Bisinfotech Magazine May Issue 2020

MAY 2020 80.00

R.N.I. No: DELENG/2019/77352 l VOL 2 l ISSUE 05 l TOTAL PAGES 60 l PUBLISHED ON 1ST OF EVERY MONTH |WWW.BISINFOTECH.COM

Cover story

Pit-Stop With EV Innovators

SEI SAUR ENERGY INTERNATIONAL

Publishing Group

Prevent Electric Vehicle Recalls

The Challenge Of Powering Industrial IoT Applications

Editorial " The Crisis Management " The coronavirus pandemic has taught the entire world a crucial lesson on the perils of relying too much on a single country for key supplies That is why the Shinzo Abe Prime Minister of Japan announced more than 240 billion yen ($2.2 billion) in an emergency economic package to assist Japanese companies in moving production back home or diversifying production bases into Southeast Asia.

Yoshihide Suga , Chief Cabinet Secretary in Japanese Government Said in an interview with Nikkei Asian Review “Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures” and it’s an "important lesson for crisis management."

Back in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi looking at this as an opportunity has asked Chief Ministers & bureaucrats to prepare well to attract investments from the global companies as they want to exit China as the uncertainty caused by the origination of pandemic from the country. Stating the sufficient manpower and improved infrastructure, PM Modi said that the country can become a potential alternative to China.

The semiconductor industry, which has historically been a major source of high-tech jobs, is among the many sectors that have had to adjust their production planning and operations as COVID-19 shifts demand for major CONSULTANT EDITOR NILOY BANERJEE niloy@bisinfotech.com SUB EDITOR NITISHA DUBEY nitisha@bisinfotech.com MARKETING MANAGER ARNAB SABHAPANDIT arnab@bisinfotech.com DESIGN HEAD DEEPAK SHARMA

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WEB DEVELOPMENT MANAGER JITENDER KUMAR WEB PRODUCTION BALVINDER SINGH SUBSCRIPTIONS PRIYANKA BHANDARI priyanka@bisinfotech.com MANAGER FINANCE KULDEEP GUSAIN accounts@bisinfotech.com

semiconductor end applications. The COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in our time. While the recession during the financial crisis from 2007 to 2008 was driven by stagnating consumer demand, the COVID-19 situation induced a shock to both global demand and supply, creating a dual challenge.

In addition to the human cost of life, the impact of the spread of the virus on the global economy is only beginning to be appreciated and has deep implications for the world's technology supply chain.

But this is what crisis management is all about. As humans we will always find solutions for any kind of crisis and come victorious.

ManasNandi

MANAS NANDI EDITOR manas@bisinfotech.com

Bisinfotech is printed, published, edited and owned by Manas Nandi and published from 303, 2nd floor, Neelkanth Palace, Plot No- 190, Sant Nagar,East of Kailash, New Delhi- 110065 (INDIA), Printed at Swastika Creation 19 DSIDC Shed, Scheme No. 3, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-II, New Delhi- 110020 Editor, Publisher, Printer and Owner make every effort to ensure high quality and accuracy of the content published. However he cannot accept any responsibility for any effects from errors or omissions.

The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Editor and publisher. The information in the content and advertisement published in the magazine are just for reference of the readers. However, readers are cautioned to make inquiries and take their decision on purchase or investment after consulting experts on the subject. BisInfotech holds no responsibility for any decision taken by readers on the basis of the information provided herein. Any unauthorised reproduction of Bisinfotech magazine content is strictly forbidden. Subject to Delhi Jurisdiction.

Contents 38 T&M Feature

36 Big Picture

MOBILE WIRELESS COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDING FIELD MEASUREMENTS TERMINOLOGY IN 5G WIRELESS NETWORK

Startup Initiatives Will Create Domestic Designs While Manufactured

by Indian EMS Companies

48 FIBRE TESTING - WHY FIBRE TESTING IS

12 ELECTRIC VEHICLES - PREVENT ELECTRIC

VITAL TO 5G

20 COVER STORY - PIT-STOP WITH INNOVTORS OF THE EV INDUSTRY

VEHICLE RECALLS – MAKE THE CORRECT CHOICE FOR YOUR CONNECTORS

50 HEALTH MONITORING - HOLTEK NEW

SOLUTION BH67F2742 - FOREHEAD THERMOMETER

42 BIG PICTURE - MEDIATEK FOCUSED ON

32 T&M EXCLUSIVE - NEW TECHNIQUES

ENABLING NEWER TECHNOLOGIES IN THE SMART HOMES SPACE

54 5G TESTING - TESTING 5G QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE

TO STREAMLINE THE ANALYSIS OF LARGE WAVEFORM DATABASES

10 POWER - THE CHALLENGE OF POWERING INDUSTRIAL IOT APPLICATIONS

53 TELECOM - QUALCOMM AND BOE

35 INDUSTRY KART- MOUSER ELECTRONICS

ANNOUNCE COLLABORATION

27 INDUSTRY KART - ADLINK, ARROW INDUSTRIAL MACHINE-VISION AI DEVKIT

NEW PRODUCT INSIDER: APRIL 2020VEHICLES AND EVS

23 T&M - GW INSTEK INTRODUCES GDS1202B SERIES DIGITAL OSCILLOSCOPE 24 IOT FEATURE - SELECTING THE BEST

28 SMART CITIES - SMART BUILDINGS:

WAY TO CONNECT IOT DEVICES WIRELESSLY

MAKING BUILDINGS SMART, GREENER AND MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT

44 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE -

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN INDUSTRY: INTELLIGENT PRODUCTION

16 AUTOMOTIVE - ROHM AUTOMOTIVE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS

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46 SMART HOMES - ROBOT VACUUMS – OPTO ONBOARD

08 POWER - BOOSTING PERFORMANCE IN 48V POWER DISTRIBUTION

AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTION

MANUFACTURING SERVICES

LICENSED MANUFACTURING

Power

Boosting performance in 48V power distribution

Phil Davies VICOR

Power distribution networks (PDNs) are the backbone of any power system. As system power demands rise, traditional PDNs are under tremendous pressure to deliver enough performance. There are two main ways to improve PDN impact on power system performance with regards to power losses and thermal management. Option one, reduce the PDN resistance with larger cables, connectors and thicker motherboard power planes; or option two, boost the PDN voltage to reduce its current for a given power delivery, which can allow use of smaller cables, connectors, motherboard copper planes and their associated size, cost and weight.

For many years engineers have used option one for compatibility with the large ecosystem built up over decades for single-phase ac and 12V DC-DC converters and regulators. Other reasons include the lack of performance of DC-DC converter topologies that could efficiently convert higher voltages to PoL (point‑of-load) directly and the associated expense of these higher-voltage converters and regulators.

However, modern-day power designs increasingly use option two, higher PDN voltage. This trend is driven by the significant rise in system load power. In the case of data centers, the addition of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and deep learning has caused rack power to soar by a factor of two into the 20kW range; and supercomputer server racks are now approaching 100kW or more.

Figure 1 The ideal point-of-load power system. A regulator delivers top efficiency when VIN = VOUT.; maximum efficiency comes when high-current delivery is closest to the pointof-load, minimizing I2R losses

This increasing need for power has systems engineers point‑of-load their complete PDNs, from the distribution of power to the racks, power distribution within the rack, and even the PDNs on the server blades because modern CPUs and AI processors consume more power. When rack power was at a 5kW level, single-phase AC to the rack was the norm. The AC was then converted to 12V for distribution to the server blades. At the 5kW level the PDN current was 416A (5kW/12V) and power distribution took place via heavy gauge cables.

As processor power started to dramatically rise around 2015, rack

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power moved up to the 12kW level. So 1kA had to be managed within the rack for a 12V PDN. The OCP (Open Compute Project) consortium – whose membership includes most cloud, server and CPU companies – continued to evolve its 12V rack design. OCP racks moved from cables to bus bars and distributed multiple singlephase AC-to-12V converters within the rack to minimize the PDN distance and resistance to the server blades. The major change from prior rack power delivery was that the single-phase AC was derived from the individual phases of a three-phase feed to the rack.

Companies with the ability to build their own racks and data center solutions began to move to 48V distribution. This strategy cut down the high-current PDN problem to 250A for a 12kW rack but brought new challenges to blade power conversion.

Figure 2 High current delivery through the “last inch” imposes obstacles on high-power processors. Vicor technology improves this performance and simplifies motherboard design

As rack power has risen above the 20kW range, server rack PDN design is continuing to evolve. Attempts to maintain the status quo 12V legacy systems are creative on many fronts, but the introduction of AI into data centers with processors exceeding 1kA steady-state with peak currents approaching 2kA make 12V-based PDNs impractical. AI is all about performance, and 12V PDNs limit performance and competitiveness.

To address the many challenges of high-power racks, the OCP consortium is evolving toward racks that accommodate 48V PDNs. Moving to 48V from 12V distribution reduces the input current requirement by a factor of 4 (P = V × I) and cuts losses by 16x (power loss = I2R). Moreover, there’s a move to 48V power distribution in the automotive and 5G markets, LED lighting, display markets, and in industrial applications. Thus the ecosystem of 48V power converters is rapidly expanding. Moving to 48V makes good business sense.

However, not all 48V converter topologies and architectures are the same. Performance varies widely in the 48V converter market, a fact worth carefully considering.

With high-performance and power efficiency at the top of the list of requirements for high-power racks and data centers, several

companies are moving to three-phase-AC-to-48V for distribution to the blades. Alternatively, high-voltage DC (at 380V, derived from a rectified three-phase feed) distributed within the rack can be used. Several high-performance computing (HPC) companies are using HVDC PDNs for racks up to 100kW. As PDNs that supply the blades convert to 48V, power conversion on the blade must change. This shift has led to many alternatives in architecture, topology and packaging of DC-DC converters and regulators.

The 48V regime is new to data center servers but commonplace in communications applications such as routers and network switches, thanks to their use of –48V lead-acid rechargeable backup-battery systems. The common architecture traditionally used in data center servers was called the Intermediate Bus Architecture or IBA. IBA consisted of an isolated non-regulated bus converter to convert the –48V to +12V which was then fed to a bank of multiphase buck regulators for the points-of-load. Some of the cloud computing companies and HPC companies copied this architecture initially for their 48V systems, but as power rose and voltage at the PoL dropped to 1V and below, designers sought out alternative architectures and topologies.

Power system architecture, switching topologies, and packaging are critical to a high-performance, high-density design. As AI and CPU processor currents rise, the density of the power delivery circuits at the PoL becomes the most critical element in AI applications because of the PDN resistance between the regulator and the PoL.

Figure 3 MCM modules can deliver high current and can sit adjacent to the processor either on the motherboard or on the processor substrate; this close placement minimizes PDN losses and reduces the number of processor substrate BGA pins required for power

This architecture and its performance are enhanced by proprietary topologies used within the PRM and VTM. The PRM uses a zerovoltage switching topology while the VTM uses a proprietary resonant high-frequency Sine Amplitude Converter (SAC™) topology. Conversion to the PoL voltage uses both zero-voltage and zero-current switching. The VTM is essentially a DC-DC transformer where the voltage is reduced with the ratio of 1/K and the current is multiplied up by the K factor. The VTM, also known as a currentmultiplier, is a high-current-density PoL converter. (New products currently hit 2A/mm2). It can sit extremely close to the processor because of its innovative ChiP™ packaging technology and high‑density integrated magnetics.

This level of high current density offers designers great flexibility.

Depending on processor current, engineers can choose between lateral or vertical power delivery (LPD and VPD). In LPD, the current multiplier sits within a few millimeters of the AI processor either on the same substrate or directly on the motherboard, reducing PDN resistance to approximately 50μΩ.

The latest state-of-the-art AI processors have steady state currents of almost 1kA with peak currents reaching 1.5 – 2kA. Consider that a typical PDN resistance from the output of a conventional multiphase buck regulator to the processor is in the 200 – 400μΩ range. The resulting power losses in the PCB are 200 – 400W steady state (P = I2R), too high for any system to handle.

PDN losses become the dominant factor in the efficiency and performance of the DC-DC regulator design. Because this is a point-of-load problem and higher voltage is impractical (PoL voltages are declining rapidly to keep Moore’s law in force), the only reasonable approach is to reduce the PDN resistance, usually by placing the regulator as close as possible to the processor. In the case of a multiphase buck regulator, it typically takes 16 – 24 phases to support the high AI processor current. This is not a highcurrent-density approach and does not solve the PDN power loss problem.

Factorized Power Architecture An alternative to IBA is the Vicor Factorized Power Architecture (FPA™), which consists of a preregulation stage (PRM™) followed by a voltage-transformation stage (VTM™). This proprietary architecture optimizes the performance of each stage. The PRM performs a non-isolated (48V is Safety Extra-Low Voltage, SELV) regulation. Its 48V input is tightly regulated to provide a 48V output, and conversion to the desired PoL voltage takes place in the VTM, which is a fixed-ratio converter (the output voltage is a fixed ratio of the input voltage).

Figure 4 Vertical Power Delivery (VPD) further eliminates power distribution losses and VR PCB area consumption. VPD resembles the Vicor LPD solution with the added integration of bypass capacitance into the current multiplier or GCM™ module

For even higher performance, VPD moves the current multiplier directly beneath the processor where it’s output power pin map matches the pitch and location of the processor power pins above it. The current-multiplier package also integrates the high-frequency bulk capacitors that typically sit beneath the processor on the motherboard or substrate. This type of current multiplier is called a GCM (Geared Current Multiplier). VPD reduces the PDN resistance to an incredible 5 – 7μΩ, enabling AI processors to realize their true performance capabilities.

Conclusion Complex power problems of this magnitude require a holistic design approach to deliver successful high-performance results. It takes innovations in architecture, topologies and packaging to solve the toughest power challenges. Higher-voltage PDNs can solve many system performance challenges. A reduction of PDN resistances is the key to unlocking the next generation power for HPC and enabling the promise of AI. BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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Power

The Challenge of Powering Industrial IoT Applications Florian Haas

Director Marketing & PM Traco Power

The hype around IoT devices nowadays is not surprising. IoT engineering kits and the appropriate technologies for designing IoT prototypes are widely available and affordable for creative technology enthusiasts. Consequently, there are no limits for enabling ideas and possible business models based on these technologies.

mention the power transformation and isolation devices used in the products. Additionally, since these mostly battery-powered IoT systems spend most of their time in standby mode and only a small part is in active mode, the built-in DC/DC converters must cover a wide load range with high efficiency.

Also in the industrial environment, there has been a rapidly increasing demand for professional IoT applications. Common characteristics include the ability to distribute intelligence by connecting various sensors and actuators with decentralized control. The ability to make them smart is that these sensors and actuators can collect and communicate data and are designed to be managed with intelligence. The market for industrial IoT applications will continue to expand as more applications evolve, including (home) healthcare, infrastructure, utilities, home automation and smart homes, vehicle, mobility and more. These professional IoT trends will undoubtedly involve miniaturization, mobility, robustness, efficiency (degrees of effectiveness) and the networking of electronic devices.

In contrast to hobby IoT applications, such safetyrelevant industrial IoT applications are subject to strict regulations, both, for the engineer and for the components being used. This poses a great challenge for developers of industrial IoT applications. The use of certified, reliable and long-term available electronic components is critical, as they are often used in safety and function-critical applications. The professional support of component suppliers is playing a very important role.

Requirements for powering professional IoT applications Critical modules within professional IoT devices are without a doubt the power converters and the power supply. Miniaturization, low power consumption, size and a high efficiency are playing an increasingly important role for those products. Semiconductors are probably the components which offer the highest level of innovation. As a second key technology I’d

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Size and efficiency matter- what else?

In order to design, certify and market such professional IoT devices, not only these technological product features matter. If these

professional IoT devices want to be certified and sold, they have to be fully compliant with increasingly stringent regulations through globally harmonized standards and guidelines, which bring a big challenge to today’s IoT electrical engineer. If IoT functionalities are required for critical applications such as in medical technology, the electronic components must be designed in such a way that they can be used accordingly, meeting industry specific regulations.

& low noload power consumption (ErP compliant), small size, high reliability and an affordable price are key elements to all these home/building IoT automation applications, and the ever-increasing compliance & standards including IEC/EN 60335-1 Careful planning is required, with the entire supply Chain We know the use of new technologies in securitysensitive and functionally critical applications requires increased reliability, quality, service life and certifications and - last but not least - seamless traceability of electronic key components.

Manufacturers are more and more in the need to use tools that have been established and perfected in the automotive industry for years, such as failure mode analysis, Corrective actions, 8D Reports, DFMEA, PFMEA, Total Quality Management and continuous improvement).

As an example, let us take a medical approved, wireless, battery-powered control panel with Internet access to the patient file. Wirelessly connected to this control panel is another device, which may can come into contact with the patient (e.g. a blood pressure monitoring device). One of the key safety concerns with respect to medical devices is that the patient is often electrically connected to the device. As a consequence, the power supply and the DC/ DC converter of this IoT application must meet safety critical regulation such as BF compliance and 2XMOPP standards within IEC/EN 60601-1 3rd Edition.

Today Total Quality has to find its way into the earliest phase of almost every development.

To achieve this, a developer today has to do more than just provide a functioning solution.

Where a mobile telephone used to be a useful accompanying instrument, today we are increasingly dispensing with redundancy from other means.

Cash, camera, address book, subscribers are all integrated into the smartphone. Smartphones are therefore critical life companions today.

The product designer today bears much more responsibility for the quality of his development than he did 10 years ago. We all know that this trend not only continues but will continue to develop rapidly.

Moreover, suppliers should regard the digital transformation in the individual components’ supply channels as a highly significant development. By establishing, analyzing and processing relevant data, a fast, reliable and economic availability of the components can contribute to increased productivity at the customer‘s facility.

In summary: This means that in IoT applications in critical applications, for example in medical technology, building automation or mobility, not only need to be efficient, miniaturized with a ultra-low standby power consumption, they also need to be available for decades, tracable and fully compliant with the relevant standards and regulations.

Another good example is industrial IoT applications for “smart” homes and buildings. High efficiency BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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Electric Vehicles

Prevent Electric Vehicle Recalls – Make the Correct Choice for your Connectors The automotive industry continues to position itself at the forefront of technological developments and offers guidance for many other industries to follow. More recent developments in the automotive market have centred on electronic advancements, whether that be with much improved driver/ passenger experience from improved HMI or due to safety critical developments and semi-autonomous driving features such as automatic braking and driver lane assistance, for example. Now, the focus is on the switch away from the internal combustion engine to environmentally conscious alternatives, most notably the electric vehicle (EV) and various hybrid options (HEV) and with this change comes even more challenges for electrical circuits, connectors and contacts.

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Regardless of the industry, electrical contact lubricants are used to enhance the performance and reliability of electrical contacts and connectors. Originally invented in 1941 for improving the electrical performance and reliability of volume controls by Electrolube’s founder, the use of contact lubricants has spread far and wide into many different

Jade Bridges

Global Technical Support Manager Electrolube

industries and has been a critical factor in the dependable performance of automotive components for decades.

Contact lubricants are specially formulated greases and oils, designed to reduce friction and wear and enhance electrical performance of current carrying metal interfaces, such as those found in switches and connectors. As no metal interfaces are entirely even and smooth, when applied to such surfaces in thin films they fill in all surface imperfections, in turn improving contact and electrical performance as well as prolonging the contact life by reducing hot spots, frettage and arcing.

By filling in the air gaps between the contacts, contact lubricants dramatically increase the effective surface area, in turn preventing arcing and the related temperature rise and oxide formation. They also provide a barrier to airborne contamination and reduce the effects of friction by facilitating smooth movement. In addition, the use of contact lubricants are typically evaluated for their ‘feel’ characteristics, improving the quality of movement of a switch or in simple plastic-plastic contacts, for example.

Whether the application is for interior components, such as air conditioning ventilation flaps; exterior components such as side mirror adjustments; or on critical contacts within the wiring harness; the applications for contact lubricants are ever increasing in line with the advancements in CASE technologies (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric).

contact lubricants can vary depending on the formulation and intended end use .

For example, some materials have a more stable low mV drop over a large number of cycles but compromise on their plastics compatibility, as shown in Figure 1 below. In other cases, the application may have the requirement for a particular consistency of contact lubricant, in combination with good electrical properties.A ‘stiffer’ or ‘harder’ grease may be selected in order to stay in place during the mechanical action of the switch. In such cases, the cone penetration at different temperatures or wear testing of the lubricants may assist in product selection. Conversely, a very soft grease or a contact oil may be required in applications where there is a very low contact force and in such cases, the mechanical action of the switch should be tested with a range of lubricants to determine suitability. It is therefore important to consider all electrical requirements, material compatibility and environmental influences when choosing the correct lubricant.

There are 3 main ways in which contact lubricants are used in automotive applications: 1. To improve electrical transfer and reliability of the contact As already discussed, contact lubricants increase the contact surface areas by filling any gaps and reducing electrical resistance. Technology has spread into more safety critical operations within vehicles and with automotive recalls due to electronic components on the rise, it is imperative that these safety critical connections are maintained correctly. In a recent report by AlixPartners, it was detailed that recalls to correct failures in electronic or electrical systems have grown 30% a year in recent years. Such failures include issues with software and software integration, however the vast majority of recalls are actually because of failures related to integrated electrical components. As an IATF 16949 approved electrochemical solution provider, Electrolube are often asked to help prevent such issues from occurring and fully understand the impact that such failures can have on businesses, with costs coming from all areas, including the effect it has on brand reputation for the automotive manufacturer. It is therefore extremely important that all aspects of electronic systems are considered, including the connection between devices and the correct selection of a contact lubricant.

The electrical performance of a contact lubricant is usually evaluated by measuring the mV drop of the contacts/ switches over a specified number of cycles. This is usually in excess of 20,000 usage cycles. The performance of various

Figure 1: Comparison of Electrical Properties and Plastics Compatibility

Traditionally, the improvement in electrical properties of switches and connectors in vehicles was focused on low voltage switches and moved on to more critical applications as the development of electronic applications progressed.

With a change to EV’s, a further increased set of challenges has been posed, including more electrical connections and most notably, much higher voltages being transferred around the vehicle. With experience in industries such as medium and high voltage switchgear, electroplating and relays, Electrolube have a range of products to meet the demanding new requirements of the electric vehicle market.

2. To reduce the effects of external influences, reducing corrosion and wear Acting like the central nervous system of the vehicle, the wire harness contains many connections to facilitate the communication of a multitude of devices. Due to the complexity of the electronics applications within a vehicle, the harness also accounts for a lot of weight. This has led to different materials being used, such as aluminium and in some cases, BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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Electric Vehicles differing metals could be used within the same harness. Whilst reducing weight, there are also other challenges with using aluminium, including the formation of hard oxide layers and electrochemical corrosion in the presence of moisture and differing metals. Contact lubricants can be used to protect freshly mated contacts being exposed to the environmental conditions but this is only part of the problem. During the lifetime of these contacts, corrosion caused by fretting is common and the use of a contact lubricant to prevent the exposure of any base materials on contacts or aluminium parts can greatly reduce failure rates of contacts and connectors.

Environmental influences can include temperature changes, humidity exposure and corrosive atmospheres. Changes in temperature can affect the consistency of the contact lubricant, for example, a lubricant may have a cone penetration value of 320 at 25˚C but when exposed to temperatures of -40˚C or lower, this value may significantly reduce, resulting in a much harder consistency of grease. Humid environments are also common and most contact lubricants will withstand high humidity for prolonged periods. When high humidity is combined with corrosive environments, differences between products can be realised. Electrolube have designed a series of tests to illustrate these differences and provide further assistance with correct product selection. These tests include wetting humidity followed by salt mist tests, chlorine resistance tests and consideration of different contact materials.

Products such as Electrolube’s CG60 and SPG have been used for such automotive applications for many years and are suitable for futureproofing the interior of vehicles, ensuring the upmost of comfort in the driving experience. In some cases, a fluorinated lubricant, such as Electrolube’s EGF, may be required to offer greater performance in these areas and particularly in the case of reducing the insertion forces when

3. To improve the quality, feel and insertion force/operation of connectors and switches.

mating connectors. This again leads us to a discussion about the wire harness and with the increase in number of electronic components and connectors as we move towards EV’s, the need for lubricants such as Electrolube’s CG60, CTG or EGF for improving manufacture and in-use protection is also greatly increased. In fact, in a study by Research and Markets it is reported that based on component, the connection of electronics within vehicles via wire harnesses is projected to witness the fastest growth up to 2025 due to the development of advanced technologies in the automotive field, including driver assistance systems and safety features.The automotive industry is in a period of constant change and evolution.

By switching to HEV’s and EV’s, a new set of challenges for electrical connectors, switches and devices are being put forward and will also continue to evolve for years to come.

Developments in battery technology and user interfaces, alternative fuel sources, and the ever expanding autonomous driving market, will all add to these challenges. By addressing the seemingly small task of ensuring high quality, reliable and protected connections, contact lubricants will assist in meeting these new demands.

Contact lubricants are also widely used in many applications to improve the ‘feel’ of a switch, thus giving the impression of high quality. This is also true for many applications within the interior of vehicles, ensuring that metal-metal, plastic-metal and plastic-plastic contacts alike have a good connection between parts, thus reducing noise and movement when subjected to vibrations caused by the normal operation of the vehicle. With a move towards quieter vehicles, improvements in tyre technology and the future with EV’s, the vehicle interior is a much quieter place to be and as such, the quality of these

The EV powertrain is on average two and a half times more expensive than conventional powertrains (AlixPartners), leading to cost being another barrier for growth in this market. This cost will naturally come down over time with economies of scale and improvements in technologies. This, combined with reduced overall costs resulting from the maintenance of high quality levels and reduced vehicle recalls due to connector failures, is why manufacturers need to have the choice of contact lubricants high on their development agendas now and for many years to come.

The combined humidity and salt mist testing subjected the lubricants to 90% humidity at 35˚C for 3 weeks, followed by 1 week at 35˚C in the salt mist chamber. The protection of copper and steel substrates was visually evaluated after this test. Typically, the synthetic lubricants, such as Electrolube CTG provided the best protection in this environment. In addition to this test, gold and silver contacts protected with various lubricants were also subjected to the salt mist environment.

Results further strengthened previous findings, highlighting that some mineral based lubricants in particular are not suitable for protecting these materials in harsh environments. Finally, as an extreme test, an oxidative environment containing chlorine was created and maintained at 35˚C for 2 months and results again showed that Electrolube CTG provided exceptional protection, closely followed by Electrolube CG53A and CG60.

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contacts and overall noise dampening is essential to ensure a high quality driving experience is achieved.

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Automotive

ROHM Automotive Lighting Solutions 1. Introduction Automotive technology is undergoing a major transformation.

A greater number of electronic components is needed to support the advancement of sensing and safety functions required for autonomous driving technology.

In the case of exterior lighting such as head and tail lamps, light source technology has continued to evolve from conventional bulbs to LEDs. In recent years, the use of products that not only turn LEDs ON/OFF but control lighting to increase safety have become widespread. Products and technologies for 2-wheeled vehicles are progressing as well, requiring the same level of quality as that of automobiles.

Against this backdrop, ROHM proposes automotive lighting solutions that combine LED driver ICs required for LED lighting control along with compact high reliability LEDs. In this paper, we will introduce ROHM’s proprietary products and technologies.

2. Market Needs for LED Driver ICs 2-1. Market needs for LED lamps Changing exterior lamps from bulbs to LEDs makes it possible to achieve smaller, thinner light sources, allowing more manufacturers to improve lamp design.

To improve design, it is necessary to increase LED output while reducing the power consumption of the LED drive control

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circuit along with size. At the same time, longer life is needed.

Unlike bulbs that break after a certain period and require replacement, LEDs are often integrated with the control circuit, making replacement difficult. In addition, since LEDs are not expected to break, the tendency is to require high reliability at the component level.

At the same time, the demand to reduce costs cannot be ignored. For example, 2-wheeled vehicles are sold at very reasonable prices in India and ASEAN, where they are the mainstream mode of transportation. As a result, cost restrictions for each module are very severe, and LED lamps are no exception.

2-2. The difference between resistor and driver IC circuits Until recently, resistor circuits were typically used to control LED current due to cost advantages. A resistance circuit can light LEDs using a simple circuit similar to those used with conventional bulbs, making it possible to achieve lower costs.

However, disadvantages include lower efficiency due to circuit heat loss and the inability to detect LED failures.

In contrast, circuits using LED driver ICs (LED driver IC circuits) that have been attracting attention in recent years provide a number of advantages, including lower power consumption while ensuring high reliability by incorporating protection circuits that can detect LED failures. However, at the same time, these circuits also increase the cost of components.

The differences are described below.

1) Power Consumption Resistance and LED driver circuits utilize very different methods of controlling LED current when the battery voltage (that is, the supply input of the drive circuit) rises. In the case of a resistor circuit, the LED current increases along with the battery voltage.

But with LED drive circuits, constant current drive is possible at a preset value even if the battery voltage increases. As an example, if the current value when the battery voltage is 13V is matched in each circuit, LED driver ICs consume 50% less power than resistor circuits. This makes LED driver IC circuits advantageous in terms of power consumption. (Fig. 1)

3. ROHM’s New LED Driver IC ROHM offers a number of products and technologies for lighting up LEDs in cars and 2-wheeled vehicles, ranging from LED driver ICs for speedometers and indicator lighting, CID (Center Information Displays), and white backlight LED driver ICs for LCD instrument panels to LED driver ICs for headlights and rear lamps.

In response to the recent market demands as mentioned above, ROHM developed the BD183x7EFVM series of 4ch LED driver ICs (BD18337EFV-M/BD18347EFV-M) that utilize a new control method called Energy Sharing in which power consumption is distributed from within the LED driver IC to external resistors.

As such these products are ideal for LED lamps (i.e. stop/tail lights, fog lamps, turn signals) for automotive use.

ROHM’s Energy Sharing control method is described below.

Figure 1. Power Consumption Characteristics Comparison

2) Reliability LED driver IC circuits are also beneficial in terms of reliability.

This is because the number of mounted parts is small, reducing the likelihood of component failure on the control board. In addition, LED driver ICs can detect errors such as LED open/ short failures and provide external notification. This makes it possible to detect unsafe conditions such as LED brightness drops due to unstable operation at an early stage and take appropriate measures.

3) Cost Resistor circuits are generally more cost efficient. For example, as shown in Fig. 1, in the case of driving 9 LEDs (3 rows of LEDs with 3 LEDs in each row, approx. 150mA/row), a typical resistor circuit requires at least 10 1W resistors, while an LED driver IC circuit needs just 4 ICs, depending on the package. So while it seems that the more components used in resistor circuits should result in higher costs, it is possible to significantly reduce costs by adopting multiple high power resistors, which are much cheaper than ICs. Conversely, LED driver ICs require more ICs as the number of LEDs increases, leading to higher costs compared with resistor circuits.

3-1 Challenges in reducing LED driver IC power consumption Fig. 2 shows a general driver IC, comprised of a constant current circuit that supplies current to the LEDs, an input that connects to the battery power supply, and an output that connects to that connects to the LEDs. When Power Supply A to which the input voltage from the battery is connected rises to some extent, the constant current circuit within the LED driver IC can output a constant LED current. So as a result, the output terminal voltage is equivalent to the forward voltage characteristics of the connected LEDs. Since the power consumption of the LED driver IC is the product of the input-output voltage difference of the constant current circuit and LED current, the power consumption will increase as the input voltage from the battery rises. Therefore, to decrease LED driver IC power consumption it is necessary to reduce either the input-output voltage difference of the constant current circuit or LED current. However, customer requirements and other factors make it difficult to change the LED current, so ROHM developed a method for controlling the voltage between the input and output of the constant current circuit.

As a result, conventional resistor and LED driver IC circuits only satisfy either the requirements for low power consumption, high reliability, or low cost. Therefore, in order to achieve the increased adoption of LED lamps, it is necessary to develop an LED driver IC that balances these 3 demands.

Figure 2. General LED Driver IC and Its Characteristics BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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Automotive 3-2. ROHM’s Energy Sharing control method reduces costs by decreasing IC power consumption Fig. 3 shows ROHM’s new Energy Sharing control method that achieves lower costs by reducing LED driver IC power consumption. The voltage between the input and output of the constant current circuit is controlled by passing a part of the LED current through the external resistor of the LED driver IC to suppress heat generation. At the same time, a newly added block monitors the output pin voltage to control Power Supply A to a constant voltage. The current flowing through the resistor is represented by the external resistor R and the voltage difference between the battery voltage generated at both ends of the resistor and Power Supply A voltage (Battery Voltage - Power Supply A Voltage). Power Supply A voltage is controlled to a constant value by increasing the resistance current as the battery voltage rises.

Using this control method allows most of the power previously consumed by the LED driver IC itself to be consumed by the external resistor R, reducing LED driver IC power consumption by approx. 75% vs conventional solutions. So by sharing power consumption between the LED driver and external resistor, the power achieved by 4 conventional ICs can be handled with a single IC and high power resistor.

ROHM achieves this function by simply adding an extra input pin to a conventional LED driver IC. And since lighting modes unique to 2-wheeled vehicles is supported, most of the necessary functions can be covered by the IC alone.

Figure 3. ROHM’s LED Driver IC and Its Characteristics

Although circuits equipped with ROHM’s new LED driver IC are slightly more expensive than resistor circuits, a cost savings of approx. 40% can be realized over conventional LED driver circuits. As a result, in addition to lower power consumption and greater reliability, lower cost on par with resistor circuits is possible by pairing with an external resistor. In addition, ROHM allows making this function available by only adding the input terminal with one pin to a conventional LED driver IC. Furthermore, most of the necessary functions can be covered with only this IC since it is able to support the specific feature for 2-wheeled vehicles, the lighting on/ off mode.

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4. ROHM LEDs Optimized for Automotive Applications Lastly, we will introduce ROHM’s automotive-grade LEDs. Ever since producing shell-type LEDs in 1973, for over 45 years ROHM has been at the forefront of the industry. ROHM’s greatest strength is the ability to implement product development with thorough quality control utilizing a vertically integrated production system in which every process, from element fabrication to packaging, is carried out in-house. One of our advantages is the ability to supply high quality products, through measures such as implementing an easy-to-manufacture chip design during the assembly process, introducing traceability for ultra-compact components, and carrying out process management for automotive-grade products.

4-1 LEDs for vehicle indicator light sources in instrument clusters In recent years, compact LEDs are increasingly being adopted as indicator light sources for instrument clusters. To cope with the severe temperature changes that occur in automotive environments, a gap is provided between the light shield and substrate to prevent contact. But this results in light leakage from the LED to adjacent areas, which can become problematic. What’s more, in applications utilizing compact LEDs, particularly automotive systems exposed to severe conditions, high reliability products that incorporate measures against aging due to environmental stress are required.

In response, ROHM developed the CSL0901/0902 series of compact, high output, surface-mount lens-type LEDs optimized for indicator light sources in vehicle instrument clusters that are expected to be exposed to harsh conditions. Raising the position of the light source to 0.49mm virtually eliminates light leakage. This enables the use of smaller LEDs – approximately 18x smaller (in volume) than conventional reflector-type LEDs, contributing to greater application space savings. In addition, ROHM developed a new molded resin that significantly reduces brightness degradation at high temperatures, even for short wavelength high brightness products. For example, in accelerated high temperature conduction testing with blue LEDs (85°C, IF= 20mA, 1,000hrs energization), ROHM succeeded in improving the residual luminosity rate by approx. 80% over conventional products. ROHM has also taken measures against sulfuration, one of the sources of age-based deterioration in automotive environments.

4-2. LEDs for in-vehicle illumination In addition to icon display for in-vehicle systems such as instrument clusters, expanding set functionality is demanding compact LEDs for illuminating the entire panel as well (i.e. infotainment/navigation systems).

To respond to these market needs, ROHM is developing compact, high brightness LEDs by optimizing a variety of factors, including the package shape, reflector material, elements, and surface plating. Furthermore, chromaticity variations are significantly reduced by carrying out high accuracy element and phosphor adjustment, making it possible to achieve high brightness equivalent to larger conventional packages in a compact 1608 size.

For this reason, ROHM is currently developing high power LEDs that deliver superior sulfuration resistance while maintaining high brightness. Combining these with ROHM’s LED driver IC introduced earlier will allow users to achieve optimal performance for automotive exterior lamps.

5. Future Developments ROHM has been developing industry-leading products ideal for vehicle lighting based on our corporate objective of ‘Quality First’. In this paper, we have introduced key products from among our broad lineup, including a driver IC that meets the 3 market needs along with breakthrough compact, high reliability LEDs.

Figure 4. Trend of LEDs used for in-vehicle illumination

4-3. LEDs for exterior vehicle lamps For exterior vehicle lamps, from a design perspective there is an increasing demand for smaller, thinner LEDs while improving power to reduce the number of mounted components. Also, as vehicle stop lamps are often used under harsh conditions, measures against sulfuration are needed to ensure reliability.

Following the proliferation and advancement of autonomous driving, automotive lighting is likely to play a role not only for illuminating the front at night and alerting drivers of braking from the rear, but also for providing external notification of vehicle conditions. Therefore, in addition to high power LEDs, LED driver ICs are required that utilize a control method capable of dynamically controlling the light source to transmit information externally. And, ROHM will continue to provide products and solutions that meet the needs of customers and society by quickly responding to market trends.

Analog Devices Contributes Against COVID-19

Federated Multi-Access Edge Computing

Analog Devices has recently announced that the Analog Devices Foundation is helping to combat the global fight against COVID-19. The Foundation is the company’s platform for engineering a better future with its mission to address many of the complex societal issues that impact the communities in which ADI lives and works. The Analog Devices Foundation has announced its support of the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund powered by the UN Foundation and a partnership with Global Citizen on its televised and streamed special “One World: Together At Home”. The WHO is leading the global effort to prevent, detect and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Fund was created to implement the COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan to track and contain the spread of the virus, ensure patients and frontline workers get the resources they need, and accelerate efforts to develop vaccines, tests and treatments. In addition, ADI and the Analog Devices Foundation will provide an accelerated match of ADI employee donations made to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO.

Altran and Ori Industries collaborate on a developer-centric initiative to help promote federated multi-access edge computing. Altran and Ori have already started working with major mobile network operators to progress a mobilityfriendly approach to edge computing. As a result of their collaboration, developers will be better able to seamlessly deploy applications globally, and operators will be able to launch and monetize industry use cases that are interoperable across different networks and geographies. Federated multiaccess edge computing (MEC) establishes separate channels that can interconnect MEC systems between each carrier so that service providers can provide the same 5G services regardless of region or carrier. Application developers will be able to improve development efficiency by reducing the process for optimizing the same services to each carrier's 5G MEC system. As with most other technology transitions, edge computing will depend on the ecosystem to meet developer expectations by simplifying application development and delivery from DevOps, mobile operator support and industry systems integration.

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Cover Story

PIT-STOP WITH INNOVTORS OF THE EV INDUSTRY

P Niloy Banerjee

olicy, implementation, technology know-how, charging infrastructure and importantly cost, these all aspects plays an instrumental role to the growth of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in India.

Leading countr ies in electr ic mobilit y use m u l t i p l e p a ra d i g m s such as fuel economy standards coupled with incentives for zero- and low-emissions vehicles, economic instruments that help br idge the cost gap between electric and conventional vehicles and support for the deployment of charging infrastructure.

Though Europe and USA leads on the global EV fleet, India has laid an ambitious blueprint to put the ignition for Electric Vehicles on the roads. In 2017, India’s Transport Minister, Nitin Gadkari baffled the automobile industry when he officially announced his intentions to transit towards 100% electric cars by 2030. Though the new proposal is to have only electric three-wheelers operating in the country by 2023, and only

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Supria Dhanda

VP and Country Manager Western Digital India

electric two-wheelers by 2025. India is set to turn heads of the economic power house countries with buoyancy towards EVs. Given the entire scenario, this is all going to happen, if just not the automobile industry is ready for it but the wholeready innovation of the technology sector. From chips to design, prototype to reality, standards to global accreditation everything has to come into the assembly area to make a the production of EV viable for the Indian market. Here in this article, I spoke to few companies and innovators in this space to understand the current market scenario of EV and way forward standing in 2020. Here is what I electrified during an interactive notion with R Vijayalayan, Manager, Automotive Industry Field Application Engineering Team, MathWorks India, Tushar Sambharam, India Electrification Lead, Ansys, Amit Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO of Yulu bikes and Supria Dhanda, VP and Country Manager, Western Digital India.

Status of Electrification of Vehicles in India

The growth of electrification emotion has grown enormously but what is the actual long-way vision drawn for EVs in India.

In which, R Vijayalayan from MathWorks states, “We believe vehicle electrification will continue growing rapidly, which is supported by the recent SMEV report noting that the sales of electric vehicles in India was up by 20% in 2019 – 2020.”

Tushar Sambharam,

India Electrification Lead, Ansys

Supria from Western Digital India asserts, “In India, the industry is working in tandem with the government to make itself one of the biggest electric vehicles (EVs) markets globally. There is a positive push in this segment as it reduces dependencies on fossil fuel and more importantly – it is environmentally friendly. The government’s target of 30% EV adoption by 2030 is projected to be powered primarily by electrification of two-wheeler, threewheeler, and commercial vehicles in India.”

Whereas, Tushar from Ansys, talking about the unprecedented transformation, he believes, “The global automotive industry is undergoing unprecedented transformation. Disruptive trends like Electrification are changing companies, industries and customers. In India at this stage, while four wheeler buyer may take some time to adopt due to range anxiety and initial cost barriers, the commercial vehicles are relatively adopting faster to electric mobility. Short range 3-wheelers running on battery swapping technology

R Vijayalayan

Manager, Automotive Industry Field Application Engineering Team, MathWorks India

hold a lot of promise as well. Cabaggregators as well as public transport buses are also moving faster towards electrification. On the personal vehicle side, two wheelers are showing strong promise because of less hassles in charging and a significantly shorter range in urban driving environments. Passenger cars may be the last to join mass adoption of EVs as charging infrastructure, charging technology and cost becomes more favourable.”

Amit from Yulu, the man driving the Indian roads with his two-wheeler mobility innovation, expresses, the future of mobility is Smart, Shared, Sustainable, and Small and Electric vehicles have a big role in this transition. Hence, the idea of smaller and efficient clean energy vehicles stands a great chance of making India a green mobility market.

The electric two-wheeler market in India is at a nascent stage but is expected to grow at an exponential rate in the coming years, taking over 80% of the market by 2030.”

Amit Gupta Co-Founder & CEO of Yulu bikes

Recommendation and Innovations To Move Ahead

Innovators are giving every ankle to nudge developments in the growing EV industry. Developments in battery cost and technology, expansion of production capacity in manufacturing plants, infrastructure etc. Other solutions include the redesign of vehicle manufacturing platforms using simpler and innovative design architectures. Tushar cites, “Industrial disruption such as electrification calls for a revamp of the supply chain and existing product development processes. Digital transformation is the need for an agile product development methodology. It facilitates to develop connectivity, interoperability and traceability across different functions for a cohesive execution of the business strategy. Simulation driven product development combined with data analytics and machine learning are transforming the product development and deployment paradigm.”

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Cover Story Stating about its expertise, Amit elaborates, “Through Yulu, we address modern-day urban commute problems such as first and last-mile connectivity through the micro-mobility option. With regard to the current COVID-19 situation, there is going to a new trend witnessed where the users might not have the elasticity to spend on personal transportation.

There will be more interaction between e-commerce and mobility start-ups for essential delivery of home items and many such interesting collaborations have already started happening. The concept of micro-mobility centered around selfdriven solo rides could emerge as a key trend post lockdown. The Indian customers are always on a lookout for a safe, feasible, and economical travelling option and two-wheeler segments dominate the interest of the young population. Also, the growing interest from the manufacturers has been boosting the growth of this segment. Today, we are moving towards an electric future and the way the twowheeler industry is heading with increased efficiency products, battery performance, lower maintenance costs, preventive maintenance, smart and connected features will definitely help the segment

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lead the path in the coming years.”

Supria elaborates, “We must however take fully notice of the fact that there has been some reluctance from consumers due to the high cost. If the government provides the much needed relief with reduced GST and taxes and prices are more affordable, India is set to witness a rise of EVs across segments. Moreover, the EV market gives a boost to the overall R&D sector and manufacturing units in India to build in-house products and drive local innovations.”

Concluding words came from R Vijayalayan, noting, “Automotive engineers have already adopted ModelBased Design, with which they can use simulations to perform trade-off studies and component sizing before building prototype vehicles, and also move quickly from concept to prototype to production for the controllers. Now, with the advent of new technological trends such as AI, Predictive Maintenance and digital twins, they will also extend their familiarity with and use of MATLAB and Simulink for designing AI models and AI driven systems. These key technologies

will in turn help engineers to increase their confidence in the feasibility of designs, track vehicle performance, and create vehicles that meet market requirements for vehicle range, battery life, safety, and performance.”

EV Roadmap for India

The Indian government has created momentum through its Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles schemes. The scheme creates demand incentives for EV and urges the deployment of charging technologies and stations in urban centers. If these aims are realised by 2030, they will generate an estimated saving of up to 474 Millions of tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) and 846 million tonnes of net CO2 emissions over their lifetime. The automotive industry players and charging infrastructure, batteries and mobility service providers have taken various actions to ramp up industry action. Companies are designing and testing products suitable for the Indian market with a key focus on two-wheelers and three-wheelers. Also, 10 states and union territories have published draft or final policies aligned with the economic and demographic realities of each region.

Indium Software Expands Partnership with Mendix

Infineon Delivers Millions of Chips for Medical Ventilators

Indium Software has announced its strategic partnership with Mendix, a low-code software platform that provides tools to build, test, deploy and iterate applications in real-time.

By leveraging the Mendix platform for the global and Indian customers, Indium can deliver Web, and Mobile Applications over 8X (times) faster with better results, driving ROI in days, not months. Indium Software can service its customers to confidently set up complex microservices and applications with the aim of capitalizing on digital transformation initiatives.

With Mendix’s Low-code technology developers can create complete applications visually by using a drag-and-drop interface rather than writing thousands of lines of complex code and syntax. This low-code platform will allow Indium users to build complete applications with modern user interfaces, integrations, data and it has the potential to greatly decrease the time and cost needed to meet business requirements.

Infineon Technologies is playing a vital role to support the manufacturing of ventilator devices.

Power semiconductors from Infineon are essential to reliably and efficiently control the motor of the ventilators, including those manufactured by a global leader in medical devices, ResMed. Dr. Helmut Gassel, Member of the Management Board and CMO Infineon Technologies AG, said: “We are pleased that we can contribute to support overcoming this crisis with around 38 million power semiconductors for producing medical ventilators. As the global market leader for these components, we are focusing on being able to make these products available on short notice.”

Mick Farrell, CEO of ResMed, said: “Infineon’s efforts to quickly provide these semiconductors are truly lifesaving. ResMed and other ventilator producers can only meet the world’s demand for these devices if component manufacturers like Infineon can meet ours.

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T&M

GW Instek Introduces GDS-1202B Series Digital Oscilloscope

Keysight Technologies Selected by Rakuten Mobile

The GDS-1000B series incorporates 200MHz dual channel model "GDS1202B" to expand the GDS-1000B series to more diversified bandwidth options, including 200/100/70/50MHz. The entry-level oscilloscope is a very competitive market in which all oscilloscope manufactures devote great efforts. GW Instek provides GDS-1202B model to allow the educational market and users with basic test requirements to purchase 200MHz dual channel oscilloscope at an affordable price.

Although, the GDS-1000B series is under the category of general purpose oscilloscope, the full functionalities within this simplein-look oscilloscope, including 36 parameters measurement, cursor indication, digital voltage meter, and data logging, etc. The serial bus trigger and decoding function originally provided in higher-end oscilloscopes is now also a standard in the entire GDS-1000B series. Users who had already purchased the GDS-1000B series can obtain the function by upgrading the firmware to V1.27 or the newer version.

Keysight Technologies has announced that Rakuten Mobile has selected the company's 5G network and channel emulation solutions in testing, validation and optimization of infrastructure and devices to speed introduction of highperformance 5G services. Rakuten Mobile is currently building a 5G-ready fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network.

Rakuten Mobile selected Keysight 5G solutions to improve the efficiency in their test and validation processes, critical to the delivery of high-performance end-user-experiences that align with market timelines.

"We are excited to partner with world-class companies such as Keysight as we push the boundaries of technology to redefine the way mobile networks are designed," said Tareq Amin, representative director, executive vice president and CTO of Rakuten Mobile, Inc. "Keysight's technologies and experience will allow us to provide high quality and highly resilient mobile 5G experiences to our users."

Keysight's suite of 5G network and channel emulation solutions, including the company's recently launched 5G Device Benchmarking Toolset, will enable Rakuten Mobile to efficiently validate 5G devices and network infrastructure – end-to-end – in over-the-air (OTA) test environments.

Rohde & Schwarz and TE Connectivity Demonstrate Compliance Successfully

Yokogawa Announces Completion of Acquisition with Fluid Imaging

Rohde & Schwarz and TE Connectivity cooperate on testing automotive Ethernet cables and connectors.

The two companies have successfully tested a communication link, utilizing Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) cables and TE’s MATEnet data connector system, for compliance with the One-Pair Ethernet (OPEN) Alliance Technical Committee (TC) group 9 test specification for 1000BASE-T1.

Automotive Ethernet is becoming the preferred solution for in-vehicle communications, offering to date speeds up to 10Gbps. For data speeds up to 1Gbps (1000BASE-T1), the communication link can run on unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cabling. However, for speeds of 1Gbps and higher, electromagnetic interference (EMI) becomes increasingly critical and can potentially threaten the integrity of other communications within the vehicle. Therefore, the OPEN Alliance TC9 group, which defines the requirements of cables and connectors for in-vehicle networks using automotive Ethernet, is now focusing on shielded cabling in order to minimize emissions, as the industry moves towards much faster speeds, for example 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps or even 10GBASE-T1.

Yokogawa has completed the acquisition of all shares with Fluid Imaging Technologies. Fluid Imaging Technologies possesses advanced technologies and know-how in the analysis of cells and other types of particles suspended in liquid media, and specializes in the development, manufacturing, and sale of flow imaging instrumentation used to perform particle analysis.

With Fluid Imaging Technologies as a member of the Yokogawa Group, Yokogawa will be able to expand the portfolio of cell observation solutions offered by its life innovation business, and thereby strengthen its business targeting the bioeconomy market.

Fluid Imaging Technologies is a pioneer in the development of flow imaging instruments that combine the features of traditional microscopes, which are used for the observation of cells, and flow cytometers, which are used for high speed analysis of the characteristics of lymph and other types of blood cells suspended in a liquid medium. With functions that enable them to image, measure, analyze, and count particles in liquid samples.

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IoT Feature

Selecting the Best Way to Connect IoT Devices Wirelessly Mark Patrick, Mouser Electronics These days, we have multiple options for connecting with other people almost anywhere on the planet. Some are almost instant (landline telephone, cell phone, VoIP phone, video conferencing), while others allow us to meet in person or send goods (rail, airplane, road transport). Much of this is being driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), which not only enables people to communicate globally, but also facilitates machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. In fact, there are already billions of deployed IoT devices around the world

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that communicate without borders, whether to send data or to receive and execute an instruction.

To facilitate this unprecedented level of connectivity, multiple network technologies will be required to connect the IoT nodes, depending on their function and where they are located.

Given the variety of IoT nodes deployed, it comes as no surprise that their needs in terms of connectivity are quite

diverse. However, there are a few key requirements that apply to almost every device in use today:

technology and an RF front end that consumes just 5nA in off-mode and 32.7mA when transmitting at 14.5dBm.

• Wireless is the preferred medium • The connection should have a fairly long range – several kilometers in urban environments and up to 40km when deployed rurally • Power consumption must be minuscule to allow a small battery to last several years, or to allow the node to be powered by energy harvesting • The deployment and maintenance of the device (including its wireless connection) must be simple and low cost The numbers involved with the IoT are staggering. Active global IoT connections will more than double from the 2018 level of 7 billion to 15.8 billion by 2023, according to a report by research firm IoT Analytics. Its report goes on to estimate that low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) will be used by 1.15 billion devices to connect to the wider world. Looking farther into the future, IDTechEx Research has produced a forecast that there will be around 2.7 billion IoT connections via LPWAN by the end of this decade.

LPWAN Protocol Overview Short-range wireless connections (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Zigbee) are not well suited to IoT applications where the node is placed remotely, and cellular networks (2G, 3G and 4G) are generally too power-hungry to meet the battery life requirements of the IoT. LPWAN technologies such as Sigfox, LoRa and Weightless have longer range than the wireless connections and use less power than cellular, making them an ideal “sweet spot” for IoT. There is also narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), which uses the cellular LTE protocol over either GSM or LTE networks. However, NB-IoT is able to transmit small packets of data bi-directionally while consuming low levels of power.

Figure 1: An overview of the main functional blocks of the ATA8520.

LoRa Another French invention, LoRa (long range) was developed and patented by Cycleo in 2009 before its 2012 acquisition by Semtech. It supports end-to-end AES-128 encryption and also uses the public ISM band, albeit at an increased bandwidth of 125kHz and 250kHz. The use of chirp spread spectrum (CSS) allows for a 50kbps bi-directional data transmission rate that supports 243-byte messages.

The LoRa Alliance defined LoRaWAN as the default LoRa protocol in 2015. So far, LoRaWAN is in use in 100 countries.

Sigfox In 2009, Sigfox (a French company) developed this proprietary technology with a 100Hz bandwidth that takes advantage of the unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band (Europe: 868MHz; North America: 915MHz; Asia: 433MHz).

Sigfox was deployed in France in 2014 and has subsequently been used in around 60 countries.

Intended for messages where the size is limited, Sigfox runs at 100bps or 600bps, depending on the region it is deployed in. Based on binary phase shift keying (BPSK), Sigfox provides bi-directional communication subject to a daily restriction of sending up to 140 12-byte messages and receiving four 8-byte messages.

Microchip Technology offers 868MHz ATA8520 single-chip RF transceivers for European Sigfox that are flexible and are able to be paired with any microcontroller (MCU) to form a Sigfox solution. The single-chip solution incorporates controller

Figure 2: Semtech SX1301 digital baseband.

All of the available LoRa ICs are supplied by Semtech, including the SX1301 digital baseband chip that creates outdoor LoRaWAN macro gateways for applications such as smart BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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IoT Feature metering, security sensors and agricultural monitoring. The SX1301 includes a multichannel high-performance transceiver (LoRa concentrator IP) that is able to receive several LoRa packets simultaneously using random spreading factors on random channels.

The Semtech solution delivers a good connection from a central wireless data concentrator to multiple wireless end points distributed over many different distances. The device also features dual-band operation, dynamic data rate (DDR) adaptation and a total of 10 programmable parallel demodulation paths.

Murata, an influential member of the LoRa Alliance, recently released several small, energy-efficient ABZ LoRa wireless modules that are intended for applications such as smart metering, wearables and asset tracking. Housed in fully shielded packages, these devices measure just 12.5mm x 11.6mm x 1.76mm and incorporate a Semtech SX1276 ultra-long-range spread-spectrum wireless transceiver as well as an STM32L0 series ARM Cortex M0+ 32-bit MCU with 192kB of Flash memory and 20kB of RAM from STMicroelectronics.

Every LoRa network requires a gateway, one or more nodes and a local server for monitoring the connected devices.

Seeed Studio’s LoRa/LoRaWAN 868MHz and 915MHz gateways are ideally suited to developing LPWAN solutions as the kits include several building blocks that speed up the process.

Included are a Raspberry Pi 3, a Seeeduino LoRaWAN with GPS, and a 10-channel gateway/local server for receiving and distributing data to each LoRa node. It takes just minutes for engineers to build a working prototype by connecting the gateway with Seeeduino LoRaWAN and Grove modules.

Weightless The Weightless Special Interest Group (SIG), a non-profit organization based in Cambridge, UK, developed the Weightless open standard. Operating in the unlicensed sub-1GHz area, the standard has three versions – Weightless-W, Weightless-N and Weightless-P – that make use of different available spectra. Weightless-W occupies the unused local spectrum in the licensed TV band – known as the “whitespace” – while Weightless-N uses the unlicensed ultra-narrowband protocol based on NWave’s unidirectional technology.

Weightless-P operates in the full range of unlicensed sub1GHz ISM/SRD bands, uses FDMA + TDMA modulation in the 12.5kHz narrowband and has an adaptive data rate (going from 200bps to 100kbps). Weightless supports AES-128/256 encryption and authentication of both the terminal and the network.

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) Standardized in 2016 by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), NB-IoT is a low-power standard that uses licensed GSM and LTE cellular networks. It offers a data rate up to 50kbps with a 180kHz bandwidth. Message size is 1.6kB. The service is expanding rapidly with both T-Mobile and AT&T

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rolling out networks across North America. Vodafone have a European network that covers 10 countries: Netherlands, UK, Czech Republic, Ireland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Hungary and Romania.

The Right Protocol for an Application There are several factors to consider when selecting the best LPWAN technology for a given application. These include the network coverage and range, latency, energy efficiency and quality of service (QoS) along with scalability and cost.

Remotely located sensors, such as those in farming/agriculture, will have minimal transmissions but will require long battery life or the ability to energy harvest. As LTE coverage is likely to be patchy at best, Sigfox and LoRa are the most likely to be selected here.

In a factory or other indoor facility, monitoring of equipment will require multiple sensor types that may have different communication needs. Wi-Fi and Ethernet are able to be used, but where they are not available, NB-IoT has the capacity to deliver a high QoS, even with frequent transmissions.

Similarly, when monitoring slow-moving environmental parameters in smart buildings such as workplaces or residences where high QoS or significant data are not required, then LoRa or Sigfox could well be the best choice (depending on coverage and indoor penetration).

Tracking or monitoring the status of mobile assets needs a long battery life and a low-cost solution, meaning that LoRa or Sigfox are likely to be the best solutions. If the assets are constantly mobile (trucks, pallets, etc.) then LoRa will most likely be the most reliable solution.

Quite a few IoT deployments will benefit from some form of hybrid LPWAN solution based on STMicroelectronics’ STEVALFKI001V1 development/prototyping platform that facilitates system designs based on Sigfox, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and sub-1GHz technologies. The kit includes a programmable Jorjin Technologies WS2118 module, which embeds the BlueNRG-1 system-on-chip (SoC) for BLE functionality and the S2-LP transceiver for sub-1GHz functionality. The minuscule active RF and MCU currents, as well as a low-power mode for reduced current consumption, enable extended battery life, permitting long-term operation with coin cell batteries or from energy harvesting. The STEVAL kit is compatible with Arduino shield boards, including those that contain MEMS motion sensors, environmental sensors and time-of-flight (ToF) ranging sensors.

Alternatively, designers can utilize STMicroelectronics’ B-L072Z-LRWAN1 STM32 LoRaWAN discovery board (which incorporates Murata’s integrated open-module LoRaWAN solution) to develop IoT solutions based on LoRa and/or FSK/OOK technologies. Certified I-CUBE-LRWAN embedded software is included, enabling the setup of a comprehensive LoRaWAN node.

Industry Kart

ADLINK, Arrow Industrial Machine-Vision AI Devkit

Hackster.io Joins UNDP against COVID-19

ADLINK Technology launches its Vizi-AI system with Intel in order to provide a development starter kit (devkit) for industrial machine-vision artificial intelligence (AI) in Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. The Vizi-AI devkit includes Intel's Atom-based SMARC computer module with an Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit and ADLINK Edge software. The dekvit is available exclusively through Arrow Electronics in the North America and EMEA regions. Developers can connect Vizi-AI to various imagecapture devices, then deploy and improve machine-learning models to gain insight from vision data and boost operational decision-making. Vizi-AI includes pre-built OpenVINO-compatible machine-learning models that can be used out of the box, the companies report.

The devkit includes an Atom-based SMARC computer module with Intel's Movidius Myriad X VPU and 40-pin connector; the Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit, which optimizes deep-learning workloads across the Intel architecture, including accelerators, and streamlines deployments from the edge to the cloud; ADLINK Edge software, which improves the functionality of OpenVINO through the ADLINK Data River, enabling data to flow freely and securely; ADLINK Edge Profile builder, which provides an intuitive user experience to manage devices and applications; and ADLINK Edge Model Manager, which lets users add their own models to a pre-loaded selection.

Vizi-AI is also supported by its own community, GOTO50.AI, where users can find support, pre-built scenarios and other useful resources.

Hackster.io, an Avnet community has joined the forces with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and 12 leading technology companies to support the world’s developing countries in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The COVID-19 Detect and Protect Challenge is calling on engineers to design low-cost and easily deployable software, hardware and services that will support the detection and prevention of COVID-19 in some of the world’s most vulnerable areas.

“Through this challenge, our community at Hackster, the UNDP and Avnet’s technology partners are coming together to provide innovative solutions to get lifesaving technology to some of the world’s most vulnerable areas,” said Bill Amelio, CEO, Avnet. “We are proud to partner with the UNDP to activate local technology ecosystems to develop, shape and implement open-source solutions that can help detect and protect against COVID-19 around the world. It’s truly a global collaboration, with a longer-term and positive multiplier effect.”

The COVID-19 Detect and Protect Challenge aims to realize ten economical and easy-to-produce hardware solutions to strengthen detection and prevention efforts in developing countries, minimizing the strain on healthcare systems by helping to flatten the curve. Projects will be curated by Hackster and the UNDP, which will also work with each creator to deploy their projects to the frontlines where it is needed most.

Digi-Key Partners with RIGOL Technologies Digi-Key Electronics has announced that it has expanded its product portfolio by signing a North American distribution partnership with RIGOL Technologies, providing Digi-Key customers with world-class electronic test and measurement solutions.

This expansion is part of the DK+ Marketplace initiative to broaden the product offering now available for customers, making Digi-Key Electronics more of a one-stopshop than ever before.

RIGOL Technologies is a world-class leader in digital oscilloscopes, waveform generators, multimeters and DC loads. RIGOL's premium line of products includes digital and mixed signal oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers and RF signal generators, arbitrary waveform generators, sensitive measurement products, and data acquisition systems.

"Partnering with RIGOL expands the solutions customers need, providing a wider selection and a deeper product offering of electronic test and measurement equipment in global regional market at competitive prices," said David Stein, vice president, global supplier management at Digi-Key. "Digi-Key is committed to providing full-service, one-stop shopping of electronic components and equipment that support engineers, designers, and the entire ecosystem of technology innovation in rapidly changing markets with supplier leaders in each region."

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Smart Cities

Julia Fichte

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Manuel Hollfelder,

Manager, Emerging Applications,

Manager, Emerging Applications,

Infineon Technologies AG

Infineon Technologies AG

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SMART BUILDINGS: MAKING BUILDINGS SMART, GREENER AND MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT

In the future, more and more people will live in cities. The United Nations predicts that by 2022, 56 percent of the world’s population will live in cities – by 2050 this is set to rise to 68 per cent. This means that existing resources have to be used more efficiently and overall energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions have to be reduced.

Buildings can play a decisive role in solving this challenge.

In the EU alone, buildings are responsible for 40 per cent of energy consumption and 36 per cent of CO2 emissions. At the same time, 75% of the existing building stock in the European Union has been assessed as energy inefficient. Clearly, there is huge potential for improving energy efficiency and buildings.

As a result, the European Union has agreed on a new set of rules for its Energy Performance of Buildings directive, which requires that EU members ratify their national policies to improve energy efficiency in the building sector.

In the directive, creating smarter building is seen as a key element for reaching this goal. Having proved their benefits in Industry 4.0, smart sensors and technologies are now being used in building automation. Intelligent building automation and control systems can significantly increase the efficiency of a building’s operation by leveraging sensor-based data insights. A Smart Readiness Indicator for buildings is also currently being developed. This rates a building’s capacity to use new technologies and electronic systems in order to reduce energy consumption and emissions and to adapt buildings to the needs of its occupants.

However, higher efficiency is not the only benefit that smart buildings deliver. Intelligently placed sensors and actuators can be used to constantly monitor and adjust air quality and lighting settings, guaranteeing optimal working environments, increasing productivity and raising comfort levels for tenants.

The Edge in Amsterdam is a prime example of how smart technology can already cut costs and increase productivity in buildings today. This 40,000 m² office building is equipped with around 28,000 sensors that enable the building management system (BMS) to collect information about a variety of crucial parameters such as humidity, brightness and temperature.

Based on these parameters, the BMS automatically triggers adjustments in the building’s operations, ensuring that systems such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and lighting run as effectively as possible. This makes The Edge one of the most energy-efficient and intelligent buildings in the world – consuming 70% less electricity than conventional office buildings.

While The Edge is still an exception today, smart buildings are definitely on the rise. Market research predicts that the market for smart building devices will double by 2022 at a compound average growth rate (CAGR) of 16%.

What is a smart building?

Unlike smart homes, smart buildings are non-residential buildings such as office buildings, shopping centers and hotels. Equipped with sensors that are connected to devices inside, these buildings can provide in-depth information on consumption levels and take automated decisions to optimize operations.

The smart downlights showcased by Infineon at Light +

Building 2020 are a prime example here, combining power and sensor solutions to create powerful insights into building performance. In these systems, the XDPL8221 digital control IC monitors relevant error conditions such as undervoltage, overvoltage, open load or output shorted at the LED driver.

Additionally, a 24 GHz radar sensor enables presence detection and people counting, allowing the system to dim the lights if no one is around and save energy. The sensor can also send this data to the BMS and the building operator for further analysis and optimization.

Following a more abstract version of “sense – compute – actuate”, an array of connected sensors collects environmental information and data about a building’s operations and usage. This information can either be processed at the edge (edge computing) or sent to a central building management system (BMS) running locally or in the cloud. This information is then used to trigger automated actions that adjust HVAC systems, lighting systems, shutters and many other devices inside a building.

Buildings can thus be smartified by using sensors, actuators and control units to cross-connect domains (figure 1). With connectivity providing the skeleton for the smartification of a building, the actual devices and control units form the muscles and the brain of the building.

This interplay of smart components enables ventilation, for example, to be controlled based on indoor air quality (IAQ) and CO2 levels in rooms. Lighting can also be automatically adjusted based on the presence of people and additional factors such as indoor brightness. This can significantly cut energy consumption and also improve occupants’ wellbeing inside a building.

Figure 1: Elements of a smart building Buildings can be clastsified into three different levels of “smartification” (figure 2): • Entry level: Basic connectivity of individual domains to a building management system (BMS) • Intermediate level: Comprehensive command and control over several integrated domains including sensor-based data collection • Extensive level: Extensive command and control over all domains with cross-domain intelligence and actuation

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Smart Cities as PoE-powered 5G small cells, LED luminaires, high-power Wi-Fi access points and public announcement (PA) systems.

The amendment also addresses overall energy efficiency, with lower standby power consumption and a protocol to manage the available power in a more granular way with power classes. This poses new challenges in switched-mode power supply (SMPS) designs for PoE devices.

Firstly, up to 100 W per port is added to the PoE switch power budget on the PSE side to fully support the latest standard.

To avoid an increase in the footprint required for the SMPS, the power density of the SMPS needs to be scaled up. This means that efficiency, power density and reliability are key requirements for the main SMPS in PSE designs.

Figure 2: Levels of smartification in smart buildings It goes without saying that today’s buildings will not reach the extensive level of smartness overnight. Instead, many small steps are needed. In the following, we will put the spotlight on two examples, Power over Ethernet and condition monitoring, to show how buildings can transition to the next level of smartness.

Example 1: Power over Ethernet as the backbone of connectivity The ability to transfer large amounts of data with high bandwidth between domains and the BMS is one of the key enablers of smart buildings. Consequently, having a capable and reliable information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure is the backbone of any smart building.

IP-based network connectivity is already well established in both industrial and residential applications. It is easy to install and maintain, integrates well with existing platforms and has an extensive implementation stack spanning both hardware and software. However, Ethernet has one disadvantage: Even though it provides connectivity to devices, power from the electrical grid still needs to be drawn from separate cabling.

Secondly, the right semiconductor solutions need to be matched to the respective SMPS topology, e.g. ACF or LLC. Choosing efficient and reliable solutions like Infineon’s superjunction CoolMOS™ MOSFETs maximizes available power and extends the lifetime of the devices. Thanks to their high efficiency, energy consumption is also reduced.

Efficiency, cost effectiveness and power density all play a crucial role on the isolated DC/DC SMPS converter stage for powered devices. Every watt saved by increasing overall SMPS efficiency can be used by the powered device itself.

When combined with reliable and efficient semiconductor solutions like Infineon’s OptiMOS™ and StrongIRFET™ families for PD SMPS or CoolMOS™ for SMPS in PSE, Power over Ethernet plays a crucial role in creating a reliable ICT infrastructure in a building. It can also unlock additional cost savings.

With the introduction of the first-generation IEEE Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard for Type 1 and 2 devices, this challenge was overcome for low-power devices like IP phones and conference systems. With PoE, power sourcing equipment (PSE) like a PoE switch is capable of providing power and connectivity along twisted-pair Ethernet cabling for multiple connected powered devices (PD). As a result, only one physical connection, the Ethernet socket, is required and this can be handled exclusively by IT experts. This approach also reduces wiring effort and simplifies device management, which results in lower installation and operation costs.

Until recently, only devices up to 30 W could be powered by PoE, hampering its widespread adoption. With the release of the IEEE 802.3bt standard in September 2018, Type 3 and Type 4 PoE uses all four pairs of the twisted-pair Ethernet cabling, increasing the available power per port to 100 W. This has opened the door for PoE in a variety of higher-power applications such

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Figure 3: The PSE requires an efficient PFC and low-loss switches using an isolated topology (bottom), while PDs make use of a generic isolated DC/DC converter solution (top) unless targeting specific applications such as LED lighting.

Example 2: Predictive maintenance Device and system failures such as broken elevators and air conditioning units are huge disturbances that can disrupt the smooth operation of a building. In interconnected smart buildings, even small problems can lead to significant disruptions in a building’s operation. Building operators are therefore desperately looking for options to monitor the condition of the installed device base and predict failures before they happen.

• XENSIV™ TLI4970 current sensor • XENSIV™ TLV493D-A1B6 3D magnetic sensor • XENSIV™ BGT24LTR11 24 GHz radar sensor

Sensors play a decisive role in monitoring a device’s condition.

Placed inside or outside the device, they collect data on a variety of different parameters that reflect its operational status.

Examples include airflow monitoring in HVAC devices using barometric air pressure sensors, current flow measurement in motor drives using current sensors and sound anomalies, and vibration measurement using MEMS microphones. These sensors allow deviations from defined optimal states to be detected in real time.

Based on Infineon’s XENSIV™ sensor portfolio, critical components in an HVAC device such as the compressor, fans, motors and filters are monitored together with overall system vibrations. The sensors collect data directly at component level. The collected data is pre-processed locally using the XMC™ microcontroller and sent to the AWS cloud for data intelligence and anomaly detection. The entire data flow is secured from the edge to the cloud by embedded hardware-security.

HVAC devices are just one example of a domain in which sensors can enable condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, unlocking added value for building operators, tenants and device manufacturers. Elevators, valves and lighting are other critical domains in a building where applicationspecific semiconductor solutions and advanced software intelligence can address maintenance problems and provide in-depth insights.

Predictive maintenance is the next logical step after the implementation of condition monitoring. It can be used to estimate when a device is most likely to fail and trigger proactive maintenance in a timely manner. This trend was evident at this year’s AHR Expo in Florida and is also in the spotlight at Light + Building in Frankfurt. Having identified this trend, Infineon is showcasing an end-to-end demonstrator for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance in HVAC systems at Light + Building 2020. Developed in collaboration with end-to-end IoT and cloud solutions developer Klika Tech and powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), it illustrates the potential of sensors in condition monitoring and predictive maintenance solutions for smart buildings. The demonstrator focuses on the key problems of HVAC devices, including airflow measurement, and integrates multiple Infineon products to ensure precise and reliable data recording: Sense • XENSIV™ DPS368 barometric pressure sensor

Compute • XMC™ XMC4800 IoT Amazon FreeRTOS connectivity kit Secure environment • OPTIGA™ Trust X

Summary Next-level building-automation requires input from sensors in order to trigger actuators and automatize decisions across all domains. Here, semiconductor solutions provide the basis of smartification, with sensors, power management ICs, microcontrollers and security ICs acting as the crucial link between the real and the digital world. Thanks to advanced technologies and smart connectivity solutions, the buildings of today can be turned into the self-aware, green and intelligent buildings of tomorrow – helping to solve the challenges that urbanization and climate change pose to society.

Electrolube Announces Success of its ER2221 Resin

HID Global Collaborates with Fidesmo

Electrolube has announced the success of its ER2221 resin for the protection of EV batteries in popular two wheeler vehicles in India.

At first, ER2188 proved effective, however, when battery numbers increased, it became apparent that the ER2188 resin wasn’t flowing into narrower areas. In light of Electrolube’s global expertise, Electrolube India collaborated with their UK Technical counterparts to find a better solution for the customer.

Electrolube’s UK headquarters sent a sample of ER2221 for Electrolube India to test with the customer.

HID Global has announced collaboration with Fidesmo, a provisioning company that makes it possible to connect contactless services to wearables.

Fidesmo has integrated HID’s next generation Seos credential technology into secure element chips that are used in a wide variety of wearables. Because Seos credential technology is designed for flexibility, Fidesmo can load the Seos applet into the tamper-resistant secure elements (SE) produced by the most prominent chipmakers in the world. This will enable wearables manufacturers using the broadest range of SE chips to add building and parking access as well as complimentary applications to their smart watches, watchbands, rings and other devices.

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T&M Exclusive

New Techniques to Streamline the Analysis of Large Waveform Databases

Alan Wadsworth

Business Development Manager for Keysight Technologies’ precision and power products

Many electronic devices and systems perform essential functions that must execute flawlessly over long periods of time. For example, electronic power grids, telecom systems, and implanted medical devices cannot afford errors that occur even once out of millions of events. For obvious reasons, the ability to capture and isolate extremely rare anomalies represents the key challenge to ensuring this level of reliability.

Monitoring voltage is not effective at identifying subtle device or system issues since it is typically controlled so effectively that minute variations are difficult to detect. In contrast, current waveforms contain much richer information relating to device or system operation. However, since current waveforms can

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Masaharu Goto

Masaharu Goto is a Principal Research Engineer in Keysight Technologies

fluctuate quickly over wide dynamic ranges, it is important to sample them at a high sampling rate to capture their full bandwidth. This can generate huge data files, since capturing data at 10 Mega-samples/second over a 24-hour period creates a data file greater than 1 Terabyte. Sifting through such a massive database to locate anomalous events is obviously a daunting task.

Until recently there were no solutions able to meet the hardware requirements just described. Data loggers can capture large amounts of data, but they have relatively low bandwidth and they can easily miss high-frequency signal

components. Conventional oscilloscopes are good at capturing high bandwidth signals, but they have limited data storage capability. Even high-performance oscilloscopes with large memory depths cannot capture data at a high sampling rate over time periods of hours or days. Oscilloscope current probes also do not have enough dynamic range to capture both low-level and high-level currents. Finally, neither of these hardware solutions supports any efficient means to analyze the data they collect and identify abnormalities quickly. This becomes a problem of big data analysis.

One solution to handle these sorts of big data challenges is machine learning. An initial technique that we explored was Deep Learning Neural Networks (DLNNs), which have been very successful in image and voice recognition. Unfortunately, DLNN technology proved to perform marginally well when applied to waveform database analysis in addition to requiring significant computing power. To analyze large waveform databases Keysight researchers had to develop new machine learning techniques optimized for that purpose. This new solution was developed over a period of five years and it incorporates clustering, unsupervised machine learning and proprietary database compression techniques. It can analyze terabyte sized waveform databases orders of magnitude faster than conventional techniques while running on a PC-based bench-top instrument.

The acquisition subsystem pre-sorts incoming data real-time during the acquisition. The real-time tagging is the most important module in the acquisition subsystem, as it pre-sorts incoming waveform segments. Similar waveform segments are grouped together and registered as members of a tag.

It is important to note that the pre-sorting does not have to be perfect; it just needs to contain enough information to enable post-processing analysis.

The database subsystem consists of the tag database and the lossless database. The tag database is a concise summary of pre-sorted waveform segments. It provides quick overview of the long duration recording. The lossless database is a full archive of the complete long-duration waveform record.

It allows quick query of waveform at any location of huge database by timing or waveform similarity. The size of the tag database ranges between one one-hundredth to one fivehundredth the size of the lossless database. This configuration permits great flexibility with regards to data management and analytics.

The analysis subsystem has two modes of operation: quick clustering and detail clustering. Quick clustering allows quick overview of the entire database. Typical computing time is less than one second. However, since quick clustering uses pre-sorted tag information its accuracy is limited by the tagging similarity threshold. Detail clustering offers more precise analysis capability as it uses the lossless database information.

Conventional analytics software needed re-scanning of lossless database in many occasions which take many hours. With this solution, user can enjoy interactive analytics with fast response without re-scanning the lossless database.

It is worthwhile to point out that this technology is not only new to the test and measurement industry, but also to the AI/ Machine-Learning community. Keysight presented a paper on this new solution at the IEEE Big Data 2019 conference (*1). At the conference, researchers stated they had never seen anything like the performance and capabilities of this solution. The technology is integrated into Keysight’s CX3300A Dynamic Current Waveform Analyzer as an available option.

It combines high integrity voltage and current measurement with long-duration waveform analytics.

Figure 1: System architecture of long duration waveform analytics software.

Figure 1 shows the system architecture of the long duration waveform analytics software. It consists of three components, and we will discuss each one in-turn.

The following example shows commercial power line voltage monitored over a period of four days at a sample rate of 1 MSa/s. Different waveform types are grouped by cluster with their populations displayed in the clustering panel. You can select one or more clusters and jump to their occurrences in the main playback window using the arrow keys. Although the database contained over 18 million waveform segments, data tagging allowed anomalies to be identified in a matter of seconds. For example, the screen capture below shows that 2 days and 21 hours into the datalog some significant over-voltage occurred. While interesting, this case is rather simple so let us look at a more challenging example.

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T&M Exclusive

Figure 3: Large spike waveforms occurring 17 times out of over 7 million waveform segments identified within 5 minutes on an IoT device.

Figure 2: Over-voltage anomalies detected on commercial power line voltage.

IoT devices need to operate long hours, and any unexpected current spikes could cause an internal IR drop and trigger a system malfunction. To verify device integrity, we measured a Bluetooth device’s supply current for 17 hours at a sampling rate of 10MSa/s. This generated a one terabyte database file.

Although the normal peak current is around 25 mA, we found very rare current spikes as large as 50 mA. These occurred only 17 times out of the over 7 million waveform segments recorded. Further analysis showed that, in this device, there are two types of asynchronous events. The 50 mA spikes are observed when those two events occur within a narrow timing window, and this happens only once per 400,000 times. This type of detailed analysis can only be achieved using the CX3300A’s dynamic current measurement capabilities along with its datalog option/long-duration waveform analytics option.

As the complexity of modern devices and systems continues to increase, the software tools used to evaluate them need to improve to keep pace. In cases where devices are used in mission critical systems, it is important to understand the behavior of waveforms over long time periods. The software used to capture the data also needs to be able to help analyze the data. This article has shown that by utilizing new machine learning techniques developed by Keysight. It is possible to analyze large waveform databases efficiently and pinpoint anomalies in those databases quickly.

Reference [1] M.Goto, N.Kobayashi, G.Ren, M.Ogihara, “Scaling Up Heterogeneous Waveform Clustering for Long-Duration Monitoring Signal Acquisition, Analysis, and Interaction: Bridging Big Data Analytics with Measurement Instrument Usage Pattern”, 2019 IEEE International Conference of Big Data, Los Angeles, CA. USA. 2019, pp 1794-1803.

Suntsu Electronics’ First Sales Office Vishay Bags 4-Star Supplier Excelin Europe lence Award US-Based Suntsu Electronics has announced the opening of its first European sales office, located in the UK. With a growing customer base of distributors and OEMs across Europe, the new office will provide additional sales and technical customer service support. Heading up the new office from its location in Bridport, Dorset is our Director of European Sales, Anke Allen. Allen is a native German who brings over 12 years of experience within the electronics industry. Casey Conlan, owner and CEO of Suntsu Electronic Inc. comments, “This is a major step for the growth of our business. As our active customer base continues to spread across the globe, it is vital that we continue to provide local support and maintain our reputation for excellent customer service”. The new operation will cover Suntsu’s entire product line including frequency control, interconnects, electromechanical, antennas, PCB’s, PCBA’s as well as design and engineering services, custom product developments and circuit board design support.

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Vishay Intertechnology has announced that the company's Dover, New Hampshire, facility has been recognized

by Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems as a 4-Star Supplier Excellence Award winner for 2019. Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems business instituted the annual Supplier Excellence Awards program to recognize suppliers that have provided outstanding service and partnership in exceeding customer requirements. Award candidates are judged on criteria including overall quality and on-time delivery.

Vishay was one of 86 companies recognized by Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems business for 4-Star honors.

"Raytheon has extremely high standards when it comes to the performance of its suppliers, so this award speaks volumes to our dedication to quality products and reliable delivery," said Tim Shafer, Vice President, Product Marketing, at Vishay Intertechnology. "We take great pride in our partnership with Raytheon and look forward to providing the company with the highest levels of service for years to come."

Industry Kart

Mouser Electronics New Product Farnell Launches New Tektronix Digital Storage Oscilloscope Insider: April 2020 Mouser Electronics is focused on the rapid introduction of new products and technologies, giving customers an edge and helping speed time to market. Over 800 semiconductor and electronic component manufacturers count on Mouser to help them introduce their products into the global marketplace.

Mouser's customers can expect 100% certified, genuine products that are fully traceable from each manufacturer.

Last month, Mouser launched more than 449 new products ready for same-day shipment.

Some of the products introduced by Mouser last month include: • Maxim Integrated MAX20353 Wearable Power Management Solution Maxim Integrated MAX20353 is a highly integrated and programmable power management IC (PMIC) designed specifically for ultra-low-power wearable applications.

• Bosch BHI260AB Ultra Low-Power Smart Sensor Bosch BHI260AB smart sensor integrates a best-in-class 6-axis gyroscope/accelerometer inertial measurement unit and the Fuser2 Core.

• Stewart Connector M12 X-Code Field-Terminated Plugs Stewart Connector M12 X-Code field-terminated plugs have eight positions to allow Ethernet connectivity and data transmission in industrial environments.

•ON Semiconductor NFP36060L42T SPM Intelligent Power Module The NFP36060L42T is an advanced PFC SPM 3 module that provides a fully featured, high-performance bridgeless power factor correction (PFC) input power stage for consumer, medical, and industrial applications.

Farnell Launches New Tektronix Digital Storage Oscilloscope Farnell has added the new entry level TBS2000B Digital Storage Oscilloscope from Tektronix to its test and measurement portfolio.

Electronics designers, test engineers and educators will benefit from its easy-to-use controls, automated measurements and large 9” display. The TBS2000B offers exceptional performance and advanced debugging at an affordable price. Customers can also benefit from a special new product promotion of up to 15% off whilst stocks last.

The new Tektronix TBS2000B digital storage oscilloscope is built on the legendary performance and value of the earlier TBS2000 model, providing higher performance and greater ease of use at an affordable price. The TBS2000B series is a complete drop-in replacement for TBS2000 series oscilloscopes, with the same form factor and programmable interface.

Notable features include: • A 9-inch WVGA display with a 5-million-point record length and 2GS/s sample rate which enables users to capture and display significantly more signal, speeding up debug and design validation.

• 32 automated measurements and on-waveform cursor readouts with search and mark features that enable easy identification of events that occur in the acquired waveform.

New Yorker Electronics Releases Vishay Infrared Sensor Modules Vishay Intertechnology franchise distributor New Yorker Electronics has introduced a new series of Vishay infrared (IR) sensor modules designed for light curtain and perimeter guard applications.

Available in five compact packages, they feature a fast 300μs reaction time. This Vishay Semiconductors TSSP9 series delivers long range presence and proximity sensing up to 2m, and a range up to 30m for light curtain and perimeter guard applications.

Compared to previous-generation devices, the fixed-gain sensors released by New Yorker Electronics provide higher interference strength without spurious signals and an output pulse width closer to the optical burst length. In addition, they

offer an almost constant detection threshold over their -25°C to +85°C temperature range and can detect a valid IR signal up to a higher DC illuminance level.

The TSSP9xxx AGC 0 is a good choice for fast proximity applications (~15ms) by using a burst pattern with variable intensity. The devices are ideal for sensing the distance to objects for drones, robots, toys and vicinity switches. They may also be used as reflective sensors for hand dryers, towel or soap dispensers, water faucets, toilets, vending machine fall detection, and security and pet gates. To simplify designs in these applications, TSSP9xxx series devices feature a PIN photodiode and sensor IC in compact Minimold, Mold, Heimdall, Panhead and Minicast packages.

The modules operate at a supply voltage range from 2.0V to 3.6V, feature a low supply current of 0.8mA, and offer carrier frequencies of 38kHz and 56kHz. BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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Big Picture

Startup Initiatives Will Create Domestic Designs While Manufactured by Indian EMS Companies India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) recently unveiled its ELECTRONICS SYSTEM DESIGN & MANUFACTURING (ESDM) Report 2020 with Frost & Sullivan. Among multiple big announcements during the virtual press conference, the report claims to serve as a catalyst for ‘Make in India’ for the World also underlines proposed creation of $1Bn billion ESDM Innovation fund and generate 1Cr jobs providing an alternate source of employment to IT sector. Reaffirming the notions and studies chalked in the ESDM report 2020, Niloy from BIS got alongside Dr Satya Gupta, IESA Chairman and Founder & CEO, Seedeyas Innovations Pvt Ltd in an interactive session to twig IESA’s vision and blueprint to device the ambitious initiatives. Edited Nub Below.

Q

As noted, how is IESA planning to achieve mammoth targets of incubating 1000 Startups, create 10k IPRs, and bring in 1mn jobs over the next five years where reports suggest economic slowdown and semiconductor demand to stall in 2020 and year ahead?

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IESA is working closely with Meity, STPI and several incubators closely to achieve this goal. We are working on Electropreneur Park (EP) program with STPI and Meity through which we would like to set-up at-least 1 Electropreneur Park in every state and UT’s of India. This will help us creating geographic diversity and inclusivity for each region of the country. The goal of 1000 Start-ups will also start looking very feasible with this approach because we have look to create only about 40 start-ups in each of EPs, which is very achievable with all the young entrepreneurs and innovators in the country.

Q

IESA mentorship on ESDM mission to make India a designled manufacturing hub?

IESA’s focus on Intelligent Electronics Products through our 1K-10K-100K and other Start-up initiatives will create domestic designs which can then be manufactured through Indian EMS companies. This will help both Intelligent Electronics Product companies and EMS companies as the increased volumes will bring economies of scale and create a vibrant environment for “Innovation Led Design; Design Led Manufacturing”

Q

Challenges of creating a holistic ecosystem amidst PM Modi's approval for PLI for large scale electronics manufacturing?

Indian Governments recently announced schemes PLI, SPECS and EMC 2.0 are going to provide significant impetus for large scale electronics manufacturing in the country for serving both Domestic Consumption Needs and grow exports. IESA has suggested enhancement in the schemes in 2 areas. i) Broad base the scope of PLI to Include all electronics product manufacturing rather than just focusing on Mobile Phone Manufacturing, ii). Link PLI incentives to %of domestic value add. These suggestions will help in increasing manufacturing base; Design Led Manufacturing and most importantly Domestic Value Addition.

It’s not just India; the supply chain for the whole world has been disturbed because of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Semiconductor suppliers across the world are finding alternate ways meet the demand of components across various geographies of the world. One of the area which is getting a lots of attention in the current times is component supply for Scaling domestic manufacturing of medical equipments like ventilators. IESA is working with many semiconductor and sensor supplier to address increased demand for the ventilator manufacturing.

Q

This is also an opportunity for India to boost component manufacturing eco-system in India including encouraging local R&D & IP creation. Given the good foundation of Talent and skills built over the years, it is an excellent to focus on component manufacturing?

After China becoming the epicentre for this epidemic what The world will possibly see Cos spreading their supply chains changes will it bring to the global semiconductor market to reduce dependence on any one particular region & India and how India will react to the huge reliance of electronic can gain from this approach. components from China?

Q

MediaTek to Enable Cutting-edge NXP, Murata to Deliver Industry’s AV1 Video Codec Technology First RF

MediaTek has announced it will enable YouTube video streams using the cutting-edge AV1 video codec on the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 5G SoC. The MediaTek Dimensity 1000 is the world’s first smartphone SoC to integrate an AV1 hardware video decoder, enabling it to play back AV1 video streams up to 4K resolution at 60 fps. With its improved compression efficiency, AV1 gives users incredible visual quality and smoother video experiences, while using less data.

Video streaming is the number one activity in smartphone use, so by using the Dimensity 1000’s more power efficient hardware-based AV1 video decoder, users can enjoy longer battery life while still streaming at the best quality settings.

Combined with its ultra-fast 5G connectivity in a single chip, the Dimensity 1000 leads the industry in design and capability.

“MediaTek is engaged in consistently upgrading its offerings to enhance user experience, and AV1 technology is a prime example."

NXP Semiconductors has announced it has collaborated with Murata, a system-in-package integrator for 5G mobile platforms to deliver the industry’s first radio frequency (RF) front-end modules designed with the latest Wi-Fi 6 standards.

Together, the companies are delivering a solution that can reduce design times, improve time-to-market and save board space in next generation Wi-Fi 6 implementations.

The NXP FEIC is tightly packed in a chip scale package (CSP) suitable for module integration and can support various 5G smartphones and portable computing devices. Additionally, it enables high performance 2x2 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) functionality. “Working with Murata helps manufacturers deliver a highly integrated, fully tested and qualified solution for 5G devices while providing the highest performance and smallest size to meet rapidly rising global demand for Wi-Fi 6,” said Paul Hart, Senior Vice President and General Manager of NXP’s Radio Frequency business. “No other chipmaker in the industry today can provide a comparable solution to meet demands of rapid deployments.”

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T&M Feature

Mobile Wireless Communication Understanding Field Measurements Terminology in 5G Wireless Network

Madhukar Tripathi

Head- MARCOM & OPTICAL PRODUCTS Anritsu India Pvt. Ltd

Why & what is 5G: The world’s demand for data is increasing at an astonishing rate. We need to be connected wherever we are and expect a seamless content rich service. With current devices consuming more and more data and more and more internet enabled devices, the current network infrastructure needs major changes to keep up with demand.

With the demand for data set to explode, next-generation 5G networks are being investigated as the solution. Three approaches are being taken towards supporting these huge traffic increases.

• Making more efficient use of available frequencies using new access technologies • Increasing network speeds and optimizing the architecture • Opening-up new frequency bands Further proposals for 5G systems aim to increase spectrum efficiency even further by speeding-up existing technologies, using newly opened frequency bands, and increasing network density, and support for this is being developed. Rapid developments in CPU processing power and cloud computing are expected to be key elements in deployment of 5G services.

5G will be both an evolution and a revolution. An evolution as mobile evolves to support a wide range of new use cases, and a revolution as the architecture concept is being predicted to completely transform to enable these new use cases.

• Provide fast, highly efficient network infrastructure • Support more and more device connections • Low latency, low power consumption

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• Data rates that exceed 10 Gbps 5G includes the evolution of existing 4G networks that use technologies such as C-RAN and HetNet to increase capacity of existing networks with an affordable cost. But revolution for core architecture to fully use SDN/NFV and network ‘slicing’, the use of a new millimeter wave band air interface for higher capacity, and new architecture/signaling for extreme low latency.

That means one of the big differences between 4G and 5G, architecturally speaking, is that while 4G networks used base stations that held omnidirectional antennas transmitting ubiquitous signals, 5G will use base stations with active antenna systems (AAS) with beamforming and massive MIMO to help focus strong signals toward each device in the coverage area.

5G Technology Enhancements: Scalable OFDM-based air interface: Efficiently addresses diverse spectrum deployment and services.

Flexible slot-based framework: Key enabler to low latency, URLLC and forward compatibility.

Advanced channel coding: Efficiently support large data blocks and a reliable control data.

Massive MIMO: Efficiently utilize a large number of antennas to increase coverage and capacity ** Mobile mmWave : Enables wide mmWave bandwidth for extreme capacity and throughput.

Massive MIMO** MIMO is a method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple TX and RX antennas to exploit multipath propagation.

The number of simultaneously different data streams depends on the number of available antennas. • min(m, n) ü m –number of TX antennas ü n –number of RX antennas. The potential is large when the received signal quality is high and the streams do not interfere with each other. The potential diminishes when the mutual interference between streams increases. MIMO works in both UL and DL. MIMO is based on 3 key concepts: • Spatial Diversity - Sending the same data across different propagation, or spatial paths • Spatial multiplexing and Multiple messages are transmitted simultaneously without interference with one another since they are separated in space • Beamforming: Focusing a wireless signal in a specific direction, rather than broadcasting to a wide area to increase channel capacity, spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. If we talk about nTx nR case we do not necessarily mean nT transmit antennas and nR receive antennas, it could also mean nT users with 1 antenna each and co-located nR receive antennas, such as at a base station.

in defining 5G standards. As per 3GPP Frequency Range (FR) for 5G has been classified in to 2 parts as under.

• FR1 – 450 MHz to 6 GHz FR1 is known as sub 6GHz band.

• FR2 – 24.25 GHz to 52.6 GHz FR2 includes the millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies between 24.25 GHz and 52.6 GHz. Bands in FR2 have a shorter range and higher available bandwidth compared to bands in FR1.

The one major drawback to mmWave spectrum is its short propagation range, making it difficult to travel through buildings or obstacles. In using the mmWave band spectrum instead of the traditional cell towers, a new technology is known as small cells. Small Cells are low powered cellular radio access nodes that operates in designated frequency spectrum . these small cell are useful in less users and high speed category over a small geographical area.

These frequency bands use various technologies to utilise spectrum efficiently broadly -.

• Frequency Division Duplex Bands (FDD) • Time Division Duplex Bands (TDD) • Supplementary Bands i) Downlink Supplement Bands (SDL) ii) Uplink Supplement Bands (SUL) RF OTA Measurements required by 5G Mobile Network Over The Air (OTA) is testing method in which Radio performance of any telecom site/ tower is measured though air interface. So traditional cable connected antenna measurement is replaced

by OTA in 5G network.

MIMO has been deployed in LTE and LTE-Advanced networks, where the base station and user equipment use multiple antennas to increase link efficiency. Massive MIMO refers to the technique where the base station employs a much higher number of antennas that create localized beams towards each device. The gains in capacity are enormous but so are the technical challenges associated with this technology.

Massive MIMO is building upon previous research and development in phased array antennas that was principally developed for electronically steered radar systems. The basic concept is that an array of low gain and low directivity antennas are built, and then the phase relationship between the signals on each antenna carefully managed such that the composite signal from all the sub-antennas gives a high gain and directional beam that is controlled by electronically adjustable phase shifters. This will lead to much higher data capacity in a massive MIMO cell, due to the ability to synthesize many separate simultaneous data paths to individual users.

The basic physics principles for massive MIMO are now proven, and experimental systems are being deployed.

5G frequency Bands: 3GPP and ITU are key standards organization which plays key role

A base station with massive MIMO and beamforming, *acts like a traffic signal in the network, keeping track of the timing and direction of arrival of all the signals in its coverage area, and use signal processing algorithms to plot the best route for a signal to get to each device in the coverage range, potentially even using building reflections to establish the best path.

OTA testing is most closely aligned with the real-world experience of network users. It is the most meaningful way of making measurements on a 5G transmitter.

In 5G coverage is beam-based and not cell based. As beams are transmitted with narrow beamwidths, there are radiated power characteristics that need to be kept at a minimum to avoid interference. These include side lobes, which form adjacent to or behind the main signal beam, and can contain considerable power with the potential to interfere with other signals. Generally, the decibel level is much lower than in the main beam, but in a dense network, side lobe level still needs to be monitored and managed. There is no cell-level reference (CRS) channel from where the coverage of the cell could be measured. Physical Cell ID (PCI) and beam ID are the identifications separating beams from each other. The PSS/SSS, together with the PBCH, is jointly referred to as a Synchronization Signal Block ‘SSB’ and is periodically transmitted on the DL from each NR cell. SS Burst Set BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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T&M Feature with several blocks is introduced to support beam selection and beam switching. The SSB Beams are static or semi-static always pointing in the same direction. They form a grid of beams (GoB) covering the whole cell area. The UE searches for and measure the beams, maintaining a set of candidate beams.

Spectrum Analyzer is tool used for field measurement in all cellular technologies including 5G. Following are typical measurements in 5G OTA

instant the decision is made.

Since the signal is distorted by noise from a number of sources the EVM plus the noise must not be so large that the receiver decodes the signal as being at a different point on the matrix. If it does then a data error occurs which may or may not be correctable. EVM is a measurement KPI for 5G NR related measurements.

• Antenna Beam qualification

• Channel Power The channel power measurement is made on the RF input signal after frequency down conversion and an analog to digital conversion The actual power measurement is performed by the test set's digital signal processor (DSP) in Spectrum Analyzer or other measurement tool.

• OccBw: Occupied bandwidth the bandwidth containing 99% of the total integrated power of the transmitted spectrum, centered on the assigned channel frequency.

In 5G Beamforming is a technique by which an array of antennas can be steered to transmit radio signals in a specific direction. In this technique, each antenna element is fed separately with the signal to be transmitted.

• SEM: SEM stands for Spectrum Emission Mask: A relative measurement of the out-of-channel emissions to the in-channel power. SEM measurements calculate the excess emissions that interfere with other channels or systems.

Principle of Beamforming Beamforming technique is used in smart antennas for transmitting and receiving signals in massive MIMO systems.

Smart antennas or Active Antenna Systems (AAS) are antenna arrays with signal processing algorithms that are aware of spatial signal identifiers, such as the direction of arrival (DOA) of the signal, and employ them to evaluate beamforming vectors.

These vectors identify and consequently track the desired signal sent from mobile stations.

Already used in radio astronomy and radio telescopes, trackand-scan radar, as well as in wireless communication systems, such as W-CDMA, UMTS, LTE, and LTE Advanced.

• EIRP measurements EIRP stands for Effective Isotropic Radiated Power. This is defined

by IEEE for an antenna in dedicated direction.

• Reference Symbol measurements 5G NR reference signals Reference signals are predefined signals occupying specific resource elements within the downlink time frequency grid. Similar to LTE, 5G NR is using many types of Reference Signals (RS).

RF Demodulation Measurements -Beam Management: 5G NR Initial Access Procedure contains following step. a) Beam Sweeping: Covering a spatial area with a set of TX and RX beams according to prespecified intervals and directions. b) Beam Measurement:

• Modulation Quality /EVM: Error Vector Magnitude Error Vector Magnitude. EVM measurement is a representation of how far the actual signal deviates from an ideal representation of that same signal. This is Signal Quality measurement. In other words EVM is a measure of how accurately the modulated signal arrives at the required point on the modulation matrix at the

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Evaluation of RX quality at the gNBor at the UE. Different metrics possible such as RSRP, RSRQ and SINR or SNR for this purpose. c) Beam Determination: Selection of the suitable beam or beams either at the gNBor at the UE, according to the measurements obtained with the beam measurement procedure. d) Beam Reporting:

Beam Reporting refers to the procedure used by the UE to send beam quality and beam decision information to the Radio Access Network (RAN).

RF Demodulation Measurements i) Physical Cell ID measurement The UE listening on a channel first detects the symbol timing and Physical Cell ID (PCI) inPSS over the time domain. Then, by utilizing SSS, the UEs obtain information regarding the frame timing in the frequency domain, CP length, as well as detect FDD/TDD mode and acquire the reference signals for demodulation Physical Cell ID has a similar role as Primary Scrambling Code of UMTS cell. ii) Synchronization Signal Reference Signal Received Power (SS-RSRP) SS-RSRP is the Reference Signal Received Power of the Synchronisation Signals (blue and red blocks) and is an average of the signal strength all REs containing synchronisation information iii) Synchronization Signal Reference Signal Received Quality (Power SSRSRQ) SS-RSRQ = Reference Signal Received Quality Ratio measurement that compares the power in the reference signals (SSRSRP) against the average power in the physical channel (RSSI).

Since the physical channel will also contain noise and co-channel interference, the result is always less than 1 or <0 dB. Typically -3 dB is very good whereas -20 dB is unlikely to be decoded correctly. iv) Synchronization Signal Signal-Interference-Noise-Ratio (SS-SINR) SS-SINR holds true for conducted and OTA measurements. SINR is measured on the 127 RE’s in the SSS. 5G NR EVM requirements: EVM Base Station requirements are divided into 2 parts: i)For small array antenna ii) For large active antenna array.

• For BS types 1C and 1H, i.e. those with an antenna connector port, i.e. < 6 GHz, small array size.

The Field Master Pro MS2090A delivers the highest levels of RF performance available in a handheld, touchscreen spectrum analyzer, with a displayed average noise level (DANL) of -164 dBm and Third Order Intercept (TOI) of +20 dBm (typical). This makes measurements such as spectrum clearing, radio alignment, harmonic, and distortion even more accurate than previously possible. For modulation measurements on digital systems, 100 MHz modulation bandwidth coupled with best-in-class phase noise performance maximizes measurement precision, while ±0.5 dB typical amplitude accuracy provides confidence when testing transmitter power and spurious.

Ruggedized for field use, all versions provide a comprehensive range of features to speed and simplify measurement, as well as enhance usability. RTSA spans of 22 MHz (standard) to 110 MHz (optional) provide capability for cellular interference monitoring to full ISM band signal analysis. In addition to being a full span swept tuned spectrum analyzer, all versions include a spectrogram display that helps monitor the RF spectrum for intermittent or interfering signals. Integrated channel power and occupied bandwidth measurements simplify the measuring and characterizing of common radio transmission. IQ data capture of 5G frames enables the capture and saving of IQ data for off-line processing on a PC using standard data analysis tools.

5G Measurement using Anritsu Field Master Pro MS2090A • 5GNR base station measurement – validate the performance of the gNB base station with essential measurements that are in full compliance with 3GPP TS 38.104 V15, including: o frequency error o time offset o cell/sector ID o modulation quality o unwanted emissions o occupied bandwidth o adjacent channel leakage ratio o transmitter spurious to 12.75 GHz o EIRP o synchronization signal block (SSB) • 5G coverage mapping – receive a clear representation of the signal strength of 5G transmitters over intended geographic area by continuously measuring RF data – including 5G channel power, EIRP, or RSRP – with results graphically displayed on a digital map or building floor plan.

• For BS type 2O, i.e. those without an antenna connector port, i.e. > 6GHz, large active antenna array.

Anritsu’s Field Master Pro MS2090A real time spectrum analyzer delivers performance never previously available in a compact, handheld instrument. With continuous frequency coverage from 9 kHz to 54 GHz, the Field Master Pro MS2090A is specifically designed to meet the test challenges of a full range of other wireless technologies in use today, including: 5G, LTE, wireless backhaul, aerospace/defense, satellite systems, and radar.

Reference: 1. * IEEE Spectrum video “5G Technologies: Beamforming Explained,” 2. Making EIRP Measurements on5G Base Stations: Application Note from Anritsu Co. USA 3. 5G NR Field Measurement webinar Anritsu EMEA BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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Big Picture

MediaTek Focused on Enabling Newer Technologies in the Smart Homes Space W

ith Indian stating itself being the next Smart City hub, real-estate and urban planning market seems booming.

To make smart and intelligent homes of tomorrow a reality, technology aptness is the core for an overall development.

In an exclusive interview, Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India unravels to Niloy Banerjee, BISinfotech about the company’s adroitness in Smart Homes segment. He also shares his insights on the overall market scenario and how MediaTek’s solutions are harnessing a variety of innovative technologies to bring forth solutions that empower the Smart Home segment. Edited Nub Below.

Q

What are the major offerings and product portfolio of MediaTek in the emerging Smart Homes segment?

A global fabless semiconductor company that enables 1.5 billion connected devices a year, MediaTek is a market leader in developing innovative systems-on-chip (SoC) for

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mobile devices, smart homes and home entertainment, connectivity and IoT products. Our dedication to innovation has positioned us as a driving market force in several key technology areas, including highly power-efficient mobile technologies, automotive solutions and a broad range of advanced multimedia products such as smartphones, tablets, digital televisions, 5G, Voice Assistant Devices (VAD) and wearables. We power 20%, or 1 in 5, of the world’s devices.

At MediaTek, the smart homes segment is one of our core verticals. Our forte lies in building the smart and intelligent homes of tomorrow. Our major offerings in this space include chips that power digital smart TVs, innovative 8K TVs, voice assistant devices, fitness systems like Tonal intelligent home gym, Blu-ray and DVDs, set-top boxes, Wi-Fi routers and optical drives to smarten up homes. We also provide chip solutions revolving around smart plugs and smart lighting. MediaTek is working on making all these products even smarter with

enhanced rich IoT and powerful Edge AI features.

Further, MediaTek powered smartphones play a crucial role in enabling smartness at homes. For instance, smartphones can use applications like Amazon Alexa and Mira vision to control all the smart products at home.

different smart home products. For instance, our flagship chips are embedded in the Amazon Echo Dot, an Alexa-enabled smart speaker. Our chip is also used in the recently launched Amazon Fire Stick 4k. In the Smart TV segment, the recently launched Motorola Ultra HD (4K) LED Smart Android TV, the OnePlus TV 55 Q1 Pro and Samsung’s 8K QLED Y20 model Can you elaborate on MediaTek and Amazon partnership use MediaTek chipsets. In fact, Samsung collaborated with to create a unified smart home vision?

MediaTek to launch the world’s first 8K QLED TV equipped Our association with Amazon is across different segments with a custom Wi-Fi 6 chipset – the MediaTek Q95 and Q900. catering to smart home requirements. Two instances of recent The TV, supporting Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, provides consumers products we have partnered on include the Amazon Fire Stick, a seamless experience with smooth streaming, gaming and a full-feature streaming device that can be plugged into the unconstrained access to the internet.

HDMI port of a television to turn it into a smart TV, and the Importance of Security for MediaTek in this growing Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker. We are also collaborating connected environment? on more Amazon devices and will be announcing these Security is an important issue when it comes to smart homes and products soon. the increasingly connected environment we live in. Security is Compared to the world, how do you see Smart Home a software driven function and MediaTek is extremely invested market booming in India? What are the challenges and in ensuring the security of consumer data. For instance, our scope that this indigenous market brings in?

AIoT chipsets have Arm’s TrustZone security built-in to enable Considering the smart home segment in India, domestic manufacturers to create secure IoT devices. These chips adoption of the technology is slightly slower than other countries, include long term support for operating system updates and but it is picking up. According to a recent report, the speech security patches. Further, MediaTek has also developed a and voice recognition technology market in India is pegged microcontroller unit chip, in association with Microsoft, to at 149.95 crore INR as of December 2019. The market is seen enhance the Azure Sphere security solution. growing to 210.63 crore INR by the end of this year.

Smart Home market is evidently becoming competitive.

With the current situation ensuring that people are required to What is MediaTek’s know-how to be a leader in this domain? stay at home, smart home technology is expected to receive a fillip. Individuals are more likely to invest in solutions that will MediaTek has always been focused on enabling newer make their homes more efficient and comfortable. There is technologies in the smart homes space and we have tremendous scope for products like smart speakers, smart endeavoured to create intelligent homes of the future. Our plugs and lighting, smart TVs, connectivity solutions, etc. A consistent efforts have made us the number one chipmaker for challenge hindering mass consumption in India is the cost VADs, digital TVs, home networking and other segments. We of some of the smart home products. People here are more believe in technology democratisation and offer consumers cost conscious but, with newer technology creating more premium services at competitive prices. Our chips are designed cost-efficient devices, consumption is seen increasing in India. keeping humans in mind and we work towards enhancing and enriching consumers’ lives through technology. It is this When we talk about a complete offering for Smart Homes ethos that differentiates us from our competitors. like automating and ‘IoTfying’ a complete house, it can Lastly, how are Technology partners and Design Service significantly start from small offerings like Smart Bulbs or say partners getting alongside MediaTek’s Rich IoT ecosystem?

Smart TVs. In this scenario, where is MediaTek’s pivotal focus and what are your strategies to encompass this Billion-Dollar MediaTek leverages a number of innovative technologies and solutions to design products that enable and democratise the market?

As we mentioned earlier, smart homes is a core vertical for us market. Our offerings power several vibrant and intelligent and we harness a variety of innovative technologies to bring technologies across verticals like home, enterprise, IT, consumer forth solutions that empower the segment. In the smart home electronics, healthcare, retail, and communications. MediaTek’s domain, we focus on pivotal technologies like 5G, artificial rich IoT program consists of three AIoT chipset platforms – intelligence (AI), narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) and i300B for voice recognition devices, i300A for multimedia 8K resolution. We also provide chip solutions for smart plugs displays and i500 for AI vision devices and these have been and smart bulbs which are small offerings that go a long way adopted by different technology and design service partners. in making a home smarter. Our strategy is to create a strong Our comprehensive AIoT program is spurring innovation with platform of efficient and premium chips that can power a chips that are leveraged by enterprises, startups, emerging variety of smart home appliances and we foresee many new brands and leading OEMs, in diverse markets. The platform products, featuring MediaTek chips, being launched in 2020. has enabled our technology partners to address new market opportunities by designing a wide range of IoT devices with What are MediaTek’s flagship offerings for (Specs, feature) Edge-AI capabilities and new user experiences. MediaTek’s Smart Homes? program also allows our partners to deep-differentiate in MediaTek has a comprehensive platform of chips that power software and provides them faster access to the market.

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Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence In Industry: Intelligent Production

I

ndustry is becoming increasingly digitalized, the digital enterprise is already a reality as Data is continuously generated, processed, and analyzed.

The volumes of data in production environments are the basis on which digital representations of entire plants and systems are generated. These digital twins have been used for some time to structure the planning and design of products and machinery – and production operations Suprakash Chaudhuri t h e m s e l v e s – a n d d o Vice President & Managing Director so more flexibly and Siemens Industry Software India more efficiently while manufacturing high-quality, customized products faster and at an affordable price. But what would happen if the machines and processes could gather insights from these high volumes of data by themselves and optimize their processes during live operation? The potential would be enormous. The good news is that this can already be achieved, step-by-step, using artificial intelligence (AI).

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Creating new opportunities AI has been the focus of research for more than 30 years.

During this time, major advances have been made in this area of technology: for example, more powerful hardware and software and improved computing power and data transmission are now being leveraged using artificial intelligence. This has created new opportunities for flexible, efficient production, even when it comes to complex and increasingly customized products in small batch runs. The potential is significant, a study by Accenture shows: AI has the potential to add US$957 billion to India’s economy in 2035 and more than 88 percent of respondents in India anticipate making moderate-to extensive investments in one or more AI-related technologies over the next three years.

The first applications of artificial intelligence are already finding their place in regular industrial activities including language recognition to perform basic tasks, documenting surroundings using cameras, laser beams, or X-rays, and providing virtual personal assistants in logistics. According to a BCG study, India has been ranked on the third spot in terms of adopting Artificial Intelligence. India, being an emerging country, remains competitive as Artificial Intelligence is heavily used for automation across several industries like- Healthcare, Banking, Retail and E-Commerce, Education, Agriculture and Manufacturing and many others. Industries are moving far beyond experimentation and are taking advantage of AI to overcome the physical limitations of capital and labor and open up new sources of value and growth. Mere,

Siemens has solutions in its portfolio in the area of service, as for example predictive maintenance, and other applications for engineering and quality testing. Cloud solutions like MindSphere and intelligent applications also provide support for the ongoing process optimization that improves machine efficiency and availability.

AI and Industry 4.0 Big data and AI give Industry 4.0 a huge boost. Digital is now a priority for most of the companies across various sectors in India.

Companies are now using advanced connectivity, advanced automation, cloud computing, 3D printing and intelligent software solutions to transform their businesses. These advanced solutions help companies to identify trends and patterns that can then be used to make manufacturing processes more efficient and reduce their energy consumption. This is how plants are constantly adapting to new circumstances and undergoing optimization with no need for operator input. And as the level of networking increases, the AI software can learn to “read between the lines,” which can lead to the discovery of many complex connections in systems that aren’t yet or are no longer evident to the human eye. Intelligent software with sufficiently intelligent analytical technology is already available. But whether data processing is performed using a cloud solution or at the local level (for example, using Edge computing) will depend on the user’s requirements. Data on an Edge platform is available more quickly and at a higher resolution, whereas a considerable amount of computing power is available in the cloud. In many cases combining edge and cloud computing is required to benefit from both worlds.

MindSphere, the cloud based, open IoT operating system from Siemens, can be used to link products, plants, systems, and machines. It is one of the most important foundations

enabling the use of AI in industry. MindSphere performs extensive analyses to make the vast amounts of data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT) useful for optimization, simulation, and decision-making.

The digital twin enables virtual testing of a variety of scenarios and promotes smart decisions in areas such as optimizing production. In the future, using a digital representation of a machine tool and the associated manufacturing process, AI will be able to recognize whether the workpiece currently being manufactured meets quality requirements. Moreover, it determines the production parameters that need to be adapted to ensure that this remains the case during the ongoing production process. As a result, production is made even more reliable and more efficient and companies even more competitive.

Security is the highest priority A precondition for both Industry 4.0 and for artificial intelligence is a state-of-the-art, end-to-end IT infrastructure, regardless of the size of the company. That’s the only way a business can become part of the digital future. But this must always be accompanied by an awareness that digitalization and cyber security need to go hand in hand. The risks are huge without the right safeguards in place. According to the 2018 World Economic Forum’s “Global Risk Report,” business losses through cybercrime over the next five years will amount to $8 trillion, far exceeding Germany’s gross domestic product.

Comprehensive protection for industrial facilities, as exemplified by the defense in depth concept from Siemens, will therefore play a key role in the future. After all, hackers are growing smarter all the time, and it is vital that companies stay ahead of them.

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Smart Homes

Robot Vacuums – Opto Onboard

Jim Toal Vishay Intertechnology

I tweaked my back the other day and had to sleep on the floor for a few nights. I was rudely awoken the first night by my robotic vacuum. It was not only the noise, though it is very quiet, but the fact that it kept trying to find a way around me. It would bump into me, back up, move left or right a few inches, and then take another stab at getting past me. I was not part of the normal floor plan. Robotic vacuum cleaners use either optical sensors or cameras to navigate around a room. Camera based vacuums wouldn’t have bumped into me but they would have taken a big chunk out of my wallet. Optical sensor based vacuums depend on contact between the bumper on the vacuum and an object like a table leg or me in this case.

There is a gap between the bumper and the body of the vacuum. Imagine that there is a ring of light in that gap.

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When the bumper hits the table leg, the ring of light is broken because the bumper collapses just enough to block the light.

“No light” translates to an object being hit. The vacuum stops, turns at an angle and goes straight again trying to find its way clear. That ring of light is created using discrete infrared emitters and photo detectors, reflective sensors, or integrated light-to-digital sensors, for example the VCNL36687S VCSEL-based proximity sensor.

Discrete infrared emitters and detectors could be used in several possible configurations. A single high-powered emitter could be coupled to a flexible light pipe with a photodiode at the other end of the light pipe. This would be similar to a fiber optic cable but in this case bumping into an object pinches the flexible light pipe causing the light to be interrupted. A second configuration would require breaking the continuous bumper into smaller subsections. Each subsection would have an infrared emitter pointed at a phototransistor that is parallel to the outer ring. When the subsection of the bumper hits an object, it deflects inward and breaks the beam of light, again causing a “no light” situation. Vishay refers to this configuration as transmissive sensing. In both these cases the output of the photo detector is a current, likely amplified, and converted and interpreted by a microcontroller.

Cliffs are always a huge concern for robot vacuums. If you have stairs leading down, you have what essentially is a cliff. Robots don’t do well when they fall down stairs; it’s to be avoided. In this case a light-to-digital proximity sensor is used, pointing down at an angle towards the floor, and located on the leading edge of the vacuum. Such a proximity sensor integrates an infrared emitter, photodiode, and signal processing circuits in a single package. The output of a sensor such as Vishay’s VCNL36687S is a digital count from 0 to 4095 as it has a 12-bit resolution. When moving along the floor, the light from the emitter reflects the wood, tile, or carpeted surface onto the photodiode and a ‘high’ count is read by the sensor and passed on the by the microcontroller via I2C. When that count drops to zero, there is no floor and the robot has got to stop. To ease the load on the robot , rather than constant polling of the value, the sensor can react to its own set thresholds and pass this information on to the microcontroller via a simple HIGH/LOW pin ( Interrupt pin). The sensor system has to be smart enough to know the difference between the transition from a reflective surface to a cliff, and from a reflective surface like wood to dark, shag carpet which can swallow infrared light. That’s the difference between stop and go.

One of the most important features of a robot vacuum is to know how far the vacuum has traveled. This too uses an optical

sensor, a transmissive sensor or slotted interrupter that has an infrared emitter directing light to a phototransistor across a gap through which a code wheel passes. In this case the transmissive sensor is a single package versus the discrete components mentioned above. The code wheel is attached to the axle driving the wheels and interrupts the infrared light reaching the phototransistor.

Together they are called an optical encoder.

Using a 3-channel transmissive sensor like the TCUT1630X01 allows the robot to keep track of distance traveled, forward and reverse direction, and, if necessary, number of revolutions.

I’m just grateful all these sensors use 940 nm infrared light. If it was visible light there is no way I would get any sleep.

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Fibre Testing

Why Fibre Testing is Vital to 5G Craig Black,

Senior Director and General Manager of Fibre Optic Test, VIAVI Solutions

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Expectations for 5G network services continue to grow, with enterprises and consumer’s worldwide desiring access to gigabit speeds with stronger, more reliable connectivity. But to make this happen, 5G requires connections to dense, high-capacity fibre optic networks. In fact, the importance of fibre cannot be overstated.

What Fibre Means to 5G Achieving the network densification required for 5G coverage and capacity heavily relies on the adoption of small cell networks. Small cells strategically place radios closer to end users and, thus, improve the overall quality of experience (QoE) for mobile users on 5G networks.

For the majority of service providers, fibre is the preferred technology for transport networks. This is because it’s scalable, secure and cost-effective, as well as easily understood by network engineers, which cuts time for installation, deployment and maintenance.

But fibre also is important to 5G fronthaul, particularly for small cell deployment, as it achieves the speed, latency and bandwidth requirements for proper operation. Furthermore, it enables operators to centralize baseband resources and connect clusters of radio units in centralized radio access network (C-RAN) architectures. Doing so simplifies deployments by decreasing equipment footprint and improving network efficiency through the centralized management of resources.

By using fibre in the fronthaul and access networks, operators reduce the cost of backhaul. This not only helps to generate higher revenues per site, but it also contributes to improved QoE. 5G Fibre Service Assurance There are several factors that must be considered when testing and assuring fibre for 5G networks. To ensure proper operation, there are several tests that should be performed during the installation and commissioning phases of the network, including connector inspection and continuity tests, as well as characterization of fronthaul and backhaul fibre links.

Moreover, operators need to validate all components of the network throughout the deployment of the 5G network. System performance requires more than simply seeing a green light on a baseband unit or remote radio. Indeed, signal levels could be just marginal or on the threshold, incapable of surviving environmental impacts.

It’s important to note that 5G networks have less tolerance for overall light loss, making attenuation more of an issue than ever before. Dust, oils and water blocking gel are common forms of fibre connector end-face contamination. Simply

placing dust caps on fibre connectors won’t work in a 5G deployment, since small particles can still migrate onto the surface, and contamination can occur during build or staging.

Physical damage, such as fibre breaks, strain, macrobends or elongation, not only causes signal loss or communication failure, but it can shorten the lifespan of the fibre cable as well.

In fact, just one percent strain exceeds acceptable thresholds for cable performance. This issue is of particular concern with 5G networks, due to the increase in deployment of fibre to the antenna (FTTA) sites. Therefore, active monitoring of the network is critical for service assurance, enabling damaged or stressed areas of fibre to be identified and repaired, reducing mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) and enhancing QoE. As service providers plan their 5G fibre rollouts, it’s particularly important to consider the skillset needed to deploy the networks.

Proficiency is required by fibre optic installers, contractors, project managers, technicians and engineers that need to understand, apply and correctly measure and record the performance of fibre infrastructures.

Competitive Differentiators 5G will create new revenue opportunities from outside the traditional telecommunications sphere, but only if operators commit to the service guarantees and experiences that these new vertical market customers require. Enterprise customers will demand 5G service performance levels that are backed by service level agreements (SLAs).

Because 5G networks are distributed across hybrid virtualised and physical infrastructure, test and assurance can be complex. Mastering those networks requires that operators have the ability to access empirical performance analysis data about how their networks are functioning. The ability to correlate and visualise that data is an essential aspect of assuring quality of experience.

Operators have a tremendous opportunity to create competitive differentiation throughout the Asian market by applying service performance monitoring and assurance metrics to fibre-based networks. There’s no question that business-critical 5G services will benefit from 5G technologies like edge cloud deployment.

However, the new architectural elements that define 5G bring complexity and technical challenges to the testing arena. In order to bring these profitable new business cases to life and command the 5G network, it’s vital for operators to implement accurate and proactive application, service and performance monitoring in their networks, with a keen focus on fibre health and resiliency.

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Health Monitoring

HOLTEK New Solution BH67F2742 - FOREHEAD THERMOMETER Holtek Semiconductor is a leading professional IC design house in Taiwan having its major business activities focused in the area of microcontroller and peripheral component design and marketing. From its origins in 1998, the company has continuously focused its energies in the advancement of new product development and skills innovation.

As per Global Forehead Thermometer market is valued at 91 million US$ in 2018 and will reach 130 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 4.7% during 2019-2025.

Ref. Picture for Thermometer Testing

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Health monitoring at home and in public places has become a critical requirement in these days. After the impact of epidemic, the world has drastically changed in its operations in public places by checking health conditions through temperature monitoring. So in such condition, requirement of fast and accurate temperature measurement plays an important role. The scale of using contactless thermometer is rising as it produces accurate readings within less time.

Compared with traditional mercury thermometers and electronic thermometers like axillary thermometer, forehead thermometers have the advantages of simple operation, rapid and accurate measurement and additionally are not required to touch the skin surface. Therefore, forehead thermometers have gradually become the mainstream product type in the thermometer market.

In order to ensure rapid product development, HOLTEK provides technical information including block diagrams, application circuits, PCB layouts, component lists.

Holtek has developed the BH67F2742 which is a dedicated MCU for contactless infrared thermometer applications, such as forehead and ear thermometers which provides a variety of flexible functions and features. The MCU Flash architecture

facilitates production parameter adjustment, product calibration and data storage. Compared with traditional solutions, the integrated LDO, EEPROM, LED and LCD drivers, low noise Operational Amplifier and 24-bit A/D Converter reduce the requirements for large numbers of external components.

Figure 1. Forehead Thermometer

DC-DC Converter The HT7733SA is a high efficiency PFM syn¬chronous stepup DC-DC converter. The device has the advantages of extremely low start-up voltage as well as high output voltage accuracy. It has higher operating frequency and also offers the advantages of much reduced audio frequency noise. The devices require only three external components to provide a fixed output voltage of 2.7V, 3.0V, 3.3V, 3.7V or 5.0V. The HT7733SA devices include an internal oscillator, PFM control circuit, driver transistor, reference volt¬age unit and a high speed comparator. These devices are available in space saving 3-pin SOT89, 3-pin SOT23 and 5-pin SOT23 packag¬es.

For 5-pin SOT23 package types.

LCD This device contains an LCD Driver function, with internal LCD signal generating circuitry and various options, will automatically generate these time and amplitude varying signals to provide a means of direct driving and easy interfacing to a range of custom LCDs. For large volume applications, which incorporate an LCD in their design, the use of a custom display rather than a more expensive character based display reduces costs significantly.

Thermopile

Figure 2. Forehead Thermometer MCU Specifications

Thermopiles are designed to measure temperature from a distance by detecting an object's infrared (IR) energy. The higher the temperature, the more IR energy is emitted. The thermopile sensing element, composed of small thermocouples on a silicon chip, absorb the energy and produce an output signal.

BH67F2742 has built-in LCD driver used to drive an LCD to display temperature. Buzzer and Motor are used for vibration and sound output alert when measurement is complete.

Figure 4. Thermopile

Forehead Thermometer circuit description

Figure 5. Thermopile Specifications

Figure 3. Thermometer Schematic

This device contains a high accuracy multi-channel 24-bit Delta Sigma analog to digital converter which can directly interface to external analog signals. PGA gain control, A/D converter gain control and A/D converter reference gain control determine the amplification gain for A/D converter input signal. The designer can select the best gain combination for the desired amplification applied to the input signal.

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Health Monitoring Switch, Buzzer and Vibration

Advantages of Forehead Thermometer

Switch is used for ON/OFF operation as well switch is used for multipurpose operations to control thermometer while taking readings. To indicate completion of reading, vibration and buzzer indication are provided to intimate user the completion of reading process.

A Forehead thermometer is a mercury-free, user-friendly, touch-free infrared type thermometer often used at home. It can accurately measure a person’s temperature within few seconds via the forehead by scanning the temporal artery blood flow. For this reason, it is a great tool to measure a body temperature.

Additional features such as the sound/silent button or an LCD blink alarm are attached for a high-temperature alert. Memory and advanced measurement functionality is available.

Holtek supports with providing supporting circuitry design for development of this product. Holtek is mainly focusing on Application oriented MCU’s and few general MCU’s. We keep on evaluating the customer requirements in different segments like Industries, Consumers and Automobile Industries to provide better solution to customers.

Figure 6. Device Specifications

Further technical and design development support required Please contact Holtek Semiconductor India Pvt. Ltd (www.holtek.com)

Figure 7. Forehead Thermometer Module

Figure 8. Forehead Thermometer PCB

Renesas Electronics Updates FSP for ST Integrates Common-Mode Filter RA Family and ESD Suppression Renesas Electronics Corporation has announced the release of a new update of its Flexible Software Package (FSP) for the Renesas RA Family of 32Bit Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers (MCUs).

The FSP version 1.0 adds new security and connectivity features, advanced neural network, machine learning and motor control capabilities, as well as enhanced compiler, debugger, and development environments.

The security and connectivity enhancements permit developers to quickly create compelling and secure IoT endpoint and edge solutions for Industry 4.0, building automation, metering, healthcare, consumer wearable, and home appliance applications.

FSP is ideal for users that want a flexible and open architecture.

Customers can re-use their legacy code or combine it with valuable software examples from Renesas that help speed implementation of complex connectivity and security solutions.

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STMicroelectronics’ ECMF04-4HSM10Y and ECMF04-4HSWM10Y automotive-qualified common-mode filters (CMF) for highspeed serial buses protect interface ICs by integrating transientsuppression diodes with low clamping voltage. These are the first CMFs on the market with automotive-grade qualification and automotive surge compliance guaranteed. They are not only produced and qualified according to AEC-Q101 requirements but are also designed and tested against automotive surge specifics such as ISO10605.

The filters replace discrete common-mode chokes or LTCC (low-temperature cofired ceramic) devices that are typically larger and provide no ESD protection. Essential for reliable functioning of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), they are placed on high-speed data lines for camera, radar.

Telecom

How Telecom Operators Are Preparing for 5G?

Jio Platforms gets interest from other global investors: RIL

Ericsson partners with MIT Technology Review Insights, released a report titled “The 5G Operator” to examine how telecom operators are preparing for 5G opportunities and challenges. 5G network technology gives telecommunications operators the ability to deliver many new applications and services in dynamic ways. Low-latency connectivity, ultra-high broadband speeds, and mobile edge computing capabilities will create myriad innovative business opportunities as well as consumer experiences. Many of 5G’s clearer use cases—such as autonomous vehicle fleets, internet of things, and management of fully-automated factories— are enterprise-focused, which gives operators a path to new revenue creation. But such services are still only just emerging, and carriers do not possess all the vertical-industry knowledge or specific application development experience to effectively explore the seemingly infinite service opportunities that 5G presents. There is a growing understanding that operators cannot do it alone, and that an innovative ecosystem of partners will be crucial to future success.

Reliance Industries on Friday said that Jio Platforms has received interest from other global investors for similar sized additional stake. The oil-totelecom conglomerate had last week said that Facebook will invest Rs 43,574 crore ($5.7 billion) into Jio Platforms for a 9.99% stake.

It is said to be the largest investment for a minority stake by a technology company anywhere in the world and the largest FDI in the technology sector in India. "We are fully committed on our investment plans in our consumer businesses and new initiatives. We are at the doorsteps of a huge opportunity and our rights issue and all other equity transactions will strengthen Reliance and position us to create substantial value for all our stakeholders," RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said in a statement. Reliance Industries said that it will complete capital raise of over Rs 104,000 crore by Q1 2020, including rights issues, Facebook investment and previous investment by BP.

Qualcomm and BOE Announce Collaboration Qualcomm Technologies and BOE Technology Group has announced their plans to establish a strategic collaboration to develop innovative display products featuring Qualcomm 3D Sonic ultrasonic fingerprint sensors.

This collaboration is expected to extend from mobile and associated 5G technologies to XR and IoT. Qualcomm Technologies’ broad product portfolio combined with BOE’s expertise in interface devices and smart IoT systems, makes this an ideal collaboration for the 5G era, in which consumers can expect extraordinary performance improvements resulting from the tight integration of both Companies’ multiple key technologies, including sensors, antennae, display picture processing, etc.

Anticipating the signing of a collaboration agreement, both companies have started working on incorporating valueadded and distinctive features to BOE’s flexible OLED panels, including the Qualcomm 3D Sonic sensor.

Integrating Qualcomm 3D Sonic sensors onto BOE’s flexible OLED displays is intended to bring a more streamlined solution, which can enable smartphone OEMs to create unique products using the industry’s thinnest and highest security fingerprint solution. This collaboration also results in a streamlined supply

chain and reduced bill of materials (BoM) and research and development expenses. Based on the collaboration, BOE will offer integrated displays with Qualcomm 3D Sonic fingerprint sensors to its customers. Commercial devices featuring this integrated solution are expected to be available in the second half of 2020.

“As a global leader in the semiconductor display industry, BOE has always adhered to the IoT strategy of ‘Ecosystem: Open and Connected,’ providing global users with excellent intelligent interface devices and solutions. BOE will start shipping flexible OLED panels with integrated Qualcomm 3D Sonic sensors during the second half of 2020,” said Wenbao Gao, executive vice president and chief executive officer of display and sensor, BOE. “Qualcomm Technologies continuously strives to improve our collaboration in China, and collaboration with BOE will be another example of the dedication and our longterm commitment to driving innovations in this vibrant ecosystem,” said Roawen Chen, senior vice president and chief operations officer, QCT, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Through this collaboration, we expect that OEMs will have more opportunities to design cutting-edge products that feature OLED displays made with the Qualcomm 3D Sonic fingerprint sensor technology. We look forward to further strengthening our innovative collaborations with BOE in key areas like 5G, XR and IoT.” BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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5G Testing

Testing 5G Quality of Experience Visibility of subscribers’ quality of experience is something operators have sought to measure since the early days of mobile networks. In this discourse, we consider the emergence of 5G, the new use cases and services it brings, and the necessity to rethink the approach to measuring network performance and the quality of experience (QoE) of 5G networks.

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Anil Rama Rao

Director – R & D & Application support , Rohde & Schwarz India

From the emergence of GSM to the global adoption of LTE, operators’ focus has been on ensuring the quality of service (QoS) delivered to subscribers. Consequently, test solutions were developed that enabled the verification of network quality and provided specific indicators to identify and diagnose issues and to optimize performance.

Historically, testing mobile networks has been built up from spectrum and physical layer parameters, such as RSSI and SINR, to OSS and trace data and, latterly, smartphone-based solutions that measure QoS and QoE, such as voice and video, at the point of delivery to the end user.

Quality of experience has become the ultimate parameter for operators to quantify subscriber satisfaction. As the name suggests, it is a complex metric that characterizes the human experience of the service delivered over the network to an end user’s device.

The emergence of 5G brings not only a leap in network performance and capabilities but also the increasing likelihood that the end user will be a machine, not a human. That means that existing test methodologies based on measuring voice, video and data delivered to subscribers using a mobile device should be expanded to encompass machine-type communication; a revised concept for what we mean by quality of experience (QoE) and new techniques for testing performance must be developed.

etc., are often more critical, and the consequences of degradation or loss of service become more serious, potentially life-threatening. Therefore, operators must monitor networks with greater accuracy and in finer detail to pre-empt QoS issues.

The challenge facing operators moves from ensuring subscriber satisfaction and compliance with SLAs to being able to guarantee the delivery of often critical services and legally prove that they meet this obligation to address questions of liability.

With each application potentially supported by a dedicated network slice, each with its own QoS definition, metrics and thresholds, operators’ network monitoring requirements expand from a single measurement for their entire network to multiple, simultaneous performance and quality measurements.

5G demands a new QoE paradigm It is important to remember that 4G services will continue to evolve but also to recognize that the implementation of 5G will be very different from previous generations of cellular technology, particularly in the RAN. It starts with a consideration of the 5G use cases of eMBB (enhanced Mobile Broadband), mMTC (massive Machine Type Communication) and URLLC (Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication).

These use cases bring new dimensions in terms of real-time, higher bandwidth, scalability, etc., and require a revised methodology and set of parameters to measure QoE. This, in turn, drives the performance of the network needed to support these use cases.

Finally, an expanded test methodology is needed to measure new parameters more accurately at higher frequencies and wider bandwidths and meet the challenge of how to quantify QoE – particularly where the end user will not be using a smartphone. We, therefore, need to rethink our approach to what constitutes QoE and how to measure it.

We need a new interpretation and understanding of what constitutes quality of experience and how to map the consequences of changes in QoE for each application.

Smartphone-based test cases to measure the quality of eMBB will remain but for mMTC and URLLC, the end user will be a machine and the service will bring a new set of demanding parameters to measure. For machine-type communication, the traditional concept of QoE will no longer be appropriate because the end user is not a human and will not experience the service in an emotive way.

Implications for operators The services and applications for these 5G use cases, such as automotive, industry 4.0, augmented reality, remote surgery,

Figure 1: 5G use cases and logical network slices The 5G QoE measurement challenge can be summarized as follows: ● 5G use cases, particularly mMTC and URLLC, demand a new way of measuring QoE for each individual application. ● QoE has a different meaning in machine-type communication.

A machine or connected thing’s QoE needs to be interpreted. ● Each application brings a specific set of network performance characteristics that need to be monitored. ● Monitoring becomes more important to operators for critical 5G applications. ● 5G testing adds a new dimension for both data acquisition and post-processing. ● Active testing and understanding of QoS per use case, allied to network operations, will be a key enabler of future 5G business cases.

Without knowing the underlying service and device requirements, network quality engineers do not know what aspects and metrics should be treated as important key performance indicators (KPI). So we need to compile the set of parameters and KPIs, and define thresholds, creating good/bad KPI limits for each application and use case. This is still at a very early stage, but one approach would be to BISINFOTECH •Vol - 2/05 •May 2020

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5G Testing start at the PHY and logical layers and work up to the apps and use cases, defining what needs to be measured.

One positive aspect is that this sort of understanding of use cases QoE can drive the Network Operations Center (NOC) to Service Operations Center (SOC) transformation that operators are making. The SOC is important because it is via this service-driven environment that operators hope to differentiate their customer experiences. For example, a car manufacturer can understand which operators’ network is best suited for its connected or autonomous cars. So we can see that active testing and understanding of QoE per use case, allied to network operations, will be a key enabler of future 5G business cases.

Implications for test solution providers Considering the operators’ challenges , test equipment providers must produce solutions that can measure multiple virtual networks at the same time and the same location with different methodologies.

An examination of the metrics required to characterize 5G use cases quickly reveals that measuring QoE becomes more complex and more demanding in terms of the data acquisition of additional measurement parameters with greater precision in the RAN. This also drives the need to provide post-processing analytics that encompasses new models for quality of service (QoS) and QoE measurements for network benchmarking, optimization and monitoring.

The consequences of degradation or loss of service for some mission-critical 5G use cases go way beyond an unsatisfactory voice call to a friend or a YouTube video freezing when you stream it on your phone. The critical nature of some applications demands that test solutions must be independent, transparent and traceable to certified international standards and not aligned to proprietary techniques or individual network equipment vendors.

Testing 5G QoE 5G introduces a new dimension and type of use cases; not only the physical test equipment required to sample the network, e.g., a wider bandwidth scanner, but also the methodology of what parameters to test for a specific application and how to post-process the data. There will be new KPIs that contribute to the evaluation of QoS and other factors that feed into QoE. QoE can be built up from the lower layers and use a model to define how QoS maps into QoE. The key question is what does good QoE look like for a sensor in an industrial IoT deployment, or a connected car, or a VR device, or any specific 5G use case? In these use cases, we need to have a way of understanding whether QoE is good or bad and what the thresholds are. For a simple example, take call setup time. What is an acceptable “setup time” for a sensor alarm, or an autonomous car, or in remote medical use cases?

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What may have been well defined in previous use cases, for example, a subscriber streaming a movie on their smartphone, may well not be transferable to 5G use cases. Attention will have to be given to the range of acceptable values of QoE for each specific application, below which it becomes a problem and above which it brings no additional value.

Therefore, it is apparent that testing 5G QoE, particularly for applications other than enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), will require more metrics to be acquired with greater precision that will need to be post-processed more quickly and with greater complexity.

Standardization of testing International standards organizations, such as the ITU and ETSI, are actively evolving their test models to cover the changes demanded by 5G, and this is something R&S is very actively engaged in. However, building 5G methodologies and standards is going to be complex when we contemplate all the use cases and remember that operators already have 200-400 core key performance indicators (KPI) to monitor.

The sheer amount of KPIs makes the understanding of quality of experience (QoE) in a granular way very difficult. Therefore, this is another change in the quality of service (QoS) environment driven by 5G, where there will be many more parameters to monitor, often in real time.

To evaluate and benchmark networks, KPIs are required that truly reflect the network’s performance so that based on such KPIs it is possible to define a fair and transparent performance scoring method. ETSI has taken the driver’s seat to discuss and define best practices for network benchmarking and scoring that enables the network to be characterized in a single, unified metric.

The method provides the operator with visibility of the status of their network and identifies the factors that influence quality.

The factors and weightings that influence the scoring method will be adapted for each 5G use case and application. The robust fundamental methodology will provide the industry with an independent reference against which 5G QoS/QoE can be measured.

The test approach should cover two aspects. First, to release test solutions that enable measuring the technical aspects of 5G networks such as coverage, performance and operation; and second, to enhance our existing QoE methodologies to encompass 5G use cases.

The solutions for testing technical aspects of the 5G RAN are already being used by operators as they move from trials to the commercial deployment of 5G. The QoE solutions from lower layers up to signaling are being developed in partnership with the operators and standardization bodies.

In conclusion, we need to establish an understanding of what the requirements of each 5G use case are. Then we can build out key parameters and KPIs required to meet those requirements and their range and limits. Once we understand why we are testing certain parameters, we will have the test methodology to quantify QoE according to those KPIs.

NEW LAUNCH Electrolube Unveils a Brand New FPC Electrolube has recently formulated and launched a brand new conformal coating product named FPC. The product (FPC) was specially developed to resolve a number of issues experienced by a specific user of surface modifier materials. The user in question (a large manufacturer of power distribution electronics) initially expressed an interest in Electrolube’s surface modifier materials due to longstanding and unresolved issues relating to coating coverage and connectivity.

Features: • Users of surface modifier coatings can completely coat a PCB and connectors without masking.

• Abrasion forces during insertion should cleanly remove the coating material allowing electrical contact.

Applications: Surface modifier materials.

Availability: Available Now.

Infineon Offers eSIM Solution for IoT Devices Infineon Technologies has launched a comprehensive turnkey eSIM solution for the plethora of IoT devices and applications. Infineon’s new OPTIGA Connect eSIM IoT solution based on leading-edge security hardware comes with pre-integrated carrier-agnostic cellular coverage in more than 200 countries and territories. Infineon has partnered with Tata Communications to offer its customers unparalleled global reach, leveraging the Tata Communications MOVE mobility and IoT platform.

Features: Availability: Applications: • Seamless, scalable and secured IoT connectivity with The eSIM portfolio Telecom global reach comes in different • The OPTIGA Connect solution enables easy deployment quality grades and and management of cellular-enabled IoT devices at scale. form factors.

Microchip 53100A Phase Noise Analyzer Microchip Technology has recently announced the availability of the new 53100A Phase Noise Analyzer, a next-generation phase noise test instrument. The 53100A Phase Noise Analyzer is designed for engineers and scientists who rely on precise and accurate measurement of frequency signals.

Features: • The new test instrument rapidly acquires frequency signals and characterizes the phase noise, jitter, Allan deviation (ADEV) and time deviation (TDEV) quickly and precisely.

Applications: 5G networks, data centers, commercial and military aircraft systems, space vehicles, communication satellites and metrology applications.

Availability: The 53100A Phase Noise Analyzer is available now.

MORNSUN Newest Chiplet SiP DC-DC Converter MORNSUN DC-DC fixed input A/B/E/F_T-1W family grabs a good market share around the world for its advanced design, good performance, reliable manufacturing process, competitive price, etc.

Features: • 80% dimensions reduction, more than 50% layout space reduction, 3.1mm thickness • Micro-SMD package • Meet AEC-Q100

Applications: Portable Equipment and IoT

Availability: Available Now

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NEW LAUNCH Murata FORTELION 24V Battery Module Murata Manufacturing has developed a FORTELION 24V Battery Module (all-in-one type) that is ideal for industrial equipment requiring high output such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and robots.

Features: • This module is equipped with "FORTELION", Murata's proprietary lithium-ion secondary battery.

• Size compatible with lead-acid batteries.

Applications: Industrial Applications

Availability: Mass production starts in April2020.

New 2.8W High Power Speaker Amp ICs ROHM recently announced the AEC-Q100 qualified 2.8W output Class AB monaural speaker amplifiers the BD783xxEFJ-M series (BD78306EFJ-M, BD78310EFJ-M and BD78326EFJ-M) ideal for instrument clusters - used in vehicles equipped with autonomous driving and ADAS. Features: • High 2.8W output with built-in over current protection • Ensuring high reliability in vehicle applications

Applications: • Autonomous driving and ADAS.

Availability: Available Now

Traco Power Introduces its New Website Traco Power has recently launched its new, improved website. The website is designed to offer the ultimate user-friendly experience with improved navigation and functionality, while allowing customers to easily access and compare the full product portfolio Traco Power has to offer.

Features: • Intuitive navigation and design to reduce the number of clicks to navigate the site • Products are well arranged in series and model overviews and are categorized by

Applications: AC/DC power supplies, DC/DC converters and DC/AC inverters.

Availability: Operational Now

Vicor’s New 270V-28V DC-DC Converter Vicor announces the DCM5614, an isolated, regulated 270V-28V DC-DC converter with an output power rating of 1300W in a 5.6x1.4x0.3in VIA package.

Features: • Providing unmatched power density of 451W/in3 at a weight of just 178g • The DCM5614 supports advanced airborne, shipboard and UAV systems where power density, weight and efficiency are critical.

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Applications: Advanced airborne, shipboard and UAV systems

Availability: Available Now