, Michigan), has been developing for several years its eCoupled technology for charging systems in low, medium and highpowered applications. The technology supplies power and communication through an inductively coupled power circuit that dynamically seeks resonance, allowing the primary supply circuit to adapt its operation to match the needs of the eCoupled-enabled devices it recognizes. TI says it can design ICs that help minimize cost, board space, and accelerate time to market of the technology — targeting end-equipment designs for the market in 2009. The IC-based solutions would be used to create a universal power source that can charge multiple devices at the same time. www.mwee.com/212200901 ISSCC points to tomorrow’s cellphone — high definition video, 32 Gbits flash Imagine a future cellphone with 32 Gbits of flash capable of playing high definition video and ranging across networks from the oldest GSM to the latest 3G. That’s just one of many future concepts enabled by chip designs that will be described at International Solid State Circuits Conference in February. Renesas Technology will describe at ISSCC a mobile application processor that can decode 30 frames/second of H.264 video at 1080-progressive resolution while consuming just 342 milliwatts. The 65 nm chip fits into a 6.4x6.5 mm package and runs at up to 500 MHz. Panasonic will detail an even bigger step in low power media with an intermittent operating technique that reduces power consumption for audio playback to just 9.6 mW on its 45 nm application and baseband processors. Toshiba and SanDisk engineers will describe a 32 Gbit NAND flash chip to meet the memory needs of such handsets. The 113 mm2 device fits into a microSD card. It packs three bits per cell and is made in a sub-35 nm process. In wireless chips, Qualcomm will detail an RF CMOS transceiver that can handle services ranging from GSM to UMTS bands 1 to 6 and 8 to 10. The transceiver can also handle global positioning system functions. In imagers, Canon will discuss a 3.3 Mpixel CMOS sensor that uses new column readout circuits to lower noise by 30 percent. The chip promises higher quality video and imaging. Finally, researchers from Elmos Semiconductor and the Helsinki University of Technology will detail a new interface to a micro-gyroscope. The design reduces the size of the interface to 2.5 mm2 in a 35 nm process and cuts the sensor startup time to 0.4 seconds. www.mwee.com/212200810 Operators worldwide renew push for more NFC enabled phones Operators across the world have renewed their call for handset makers to incorporate full NFC functionality, including the standardized Single Wire Protocol Near Field Communications interface, to speed the uptake of contactless payments. Working through the auspices of the GSM Association (GSMA), the operators say the Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative needs a big push, and have thrown their weight behind the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) endorsed SWP standard to provide the interface between the SIM card and the embedded NFC chipset within the handset. NFC chips, from companies like NXP Semiconductors and STMicroelectronics, can communicate with existing contactless readers to deliver a wide range of secure, interoperable and transparent services, such as credit and debit payments. The GSMA says several operator trials have already demonstrated that consumers can safely use the technology. Trials are underway across eight countries involving nine mobile operators. Further pilots are planned across 14 countries by 15 mobile operators. For instance, seven banks and four mobile operators “ including Orange and SFR — involved in the “Payez Mobile” trial in France have announced the results of trials conducted with almost 500 sales outlets and nearly 1000 triallists. Over 90 percent of triallists said they found contactless mobile payment convenient, fast, and easy to use. And in Taiwan, in a trial of over 200 users, FarEasTone found that 90 percent of people felt positive toward to the service, with 80 percent saying they were satisfied that the service is secure. Last month, industry analyst Juniper Research said that while the mobile payments market is currently dominated by purchases of digital content such as ringtones, music and games, it will in future be driven by users transferring money and using NFC to make purchases. They predict that mobile money transfer and NFC transactions will account for 50 percent of the global mobile payment market by 2013. The Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative builds on the infrastructure of the major credit card companies, which have developed specifications to ensure global interoperability between contactless chip cards and point of sale terminals, regardless of manufacturer, the financial institution and location of transaction. The main phone makers that already have or are developing NFC-enabled phones include Nokia, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sagem. www.mwee.com/212200812 IMEC, Panasonic extend R&D collaboration Nanoelectronics research center IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) and Panasonic Corporation (Osaka, Japan) have extended their collaboration to include R&D on topics such as dynamically reconfigurable software-defined radio, ultra-low power consumption wireless communication technology for healthcare monitoring and biomedical technologies such as biosensors. Research will be carried out at the Leuven facilities and IMEC’s research unit at Holst Centre in Eindhoven (the Netherlands). Panasonic is also already a core partner in IMEC’s research programs on sub-32nm CMOS. The groups say the world’s first mass production of the systemon-chip with 65-nm and 45-nm processes such as Panasonic’s UniPhier uses the results of the joint research between them. www.mwee.com/212200899 Microwave Engineering Europe ● December 2008 ● www.mwee.com http://www.mwee.com/212200810 http://www.mwee.com/212200901 http://www.mwee.com/212200812 http://www.mwee.com/212200899 http://www.mwee.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.