Internet of Things

Maria Chizzali is chief operating officer of Italian home automation device provider Sfera Labs. She tells Caroline Hayes how her engineering degree and juggling skills helped her to co-found the company, raise a family and adapt to see the business through the covid pandemic. An early interest in the laws of nature, science and machinery meant that one of young ...

Belgian lab Imec is claiming record ranging precision and power consumption for a novel 6 – 9GHz IEEE 802.15.4z UWB (ultra-wide-band) impulse-radio transceiver: 1.4mm ranging, and 8.7mW Tx plus 21mW Rx consumption in continuous mode. “It paves the way for a variety of automotive applications,” according to Imec. “One use-case includes the creation of radar-on-chip systems for in-cabin child presence ...

Nexperia has created an energy harvesting IC for photovoltaic cells up to around 1mW, that automatically matches the cell to the battery – aiming to extract at least 80% of energy that the cell can produce for any given illumination. Harvesting range is 35µW to 2mW. Inside the IC, called NEH2000BY, power conversion is thorough a voltage-doubling capacitive dc-dc converter, ...

There are design challenges for antennas, PCB connectors and components, advise Ifan Yousaf and David Currie, of TE. The environment of smart devices presents design challenges. Electronic devices are increasingly being connected to the world through one or more wireless technologies and are commonly referred to as smart devices. By 2025, it is estimated that more than 75 billion devices ...

Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications New Radio plus is a new wireless communication protocol that promises to address many limitations of existing methods, filling the gap for reliable, low latency, long range communication, writes Mark Patrick of Mouser Electronics. The advent of the IoT and IIoT (industrial IoT) has brought technology into homes, cars and factories. Most of it depends heavily ...

Toshiba is aiming at over-temperature detection in mobile devices and home appliances with a family of ICs, intended to work with positive coefficient thermistors. Power consumption is under 12μA with 10μA of that going through the thermistor as sensing current. Lower current (<2μA) versions are planned. Inside is a current source to feed the PTC and a reference voltage with ...

Linx Technologies is aiming at sub-6GHz 5G New Radio, LTE, LTE-M and NB-IoT with a range of flexible stick-on antennas. Measuring 120 x 20mm, “ANT-5GW-FPC antennas provide a ground plane-independent dipole,” according to the company, which is now part of TE Connectivity. “The flexibility and adhesive backing make the series easier to mount in RF-transparent – for example plastic – ...

ScioSense has created a gas sensor that outputs CO2, volatile organic compound and air quality indices. Inside the 3 x 3 x 0.9mm LGA package are four separate metal oxide gas sensors, each with its own hot-plate, plus a processor whose algorithms decode the four sensor outputs into: ‘equivalent CO2‘ (400 – 65,000ppm), total volatile organic compounds (0 – 65ppm), AQI-U ...

Melexis is encouraging innovation and drawing on the rich pool of local technology graduates at its newly-opened Innovation Lab. Positioned in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, the Melexis Innovation Lab is the latest addition to the Belgian company’s site in Bevaix, near Geneva. The lab was opened in December 2022 and is a centre for pre-development of sensor technology products ...

The Design and Verification Conference & Exhibition Europe (DVCon Europe) is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The event will be held in Munich (14 and 15 November, followed by a SystemC Evolution day on 16 November). This year, the event will include a research track and authors from universities and research institutes are invited to contribute research papers for consideration. ...