Bisinfotech Magazine March Issue 2021

MARCH 2021 80.00

R.N.I. No: DELENG/2019/77352 l VOL 3 l ISSUE 03 l TOTAL PAGES 64 l PUBLISHED ON 1ST OF EVERY MONTH |WWW.BISINFOTECH.COM

Open Stack Automation

Evolving Instrument Cluster Systems

st 1Unique

Wireless MCU

Fleet

Management 'IoT-Sized'

SEI SAUR ENERGY INTERNATIONAL

Publishing Group

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The Future Stows Here!

Editorial Semiconductors for the past few decades have been playing a key role in the advancement AI, IoT, autonomous vehicles, 5G, robotics and what not.

Semiconductors for AI advancements have huge implications for applying AI and machine learning techniques to domains under significant constraints such as size, power and more.

Recently, the government of India released an Expression of Interest (EoI) inviting companies and consortia, who are desirous of setting up or expanding existing Semiconductor wafer as well as device fabrication facilities in India or acquisition of Semiconductor fabrication facilities outside the country.

With all these advancements, the electronic manufacturing industry in India has been steadily gearing up its value chain from the SKD to CKD. The government of India is keen to incentivise as well as attract investment in establishing Semiconductor FABs in India. India is endeavoring to increase its share in the manufacturing of mobile phones, IoT, automotive electronics, industrial electronics, medical electronics and other such devices in the coming years as it aspires to have USD 400 billion of electronics manufacturing by the year 2025.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued EoI recently for expanding existing semiconductor wafer/device fabrication (FAB) facilities in India or making an acquisition of semiconductor FABs abroad. Alongside, the information received in response to this EoI will be utilised to develop a scheme for setting up or expanding existing semiconductor wafers as well as device fabrication (FAB) facilities in India or abroad.

Semiconductors being the next wave, there have been an upsurge in using semiconductors in the automotive sector and AI as well as the adoption of cloud computing around the globe. The government of India is expediting its efforts in every way possible in order to advance its domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry.

This month BISInfotech will be celebrating International Women’s Day with more than 20 Powerful Women in Tech. Login to our website on 8th March for this special story.

Lots more inside.

Happy reading!!

ManasNandi

MANAS NANDI EDITOR manas@bisinfotech.com CONSULTANT EDITOR & External Communication NILOY BANERJEE niloy@bisinfotech.com SENIOR SUB-EDITOR NITISHA DUBEY nitisha@bisinfotech.com

DESIGN HEAD DEEPAK SHARMA WEB DEVELOPMENT MANAGER JITENDER KUMAR

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.

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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

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Contents 08

COVER STORY FLEET MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY ‘IOT-SIZED’

12 WHITE PAPER

LEVERAGING THE POWER OF SILICON CARBIDE IN SWITCHED POWER CONVERTERS

15 KART AVNET ADDS CYPRESS IN ITS PORTFOLIO

16

BIG PICTURE THE POWER BEHIND VICOR PACKAGING

19

T&M ANRITSU NEW RF REGULATORY TEST SYSTEM

16

Eric Wong

Vice President|Sales Asia Pacific|Vicor

Madhukar Tripathi

Head-MARCOM & OPTICAL PRODUCTS at Anritsu India Pvt. Ltd

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20 ENGINEER'S DESK

FOR AUTOMOTIVE ADAS/ INFOTAINMENT APPLICATION, CISPR25 CLASS5 COMPLIANT 8 RAILS POWER TREE REFERENCE DESIGN WITH POWER RAIL MONITORING FOR SUPPORTING FUNCTIONAL SAFETY

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CONFORMAL COATINGS PCB AUTOPSY – PRE AND POST COATING VARIABLES THAT CAUSE BOARD FAILURE

28

TEST & MEASUREMENT “TESTING CONSUMER ELECTRONICS” UNDER TEST AND MEASUREMENT

Bala Prasad Peddigari Senior Member, IEEE

30

TECHNICAL ARTICLE CONSERVE BATTERY POWER IN HEV/EVS WITH AUTOMATIC HOST REVERSE WAKEUP

44

32

48

WHITE PAPER OPENSTACK AUTOMATION WITH ANSIBLE

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DIGITAL TWINS HOW SIMULATION-BASED DIGITAL TWINS AND THE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS CAN IMPROVE PRODUCT AND PROCESS PERFORMANCE

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BIG PICTURTE SECURITY DOES NOT COME IN A SINGLE FORM

44

Shinichi Asano

rincipal Specialist Renesas Electronics Corporation

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BIG PICTURTE CYBERSECURITY PRACTICES’ AWARENESS NECESSITY FOR ALL DIGITAL CITIZEN TEST & MEASUREMENT DETECTING HARDWARE TROJANS USING MACHINE LEARNING STATE-OF-THE-ART MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY AND EXTREMELY FAST CLUSTERING ALGORITHM

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AUTOMOTIVE EVOLVING INSTRUMENT CLUSTER SYSTEMS

56

TECHNOVATORS AGRI-START UP FROM BENGALURU CREATES AI-BASED TECH TO EXAMINE SEEDS QUALITY

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Nikhil Das

Founder, Agdhi

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> COVER

STORY

Fleet Management Industry ‘IoT-sized’

- Nitisha Dubey

> MARCH 2021

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COVER STORY <

Anand Kumar Seethala

Director, CTPL- Containe Technologies Pvt. Ltd

Sameer Mahapatra

Country Sales Head-India & SAARC Aeris Communications

Fleet management is one of the major verticals when we elaborate on today’s advance business processes. With the boom of IoT, the Fleet Management segment has seen immense growth and revitalization. From providing driving details, vehicle maintenance report, green fleet initiatives, etc. IoT plays a tremendous role in making this task successful and popular. Now, you can monitor your assets as it travels, monitors their health remotely and reroute your team to put them on the safest and most efficient path available. The use of IoT in various industries has created huge growth for the business. Today, for knowing your product’s status you just need to track it by mentioning a specific code or number and this is what fleet management does in major form. By using fleet tracking software one can optimize routes, save money on fuel and maintenance, and ensure drivers obey the rules.

Plus, many programs offer tracking capabilities for trailers, refrigerated trucks (reefers), and other types of equipment.

The importance of fleet management can be understood by those people who are running their huge businesses on the basis of fleet management. While talking with Nitisha from BISinfotech, Srinivas Chitturi, CEO & Co-Founder - MTAP Technologies, Sameer Mahapatra, Country Sales Head-India & SAARC - Aeris Communications and Anand Kumar Seethala, Director, CTPL- Containe Technologies Pvt. Ltd explains the market situation and upcoming trends across the fleet management industry.

Srinivas Chitturi

CEO & Co-Founder - MTAP Technologies

Sameer also shared that, India’s leading footwear brand Paragon deployed an integrated IoT solution and managed services from Aeris in partnership with Sify. As a first step towards digitizing their supply chain, Paragon decided to implement the Aeris IoT solution across its nation-wide fleet, thus making them a single connected entity.

On the other hand, Srinivas’ noted, MTAP Technologies, works with a high-level technology, which not only provides details of the fleet but also predicts risk and acts accordingly. He says remote engine cut off in case of emergency or risky driving behaviour. Improved transparency of fleet operations, realtime updates, webcams, and SOS buttons work to improve safety. If a vehicle breaks down then the system can send automatic ticket notification to tow trucks and nearest service stations. Drivers are updated about weather warnings or road conditions in real-time so that a new optimized route can be selected.

So, after reading that one can realise that by using IoT, fleet management has become easiest nowadays.

Fleet Management Adoption

Elaborating on one of its flagship products tailored for this industry, Sameer highlighted on the Aeris Smart Fleet Platform, which offers a single connected platform and telematics solution called AerTrak for the fleet owners. It comes with unique features to help maximize fleet efficiency and operational excellence.

The unique value proposition of this innovative platform lies in its ability to address three of the biggest challenges that fleet owners face - reducing accidents, instances of theft and improving efficiency. He also mentioned, Aeris is uniquely positioned to cater to the needs of the fleet owners with flexible commercial models, deployment capabilities and 24*7 multi-lingual helpdesk.

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STORY

Sensors-equipped vehicles send automated signals and early warning alerts when the monitored parts need maintenance or are close to failure. Along with this, alerts for low battery, coolant temperature or engine maintenance can help in providing preventive maintenance – all such factors help vehicles run safely for a longer duration, mentioned Anand.

He said, typically, the driving style and driver behaviour greatly affect fuel efficiency. Things like unnecessary idling, accelerating and decelerating patterns, breaking habits, average speed and so on affect fuel efficiency. Using IoT, fleet managers can track all such data through embedded sensors and work with the drivers to improve fuel efficiency.

Fleet Management during COVID

There was a huge loss during the Covid pandemic, but fleet management companies have proactively participated to serve the country. During the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, Aeris technology helped the law enforcement and disaster management agencies in multiple cities for improving response time to crisis with faster mobilization of police vehicles via live location tracking, enabling better coordination between the police vehicles and faster action for crisis management, shares Sameer.

During the Covid situation, many companies faced dire consequences while adopting newer strategies and reaching the last mile to cater to their customers.

a need that could be fulfilled so we launched internationally, Safebus, a School Bus tracking app that provides a host of security features to protect students from accidents and Covid-related dangers.

Safetrax is a flagship product that enables the organization and management of employee transport for companies.

The algorithm of MTAP Technologies is pretty robust and can provide highly customized solutions for clients. They also launched SafetraxGo which is a lite version of Safetrax. It’s a standard tracking app with basic features for clients with a smaller budget, who do not need the level of customization that the company provide.

Srinivas also said that e-commerce is another sector that we forayed into. The results have been positive so far. Apart from new launches, we worked on catering to smaller companies in essential sectors with 100-200 employees that could not run on a work from home model. Internally, we suffered the same problems as everyone else. Working from home was a new challenge to overcome but we decided to take the positive approach. We took the time to reconsider our strategy and adopt a new perspective for our way forward. We're helping people and companies get back on track as we do the same.

IOT Fleet Management solutions serve to move the industry towards connected fleets. This is a world in which you can follow your assets as they travel, monitor their health remotely and re-route your team to put them on the safest and most efficient path available.

Anand says fleet managers can track driving patterns to pinpoint best and worst practices to enable careful and cognizant drivers. Efforts to go green move in tandem with cost-saving initiatives, backed by data to mobilize programs that protect your budget and the planet. Connecting your fleet makes your drivers better, your budget tighter and your vehicles safer. All of which makes your job easier. So, during pandemic, these services play a huge role and it has proven impactful also.

Challenges and Market Statistics According to a research report by Marketsandmarkets, the global fleet management market size is expected to grow from USD 19.9 billion in 2020 to USD 34.0 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.3% during the forecast period.

Srinivas emphasized this issue and said, like other companies throughout the world, we were hugely impacted by the pandemic. The pandemic has made us reconsider our business module. We created and launched new products like Safebus, MTAP Technologies, and Autoroutes and tweaked our software to incorporate social distancing rules. With schools opening up and the danger of covid-19 still present, we saw

> MARCH 2021

The growth of the market can be attributed to the cost benefits versus Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-based deployments of fleet management solutions. The primary factors driving the growth of the fleet management market include the increasing government regulations and the need for optimization of fleet operating expenses. The other factors supporting the market growth include the decreasing hardware and software costs and the growing need for operational efficiency among fleet owners.

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While focusing on challenges, Srinivas says that the greatest and immediate challenge for us is to adapt to a post-pandemic world. We are still waiting for things to settle down to establish new patterns of living. Whatever the outcome, we're focusing on making our technology as flexible and customizable as possible.

He also says, before the pandemic, we were headed into a world where smart cities we're the norm. IoT is the foundation on which smart cities, where every system is interconnected for maximum transparency and efficiency, are built. The pandemic has heightened the need for smart cities and we want to be frontrunners in driving the transition.

The Indian market is undergoing precedent changes due to heavy regulatory policies, changes in customer preferences, increasing adoption of technology, and digitalization. The proliferation of network and mobile phones is also aiding traceability and accessibility of vehicles that have led to the adoption of connected business solutions, mentioned Sameer.

Future Fleeting with IoT

Over the past many years, CTPL had an opportunity to interact with thousands of fleet operators all over the Nation and helping them to solve their business problems using technology, through the implementation of the right IoT – ‘Internet of Things’ solutions, we could switch them with modern capabilities and help them increase their operational efficiency, convenience, safety and reduce the overall costs, explained Anand.

Srinivas sees himself entering the indoor tracking, Bluetooth transport products and logistics space as well. He wants to have 360 degrees of transport management solutions for which IoT is crucial.

Aeris is uniquely positioned to cater to the needs of the fleet owners. Aeris has created a unique IoT ecosystem

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for enterprises, the financial sector, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), technologists, system integrators and solution providers across many vertical sectors. With flexible commercial models, deployment capabilities and 24*7 multi-lingual helpdesk, we empower enterprises to optimize human intervention and attain real-time remote monitoring of machines, equipment, and other assets along with predictive and preventive maintenance of various products and assets within enterprises, shared Sameer.

Upcoming Project

While talking about its upcoming projects, Sameer shared, Aeris has already launched the connected eBike and connected eRickshaw IoT based solutions in the electric vehicle segment. Now, we are helping the industry to solve one of the biggest pain areas - the theft of batteries from sites and electric vehicles. With the resale value of 50% of original cost & no clear identification marks, batteries for electric two, three and four-wheelers and even eRickshaws are some of the favourite items targeted by thieves. Aeris is helping our EV clients prevent Battery theft with the help of the Battery Swap Management Platform.

Whereas, MTAP Technologies, is planning to put its best minds at work to optimize EV transport when it finally hits Indian roads in mass.

Conclusion

No doubt, IoT has changed the world in a different way by making everything only one button ahead. It has a diligent impact on our day to day life by extending new cognizance in every walks of businesses. There are some reports which predicted that we may see 28 billion connected objects by the year 2021. In a simple way, we can say that IoT is the backbone of the fleet management industry. In the upcoming time, we will see more developments, which will surely attract huge growth for this nascent yet booming industry.

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Leveraging the power of silicon carbide in switched power converters

René Mente

Introduction

Much has been undertaken by the semiconductor industry over the past decades to improve on the parasitic components of silicon MOSFETs to meet the needs of switching converter designers. Through a combination of regulation and market demand for green technologies, these have resulted in a demand for products that can be used to build ever more efficient and compact power solutions. In the meantime, wide bandgap (WBG) technologies such as silicon carbide (SiC) have emerged that provide the improved parasitics switch-mode power supply (SMPS) designers are requesting. With the introduction of 650 V SiC MOSFETs to complement existing 1200 V discrete power devices, SiC becomes more attractive for applications for which they had not been previously considered.

As a result, SiC MOSFETs are increasingly being turned to in applications reaching into the kilowatt range, covering everything from power supplies for telecom and servers, to battery charging for the growing electric vehicle market.

Their allure is linked to their superior robustness compared to their silicon counterparts, coupled with the ability to utilize them in hard-switched topologies of Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM) Power Factor Correction (PFC) designs which continuously uses the internal body diode.

Furthermore, their support for high switching frequencies supports the industry’s drive towards smaller, more compact power converters.

> MARCH 2021

Senior Staff Engineer, Infineon Technologies

No such thing as a free lunch

Of course, as is often the way, the benefits that SiC provides over Si devices are not provided ‘for free’, and there are some areas where SiC performs less well. This requires designers to take the time to fully understand the characteristics and capabilities of these novel new devices, as well as considering a move to new topologies. One thing should be clear: these devices are not drop-in replacements and using them as such may result in a loss in efficiency rather than a gain.

For example, the body diode of a CoolSiC™ device has a forward voltage (VF) that is some four times greater than that of a silicon CoolMOS™ device. Without adapting the circuit accordingly, a resonant LLC converter might actually see a drop in efficiency of up to 0.5% at light loads. Designers should also note that it is mandatory to boost through the channel and not through the body diode if the highest possible peak efficiency in CCM Totem Pole PFC designs are to be attained.

Another consideration is the thermal resistance, junction to case. Here CoolMOS provides a slight advantage with a value of 0.8 K/W (IPW60R070CFD7) against the 1.0 K/W of CoolSiC (IMW65R048M1H) on package level due to the smaller chip size of CoolSiC, although this thermal drawback proves to be negligible in actual designs.

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WHITE PAPER < On-resistance on par with silicon at operating temperature

Where designers see quick benefits is with parameters such as the on-resistance, RDS(on). CoolSiC sees a lower multiplication factor (κ) of around 1.13 against the 1.67 of CoolMOS at 100 °C. This means that at this typical operational junction temperature an 84 mΩ CoolSiC device achieves the same RDS(on) as a 57 mΩ CoolMOS device. This also highlights that simply comparing datasheet silicon and SiC RDS(on) does not provide the full picture. At the cold end of the temperature scale, CoolSiC provides further benefits over silicon devices due to its higher breakdown voltage, V(BR)DSS, resulting from its lower slope and dependency on temperature. This is useful in applications that are located outdoors or start up in low-temperature environments.

CoolSiC MOSFETs can use the same EiceDRIVER™ devices as they have used to date in their silicon designs. However, it should be noted that, due to the difference in transfer characteristics (ID vs VGS), the gate (VGS) of these devices should be driven at 18 V rather than the typical 12 V used with CoolMOS. This delivers the RDS(on) as defined in the datasheet which lies some 18% below the on-resistance value achieved if the drive voltage is limited to 15 V. Should the design allow a new driver to be selected, it is worth considering a version featuring a higher undervoltage lockout of around 13 V to ensure that the SiC MOSFET and the system can safely operate under any anbnormal operation conditions of the target application.

Another advantage of SiC is the limited impact temperature has on the transfer characteristic between 25 °C and 150 °C.

Avoiding negative gate voltages

One area that requires attention is to ensure that the gatesource voltage is not allowed to become too negative. Ideally, there should be no negative turn-off voltage applied but, with the realities of practical circuits, this cannot be guaranteed unless it is considered during development and checked when prototyping. AVGS that reaches lower than -2 V and have a duration of more than 15 ns can result in a drift of the gate threshold voltage (VGS(th)) after end of life of the application.

Figure 1: The influence of temperature on RDS(on) is lower for CoolSiC than CoolMOS, resulting in a similar on-resistance at typical operational temperature.

This can also result in an increase of RDS(on) together with a reduction in system efficiency over the lifetime of the application.

One cause of negative VGS results from inductive-driven gatesource voltage oscillation at turn-off.

This is a result of the high di/dt inside the gate drive loop over the source inductance. The second common cause is a capacitive-driven gate-source voltage at turn-on, originating from the high dv/dt switching of the second MOSFET in halfbridge configuration.

Such issues in silicon MOSFET designs are usually resolved by inserting a high-value resistor between the gate driver and the MOSFET gate or finding another way to slow the di/dt and dv/ dt. Unfortunately, these approaches result in further switching losses and a resultant drop in system efficiency. When using SiC devices, the simple addition of a diode voltage clamp between the gate and source serves to resolve this challenge.

If the issue is purely inductive, splitting the common source to a power and driver source together with the clamp diode, and using any available Kelvin source, is the preferred approach.

Use of a MOSFET with a Kelvin source is highly advisable in any high-current application. For example, in a 3.3 kW CCM Totem Pole PFC, turn-off currents can reach 25 A to 30 A. Use of the CoolSiC IMZA65R048M1H results in up to three-times lower EON losses over a device such as the IMWA65R048M1H that does not feature a Kelvin source.

Figure 2: The transfer characteristics at 25°C (left) and 150°C (right) show a significantly lower impact for SiC devices than silicon MOSFETs.

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PAPER this family in this parameter. This means, with the use of 48 mΩ devices, efficiencies of over 99% for a 3.3 kW CCM Totem Pole PFC can be attained where the best possible efficiency using CoolMOS in a Dual Boost PFC design peaks at 98.85%.

And, despite the higher cost for SiC devices, the resultant reduction in bill-of-materials (BoM) between the two design approaches results in the SiC solution delivering a more costcompetitive 99% efficiency solution.

Figure 3: To avoid that the gate of a SiC MOSFET goes negative, a diode clamp, separate commons, and a Kelvin source should be considered.

Pushing beyond 99% efficiency

CoolSiC MOSFETs also have a higher output capacitance, COSS, than its silicon counterpart at drain-source voltages, VDS, above around 50V. This actually works to its advantage, resulting in reduced levels of overshoot during turn-off. For both device technologies the peak VDS, max is set at 80% of the datasheet limit. CoolMOS devices require a high gate resistor to achieve this requirement, resulting in the efficiency losses already mentioned, but CoolSiC designs can be implemented without such a resistor. This additionally simplifies the design and layout, together with their use. This achievable benefit is depending on the overall design parasitics designers can achieve.

Summary

While advancements in silicon MOSFETs have attained remarkable improvements in their parasitic parameters over the years, the fundamental physics of silicon remains stubbornly in the way of further improvements. This limits the use of innovative new and simple topologies that can pave the way for sustainable green power initiatives. SiC, as has been shown here, also has its challenges in use and not every parasitic characteristic proves to be better than silicon. However, the advantages it does offer, coupled with its robustness in hard switching applications, make it worthwhile considering in the most efficient power conversion applications. The introduction of the 650 V CoolSiC family enforces this, making SiC MOSFET technology more economically viable for those pushing power conversion to its limits.

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The QOSS behavior of SiC technology also benefits hard and resonant switching topologies. With a 75% lower charge compared to silicon MOSFETs, less discharging is required, something that impacts Eon losses in CCM Totem Pole PFCs. And, while CoolMOS devices achieved a ten-times improvement in Qrr over the previous generation with the CFD/CFD7 family, CoolSiC attains a further five to ten-times improvement over

Figure 4: Even a 107 mΩ CoolSiC CCM Totem Pole PFC comes close to 99% efficiency, mostly outperforming the best CoolMOS dual boost PFC approach.

> MARCH 2021

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Avnet Adds Cypress in its Portfolio

element14 Stocks KOA’s Passive Components

Avnet has been given access to the full portfolio of Cypress Semiconductor solutions as part of the Infineon product line.

Avnet’s customers around the world can now access and integrate Cypress’ suite of hardware, software and security solutions for their technology projects and initiatives, especially in the automotive, industrial and IoT sectors.

The expansion of Avnet’s Infineon product offerings follows the acquisition of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation by Infineon Technologies AG in 2020. Avnet’s Infineon product offerings now encompass power semiconductors, automotive microcontrollers, sensors and security solutions.

The addition of Cypress’ lineup includes the popular and unique Programmable System-on-Chip (PSoC), Traveo and FMx MCU families, along with its highly specialized memory products based on NOR, SRAM and F-RAM technology, optimized for high-growth applications.

Mouser, NXP eBook on Smart Mobility

KOA is a leading global manufacturer of passive component solutions, specializing in thick film and thin film resistors for high-reliability applications such as industrial, automotive, aerospace, telecommunications and medical, as well as more commercial markets.

KOA’s full range of passive component solutions now available from element14 include: • High-reliability thin-film resistors • Pulse tolerant and anti-surge resistors • Wide terminal resistors for high power density • Current sensing resistors

Mornsun’s DC-DC Converters Now at Relec

Mouser Electronics new eBook with NXP Semiconductors explores strategies for enabling safe, secure, and efficient mobility in cities through new technologies.

In Smart Mobility and the Technologies Paving the Way, subject matter experts from NXP offer their perspectives on secure identification and authentication solutions for intelligent transportation systems.

Traffic congestion, aging infrastructure, and rapid urbanization are increasing the need for new mobility solutions. The ease of getting from point A to point B, the efficient movement of goods and services, and the flexibility and integration of different modes of transportation all play a key role in developing solutions that enhance mobility.

Smart Mobility and the Technologies Paving the Way, the new eBook from Mouser and NXP, explores the applications, design topics, and featured technologies essential for developing smart mobility solutions that will move us forward. Topics include advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), radar, vehicle networks, and vehicle electrification.

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element14 has expanded its market-leading passive component portfolio with KOA Europe GmbH (KOA)’s a full range of around 2400 lines, all in-stock for delivery in APAC.

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Mornsun has improved the input range of its 3rd generation (R3 Series) 1W to 2W DC-DC Converters to cover 5V, 12V, 15V and 24V fixed dc inputs.

Modules are available in industry-standard 3V3, 5V, 9V, 12V, 15V & 24V single outputs, as well as ±3V3, ±5V, ±9V, ±12V, ±15V & ±24V bipolar outputs.

The R3 Series converters offer 3 key advantages over other technologies.

• 40% reduction in internal components leads to significantly reduced costs and improved reliability.

• Traditional push-pull circuits are highly dependent on the characteristics of individual components. Mornsun’s new IC technology has solved this problem leading to more repeatable output performance.

• There has always been a trade-off between the ability to power capacitive loads and effective short circuit protection.

Mornsun’s R3 Series allows capacitive loads up to 2400uF to be driven whilst still providing full short circuit protection.

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The Power Behind Vicor Packaging Q

: How would you characterize the evolution of Vicor within the power electronics domain, and what was the driving force of this evolution?

Vicor has been on the forefront of power delivery network (PDN) performance for decades by continually innovating on four essential technology pillars, spanning power delivery architectures, control systems, topologies and packaging.

Each pillar has multiple layers and all are essential to advancing the performance of Vicor power modules. However, the innovations in power system architecture, control systems and topologies would have little impact apart from the central pillar of packaging. Without innovating power module packaging technology, the industry-leading advances in power density, current density and efficiency could never be realized.

Power module packaging is a unique differentiator for Vicor and has been a core competency since the company’s inception. From its first Brick product to today’s ChiP™, Vicor has been continually innovating its packaging technology to deliver better solutions for power systems engineers.

Q

: What was the genesis of the Vicor product portfolio in terms of power packaging?

Figure 1 — Vicor Maxi, Mini and Micro DC-DC Bricks revolutionized power systems design in the 80's with a new high-power-density module package consisting of an overmolded board assembly mounted onto a baseplate for heat extraction.

> MARCH 2021

Eric Wong

Vice President|Sales Asia Pacific|Vicor

Every innovation begins with a spark of an idea, of how technology can improve performance to better meet customer challenges. Sometimes innovations are ahead of the curve, and it takes time before early adopters comprehend the full potential of the innovation. This is what happened with the Vicor modular power component concept that brought the DC-DC converter module to market as a building block for designing advanced power system solutions in the 80s. Vicor modules were way ahead of the competition in terms of density and efficiency and they were packaged in a format that resembled a brick—hence the name Bricks. The Brick consisted of an overmolded circuit board assembly mounted onto a baseplate for optimal thermal management. This was a highly differentiated approach to power conversion, and Vicor Bricks drew interest from early adopters in the emerging communications, defense and industrial markets. Power system engineers realized that a decentralized, modular approach to their power system design would allow them to handle the increasing number of loads in their system and that Bricks had many advantages over bulky, centralized, multi-output power supplies. In fact, the advent of the Brick was key to the development and acceptance of distributed power architecture at the time.

This new power module provided a flexible, scalable solution which was essential for advanced power systems design.

Vicor continued to drive the evolution of the Brick package by being the first to market with the Half-Brick and then in the 90s the first to offer the Quarter-Brick.

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Q

: How did Vicor power packaging progress from the although it looked similar to a VI Chip, its construction and original Brick package format, and what were the benefits? manufacture was very different.

Figure 2 – VI Chip® packaging was necessary to fully realize the breakthrough advances of the new FPA™ (Factorized Power Architecture) and advances in topologies and control systems

In 2008 Vicor introduced three new innovations.

1. A new architecture called FPA™ (Factorized Power Architecture) 2. A new topology called SAC™ (Sine Amplitude Converter) 3. ZVS and ZCS (zero-voltage and zero-current switching) control systems Collectively they reduced power losses dramatically and drove a new package development, the VI Chip, initially in a one-inch-square package with a height just over a quarter of an inch, which could take full advantage of the improved efficiency and power density the three innovations.

Instead of an individual cavity construction as in the VI Chip package, ChiPs are made and cut from a standard-size panel and full utilization is made of both sides of the module’s PCB for active and passive components. Thermal management of this package must take this into account with a double-sided cooling design to maximize performance and power density.

Making and cutting ChiPs from panels is very similar to how silicon chips are made and cut from wafers, but whatever the power level, current level or voltage level of the module, ChiPs are all cut from the same panel size enabling a manufacturing operation that is very scalable. This advancement in package design and manufacturing offered significant advantages in terms of increased power and current density, plus highvolume automation and cost reduction.

Figure 4 The new panel manufacturing process was another innovation for the power industry. ChiPs are all cut from the same panel size enabling a manufacturing operation that is very scalable.

Q

: To what extent did mounting configurability and thermal The VI Chip packages were further developed as half, full and management considerations impact the evolution of the double sizes and were manufactured in individual cavities where their PCBs were fully overmolded with a thermally effcient ChiP packaging platform? molding compound. The VI Chip package had surface-mount J-lead pins or straight pins for though-hole mounting.

Q

: How did manufacturing scalability factor into the next generation of Vicor power products subsequent to the VI Chip packaging?

Figure 5 – Following completion of the molding process, the panel of surface-mount CM-ChiPs is copper plated to provide terminal connections for power and signal pins.

Figure 3 – The new ChiP package was distinguished by its two-sided component assembly while being cut from fixed-size panels, similar to how silicon chips are made and cut from wafers.

In 2015 with further improvements in control systems, topologies, components and materials, the VI Chip ® package was redesigned to capitalize on further power-loss reductions, higher-frequency control systems and topologies with resulting gains in power and current density. The new package was called the ChiP™ (Converter housed in Package), and

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ChiP packaging technology came under scrutiny again when Vicor advanced its innovations in control systems and topologies with a fourth generation (Gen 4) of power conversion and regulation ASIC controllers. The Gen 4 controllers enabled further advances in efficiency and power and current density. To take full advantage of the Gen 4 control silicon improvements in converter and regulator performance, the decision was made to retain the basic panel construction but with one difference: after completion of the molding process, the panel would be copper plated to provide terminal connections for power and signal pins.

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PICTURE power module and the processor. This is a critical term when processor workloads are suddenly increased and immediate current draw is needed.

Figure 6 – The newest CM-ChiP packaging enables chassis mount, surface mount and pin-mount options

The plating also enables thermally adept high-power front end AC or DC converter modules utilizing advanced cooling schemes. The new fourth-generation ChiPs advance performance significantly (see Figure 6) and keep Vicor on a track of consistently cutting power losses by 25% every 2.5 years.

Figure 7 Vertical power delivery to advanced AI processors with stacked ChiPs reduces board and substrate power losses to improve processor performance

Figure 6 Advances in power and current density enabled by cutting power losses by 25% every 2.5 years and advancing power module packaging technologies

Q

: What are the core target applications for Vicor ChiPpackaged power products, and what are the key design challenges?

More recent innovations in ChiP packaging are enabling several new high-growth applications. One of the most demanding is advanced artificial intelligence (AI), where processor current levels have risen above 1000 amps. In these applications, power distribution losses in board and substrate copper power planes has become a dominant loss term and performance limiter. These applications require extremely high-current-density power modules that can be mounted as close as possible to the processor power pins to reduce these losses. Additionally, transient performance (di/ dt) can also be affected by the impedance between the

> MARCH 2021

To meet the requirements of these demanding applications, and minimize impedances it is necessary to deliver power vertically by positioning the power modules directly under the process and exactly matching the power modules’ output power pins with the power pin array of the processor.

Typically, this would result in a board layout conflict because this is also the optimal location for the large number of bypass capacitors required for energy storage to meet instantaneous processor power demands.

Q

: How can this ‘vertical power delivery’ architecture benefit from Vicor ChiP technology?

The challenge of vertical power delivery (VPD) has been met with a ChiP stacking technology. The new VPD power modules consist of a current multiplier layer and a “gearbox” layer which holds the bypass capacitors and changes the pitch of the current multiplier to match the pitch and layout of the AI processor power pin map above. This new ChiPstacking technology enables AI processor power system designers to deliver power in the most optimal way and to get the maximum performance out of their processor for high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

Q

: How would you summarize the overall Vicor philosophy on power packaging?

The four pillars of Vicor innovation are completely intertwined, and each pillar has many elements and layers to it. Enabling the highest performing modular power delivery solutions and continually advancing power and current density demands that power module packaging is developed ahead of the delivery of control system, topology and architectural innovation advances. The Vicor ChiP packaging approach focuses on the miniaturization of every single component and element that makes up the module. As Vicor makes further improvements in performance, ChiP packaging will take on new levels of innovation, the journey is nowhere near over.

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TEST & MEASUREMENT <

Anritsu New RF Regulatory Keysight’s New AresONE-S Test System Test System Anritsu Corporation has released its new RF Regulatory Test System ME7803NR solution for regulatory compliance testing of 5G communications systems.

The newly developed RF Regulatory Test System ME7803NR uses the Radio Communication Test Station MT8000A as a simulated 5G NR base station in combination with a spectrum analyzer and signal generator to implement ARIB/ETSI/FCCcompliant FR1 RF tests.

Key Features:

• Supports World Regional Frequency Bands Certified North-American, European, and Asian bands, as well as other future regional bands to be deployed (5G NR Bands and 5G NSA mode LTE Bands for LTE Anchor), are supported.

• Maximizes Value of Customers’ Prior Equipment Investment Customers can configure the ME7803NR test system by adding their own Anritsu standalone test equipment, such as the MT8000A, MT8821C, MS2840A/MS2850A, MG3710E, MG3694C, etc., to minimize additional required hardware purchases.

Rohde & Schwarz has demonstrated its market-leading solutions for mobile devices, chipsets, infrastructure and networks live at the Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC).

Rohde & Schwarz is demonstrating highlights from its portfolio of test solutions for 5G base stations and end-user devices.

For base station testing, Rohde & Schwarz offers its high-end instruments, the R&S SMW200A signal generator and the R&S FSW signal and spectrum analyzer. Also, Rohde & Schwarz showcases their R&S 5G NR signaling test solution for FR1 and FR2 frequency bands based on the R&S CMX500 radio communication tester.

Rohde & Schwarz provides the industry with standardcompliant test and measurement solutions to ensure regulatory compliance and the correct operation of wireless systems within vehicles. At MWC Shanghai, Rohde & Schwarz demonstrates protocol conformance test systems for C-V2X standards, and an advanced C-V2X hardware-in-the-loop test solution to verify telematic control units (TCU) in complex road traffic scenarios.

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Data center operators have widely deployed mature 100GE non-return-to-zero (NRZ)-based technologies. However, higher Ethernet speeds, such as 400GE, create new mixed signaling and forward error correction (FEC) implementations in data center networks, as well as multi-rate speed environments.

Keysight's AresONE-S test system also provides: • An ultra-high-density, 2 rack unit (RU) fixed chassis to deliver optimal rack space footprint.

• The IxNetwork software application, a Layer 2 and 3 protocol emulation platform that runs end-to-end tests with an extensive list of networking protocols and data plane traffic to test network infrastructure performance.

Yokogawa to Offer OpreX Batch

R&S at MWC Shanghai 2021

Roll-out of 5G in full swing

Keysight Technologies has introduced new AresONE-S 400GE test system which enables network equipment manufacturers and data center operators to validate complex, mixed 400 gigabit Ethernet (GE) and lower-speed networks and devices.

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Solution Soon

Yokogawa Electric Corporation reported that they began providing OpreX Batch Solution on March 17.

This solution for batch manufacturing applications eliminates the overlap between process control system (PCS) and manufacturing execution system (MES) related work and helps to enhance efficiency through all phases of the plant lifecycle, from design and engineering to actual operation, modification, and expansion. For use as a central element of OpreX Batch Solution, Yokogawa has also developed Integrated Recipe Manager (IRM), and did release this product on the same date.

In addition to needing to rapidly develop and deliver new products, batch manufacturers face the challenge of maintaining stable operations while dealing with shortages in the availability of experienced personnel.

To address these issues, Yokogawa is offering OpreX Batch Solution, an integrated portfolio for batch manufacturing processes that are aligned with both the ISA-88 Batch Control standard and the ISA-95 Enterprise-Control System Integration standard.

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> ENGINEER'S

DESK

For Automotive ADAS/Infotainment application, CISPR25 Class5 compliant 8 rails power tree Reference Design with power rail monitoring for supporting functional safety Introduction

In recent years, the importance of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) that support a high level of Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) has increased as automobile accident prevention measures and autonomous driving progress. Automated driving requires a vehicle's on-board control system to replace the human driver in performing the four elements of human driving: “Cognition” with the ears and eyes, “Prediction” and “Judgment” with the brain, and “Operation” via the steering wheel and accelerator. For safe automated driving, accurate sensing, timely control and fast display imaging are necessary. For the unit to achieve safety requirements, it is also necessary to monitor the internal operating conditions and take care of any lack of functionality because of unit failure. In order to achieve this, the number of installed cameras and sensors to monitor any external situation are increasing and multi-functionality to inform and display these situations are required in the infotainment system. With the addition of electronic circuits to monitor the operating conditions in each unit, the electronic circuits are becoming more complex and a greater amount of time is being devoted to the design of units and systems.

The market requirements for Reference Design

With increasing the number of on-board units and the number of required functions, the electronic circuits of ADAS/ Infotainment peripheral units require more complex designs.

1) An optimal combination of cost, size and characteristics are necessary as the number of cameras, sensor units and mounted electronic components increase which result in more complex power supply rails.

2) A highly efficient power supply system is necessary since traveling distance cannot be sacrificed.

3) It is difficult to see the problems in a single product consideration since there are different noise standards (e.g., CISPR25 Class 5) that have to complied with for automotive units and many design elements other than functional design that have to be catered for.

To adapt these market requirements, ROHM has developed a reference design that satisfies the design elements required for unit design, and has disclosed the available design data on website.

Overview of Reference Design (REFRPT001)

An overview of developed reference design (REFRPT001) as follows: 1) Cover the necessary power systems for ADAS and Infotainment applications with an eightcircuit power tree.

2) Built-in Primary(*1) DC/DC Converter ICs (BD9P series) for stable power supply even immediately after battery cranking.

3) Built-in Secondary(*1) DC/DC Converter ICs (BD9S series) with an industry-leading small and highly efficient.

4) Built-in Power Supply monitoring IC with self-diagnostic functions that monitors the all eight output rails to contribute to improve functional safety level.

5) The following items were validated in the system level.

- Standard Electrical Characteristics test - EMC test (CISPR25 Class 5 compliant without input filter) - Thermal performance test (separate located high-efficiency DC/DC converters distribute the heat) 6) On-board ICs and discrete parts are automotive AEC-Q100 or AEC-Q101 grade compliant.

7) Main ICs are functional safety products in the FS supportive(*2) category.

A reference board (REFRPT001-EVK-001) outline of the reference design (REFRPT001) (Figure 1) and a system block diagram (Figure 2) are shown below. It is designed to supply power to SoC, MCU, and CAN devices from two primary DC/DC Converter ICs (BD9P series) by splitting into four outputs each.

It can also monitor the power rails of all eight outputs, helping to improve the level of functional safety systems.

4) In order to improve the safety function as a unit or system, it is necessary to have a function to monitor the power rail, detect the failure of the electronic circuit, and transmit it to the CPU. Figure 1. Reference Board (REFRPT001-EVK-001) Outline

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ENGINEER'S DESK <

Figure 5. Conduction Noise

Figure 2. Reference Design (REFRPT001) Block Diagram The following are EMC test results disclosed as evaluation data. It is shown that EMC radiation noise (vertical antenna) (Figure 3), radiation noise (horizontal antenna) (Figure 4), and conduction noise (Figure 5) passed CISPR25 Class 5, even with the entire board in operation without input filter. Since an input filter, which improves noise margins is also implemented in the pattern, it is possible to take additional measures for EMC problems that would take a lot of man-hours to fix if they occurred in a unit.

Content and tools to fully support customer’s design

The design data of this reference design (REFRPT001) is available on ROHM website. In addition, various design support tools are available.

- Reference Block Diagram, Reference Circuit, BOM - PCB information / PCB data - Test report (Standard Electrical Characteristic, EMC, Thermal) - Part of design can be simulated with free web simulation tool (ROHM Solution Simulator) - Spice Model of mounted products - Symbol and Footprint of mounted products - Thermal simulation model of mounted products As mentioned above, the part of this reference design can be simulated using ROHM Solution Simulator(*3). The ROHM Solution Simulator is a free web-based simulation tool, and reference circuits including peripheral circuits are available.

It allows users to perform simulations easily without preparing any simulation circuits or models.

Figure 3. Radiation Noise (vertical antenna)

An example of simulation is introduced below: - Simulation of a two rails power tree with a secondary DC/ DC converter (BD9S201) and LDO (BD00IA5M) behind the primary DC/DC converter (BD9P105) connected battery input. (Figure 6) **Simulation circuit is here. My ROHM registration is required.

BD9S201 5.5V 2A DC/DC

BD9P105 40V 1A DC/DC

BD00IA5M 500mA LDO

Figure 4. Radiation Noise (horizontal antenna)

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Figure 6. two rails power tree simulation circuit (1)

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DESK

- Simulation of a three rails power tree with a secondary DC/ DC converter behind the primary DC/DC converter (BD9P205) connected battery input. (Figure 7) **Simulation circuit is here. My ROHM registration is required.

BD9S201 5.5V 2A DC/DC

BD9P205 40V 2A DC/DC

Table 2. Line up of Secondary DC/DC Converter BD9S series y BD39040MUF-C - Power Supply monitoring IC with built-in self-diagnostic function (BIST) to support functional safety. (Figure 8) - Built-in Variable watchdog timer (window type), over voltage monitor, under voltage monitor and reset functions.

- Built-in self-diagnostic function (BIST) as well as system power rail monitoring to detect potential failures.

- Redundant internal reference voltage circuits and oscillator circuits to significantly reduce the probability of failure.

- FS supportive category of functional safety products.

- Small 3mm x 3mm package make it easy to add to the system.

BD9S300 5.5V 3A DC/DC

BD9S400 5.5V 4A DC/DC

Figure 7. three rails power tree simulation circuit (2) Utilizing these reference design data and simulator in the design of ADAS/Infotainment units can greatly reduce the number of unit design cycles by eliminating the process to select components and ensure to validate the circuit specification.

Advanced technology products that support distinctive reference designs The distinctive reference design is made up of products with advanced technology and features. y BD9P Series (with Nano Pulse Control™(*4) technology) - 42V Automotive Primary DC/DC Converter Series. (Table 1) - Quick response to provide a stable power supply for battery cranking.

- Low EMI noise with a switching frequency spread spectrum function.

- FS supportive category of functional safety products.

Figure 8. Feature of Power Supply Monitoring IC BD39040MUF-C

Table 1. Line up of Primary DC/DC Converter BD9P series

y RBR3LAM60BTF This is a high-reliability, automotive grade (AEC-Q101 compliant) 60V Schottky barrier diode. In this reference design, it is used as a battery input backflow prevention diode. To minimize the dropping voltage due to the diode's forward voltage (Vf), the RBR series has been used with low Vf.

y BD9S Series - Automotive Secondary DC/DC Converter Series. (Table 2) - Contributes to high reliability of the system with Output voltage y RV4C020ZPHZG monitoring function and soft-start time variable function.

A highly reliable, 1.5 V drive, low ON-resistance, automotive - 2mm x 2mm small package and industry-leading high grade (AEC-Q101 compliant) Pch MOSFET. It is packaged in efficiency. a bottom electrode package for high mounting reliability, - 2.2 MHz (typ.) switching frequency without interference to and the wettable flank shape does not impair visibility after the AM band. mounted. In this reference design, it is used as a load switch - FS supportive category of functional safety products. to split the 3.3V system.

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ENGINEER'S DESK < Conclusion

ROHM will continue to develop advanced products and reference designs to apply them to applications, thereby save energy, downsizing, reducing heat generations, reducing design man-hours and improving functional safety level for customer’s units. We believe that our sustaining and continuing efforts will bring safety and security to the automobile society and bring rich lives to people all over the world.

[Terminology] (*1) Primary, Secondary In a multi-rail power system, the first stage conversion circuit from the battery or other power source is called the Primary.

The second stage conversion circuit connected to the output of the primary is called the Secondary. (*2) FS supportive ROHM categorizes the forms that can be provided for functional safety by product. The component-level forms are necessary to achieve functional safety in the unit. For detail information: https://www.rohm.com/functional-safety (*3) ROHM Solution Simulator This is a free simulation tool that runs on the official ROHM website. Solution circuits, which is close to application circuits such as circuits combining SiC power devices with gate driver ICs, can be simulated. It reduces design and circuit verification man-hours. For detail information: https://www.rohm.com/ solution-simulator

(*4) Nano Pulse Control™ This is one of the Nano series, an innovative power supply technology developed by ROHM. The ultra-fast pulse control technology enables a significant improvement in the conversion ratio and fast response time in power supply ICs. It helps to reduce BOM costs in the system. For detail information: https:// www.rohm.com/support/nano *Nano Pulse Control™ is trademark or registered trademark of ROHM Co., Ltd.

[References]

ROHM official web site. “New Ultra-Compact Automotive Grade Buck DC/DC Converters” https://www.rohm.com/news-detail?news title=ultra-compact-automotive-grade-buck-dc-dcconverters&defaultGroupId=false ROHM official web site. “New Power Supply Monitoring IC with Built-In Self-Diagnostic Function that Supports Functional Safety” https://www.rohm.com/news-detail?news-title=power supply-monitoring-ic-with-built-in-self-diagnosticfunction&defaultGroupId=false (The article is an original piece written by ROHM Semiconductor.)

ROHM Develops Wi-SUN FAN Module Solution ROHM has established a new Wi-SUN FAN, Field Area Network module for infrastructure applications, capable of connecting up to 1,000 nodes in a mesh network. Wi-SUN FAN the latest Wi-SUN international wireless communication standard, which eliminates the communication costs associated with conventional LPWA (Low-Power Wide-Area) wireless standards.

In response to these challenges, ROHM developed the BP35C5, an in-house ultra-small (15.0mm × 19.0mm size) Wi-SUN FAN module. This solution can connect with up to 1,000 devices (e.g., traffic signals and streetlights), enabling the configuration of a remote wireless management system covering an entire city.

The BP35C5 also includes the necessary security functions for carrying out secure communication without the need for complicated control. Certifications acquired under the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and ARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Business) allow for immediate use

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both in the US and Japan. Other countries and regions will be supported shortly.

The BP35C5 module and BP35C5-T01 evaluation board will be available for purchase in mid-February 2021 through online distributors Digi-Key and Mouser. Various documents and user guides are now available on ROHM’s website.

Wi-SUN FAN (Wireless Smart Utility Network for Field Area Network profile) is the latest protocol under the Wi-SUN international communication standard with over 95 million units shipped worldwide.

Whereas conventional LPWA standards support only startype networks, Wi-SUN FAN enables the configuration of mesh networks capable of performing multi-hop transmission between relays, while allowing for remote management of terminal-mounted applications via bidirectional communication between relays and terminals. This makes it possible to automatically optimize the hop route between relays in the event of communication failure due to newly constructed buildings or other surrounding obstacles Unlike other LPWA standards that incur communication costs for each terminal, Wi-SUN FAN can be operated at little to no cost.

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> CONFORMAL

COATINGS

PCB Autopsy – Pre and Post Coating Variables That Cause Board Failure

Phil Kinner

Electrolube’s Global Business & Technical Director for Conformal Coatings

Conformal coatings are widely used in high reliability and safety critical applications, where the impact of electronic failure can have very serious consequences including loss of life. To ensure a conformal coating meets the desired requirements, coated assemblies need to be exposed to a range of environments via appropriate test conditions to establish the performance range and limitations. Basic tests include electrical performance and accelerated humidity testing, whereas advanced testing can imitate severe conditions such as salt mist, temperature extremes or rapid environmental changes. Conformal coatings are designed to protect PCBs and ensure that they work efficiently in their end-use environment. However, there are instances where boards may not perform adequately or may even fail entirely despite being coated, which in turn produces an expensive, time-consuming nightmare that also impacts on your reputation. Phil Kinner, Electrolube’s Global Business & Technical Director for Conformal Coatings, explores why testing is so important and examines different variables that can cause board failure.

As electronics evolve to do more in an ever smaller footprint, the chance of failures increase more and more. As components get smaller and pitches become ever finer, many designs are getting closer and closer to design rule limits and sometimes even challenging the limits of manufacturability. It stands to reason, that the more designers push the boundaries, the chance of failure increases dramatically.

> MARCH 2021

In addition to design related failure issues, the closer proximity of components due to the higher density inherently makes the hardware more vulnerable to corrosion, which is a complicated, diffusion controlled, electro-chemical process that takes place on an exposed metal surface, in the presence of water and ionic contaminants. Cleaning prior to conformal coating will go a long way to removing conditions for corrosion, enabling a more efficient coating process to increase the insulation resistance in these sensitive designs and mitigate against the effects of the operating environment on failure.

As PCBs are highly complex, there are so many variables that can potentially cause board failure. Some failure mechanisms occur slowly, which can help with detection, maintenance and even repair, however, with a sudden and unanticipated failure mechanism, complete PCB failure is often more likely.

When a PCB fails despite being coated first, the chances are that there were problematic conditions already prevailing on the PCB prior to the conformal coating process, further still, the coating itself could have been inappropriate or the coating method deployed was not suitable for the application.

Equally, there are many other threats to a PCB’s success, which include applying conformal coating to components and surfaces that have not been cleaned prior to coating, electro static discharge or even potentially poor construction of the unit itself.

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CONFORMAL COATINGS < becomes increasingly difficult to satisfy both clearance and creepage design requirements. Even very slight changes in the environment, whether it is an increase in dust, higher humidity, water-splash or exposure to potentially corrosive gaseous materials can be enough to take an otherwise safe, functional design outside of safe operating clearance and creepage, and cause performance failures.

The first and most critical procedure to employ is to carry out an inspection prior to coating. This is essential because it validates the overall quality of the PCB, ensuring it is fit for purpose and in keeping with customer specifications. Inspection at this stage is also paramount in detecting any conditions that could potentially cause board failure such as component failure, insufficient board thickness and loose connections that impact on connectivity. Conformal coatings do have their limitations and contaminants present on the surface prior to coating will be sealed in by the operation and may cause long term problems – such contaminants might include fingerprints, flux residues and moisture as well as other atmospheric pollutants.

Boards should always be cleaned and dried before conformal coating to obtain optimum performance. Even when using so-called no-clean fluxes, cleaning boards before coating helps to increase performance and reliability.

Other contributing factors to board and component failure include poor solder joints, unconsumed or superfluous flux and tin whiskers. Cold solder joints, which occur when the solder fails to melt entirely during assembly, produce poor surfacemount connections that burn components and create power problems. Left over flux can also contribute to corrosion, due to its absorption of moisture, and produce short circuits and damage to components. Tin whiskers also cause short circuits.

Conformal coatings can normally combat the formation of tin whiskers during operation, but are less effective when whiskers exist already within the assembly prior to coating. In general, the level of mitigation provided depends more on coating coverage than the properties of the coating, although there is some equivocal data that harder and tougher coatings provide more mitigation, but this must be balanced with an increased impact on the life of the solder joint. Overall, focussing on achieving 100% coverage of metal surfaces is likely to be a more efficient mitigation strategy.

Trace damage can occur from power surges, lightning strikes and overheating. Damage to the silver or copper conductive pathways can normally be seen with the naked eye, but this is not always the case. Trace damage causes considerable issues with conductivity, components and the reliability of the device. Fortunately, trace damage is normally detected and remedied during the initial inspection as it is visually very apparent.

Another renowned enemy of PCBs and components is heat.

During operation, the materials within the PCB will undergo a wide range of temperature changes and each component has a specified range of heat that it can absorb, largely dependent on its size and shape. Higher power, greater density electronics produce more heat and excessive heat can cause significant mechanical stress that can impact on solder connections and burn out components. It is essential to manage heat transfer efficiently to increase the lifetime of the device and prevent failure. Overheating not only accelerates failure mechanisms but can also cause devices to become too hot to handle and, in some cases, present a fire risk.

In addition to the issues surrounding heat, the continuing drive towards miniaturi¬sation means that we don’t have space for multiple boards, and there is an increase in the number of designs utilising mixed technologies where analog, digital, and RF circuits are closely combined with high voltage cir¬cuits, it

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Whilst this is not an exhaustive list of every single factor that contributes to PCB failure, it should help to provide a comprehensive overview of key elements to look out for.

Lastly, the design itself could be responsible for PCB failure.

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COATINGS

To increase the lifetime of the board, it is imperative to ensure that the appropriate components and materials have been selected, the board layout is sufficient and the design is verified for its specific requirements. Design is also important in determining the appropriate coating application methodology and therefore the cycle times and the costs involved. Some simple things, like trying to keep connectors or other no-coat areas on the same edge of the assembly, can make a huge difference to the ease of coating an assembly, the cost of coating that assembly and, of course, the overall reliability of the assembly.

PCB malfunction post coating

There are a number of variables that could be responsible for a malfunctioning printed circuit board following the coating process. Generally, the results could indicate poor product selection and/or application, or some underlying problem arising from insufficient surface preparation or some chemical activity going on beneath the coating that is entirely unrelated to the coating chemistry. Poorly performing coatings risk loss of insulation at the PCB surfaces when water condenses in combination with ionic impurities to form conductive pathways between PCB tracks. Without doubt, condensation can severely test the insulation resistance of a coating. There are many coating products that resist these sorts of conditions, so this type of problem can be avoided by making an appropriate material selection at the outset.

If the coating has not cured properly, it will not be able to develop its protective properties to the full. In this incidence, the application process is to blame. Correct application is a pre-requisite to coating success and by achieving this, a whole raft of problems can also be solved in one hit. For instance, poor coverage, insufficient thickness and sharp edge coverage can be difficult to achieve with many coatings and it can be hard to ensure sufficient thickness in these areas to maintain protection. A combination of material selection and application technique/workmanship will remedy these sorts of issues. The IPC specification allows a dry film thickness of between 30 and 130 microns, the greater thickness being achieved by

> MARCH 2021

the application of multiple coating layers. Trying to achieve a 130 micron dry film thickness from a single selective-coating process with a solvent-based acrylic material, for instance, is a recipe for a disaster, likely to result in excessive bubble formation, film shrinkage, coating de-lamination and additional stress on components. The result is poorer protection, rather than an improved overall level of circuit protection. Aiming for a uniform 30-50 microns and focusing on achieving perfect coverage at each application is a much better approach to improving the protection of electronic circuits.

Achieving the correct coating thickness is important; bear in mind that if the coating is too thick it can lead to entrapment of solvents in areas where the coating does not fully cure.

Similarly, it can cause the coating to crack as it cures, or even cause cracking of the coated components themselves, or as the result of changes in temperature, or due to mechanical shock and vibration. The number one determinant of success for coating reliability lies in the application. Often a poor material applied well can be just as good or sometimes better than a material with great properties that is applied badly.

Coating is about getting sufficient coverage of the sharp edges and metal surfaces without applying the material too thickly elsewhere. Of course, some materials ‘apply better’ than others and make this process as easy and foolproof as possible; but in the end, the performance of liquid applied coatings will always be determined by how well they were applied.

Large arrays of discrete components also represent a massive coating challenge due to the high levels of capillary forces present and the result is often quite disastrous, with areas of no coverage/protection on the board and conversely areas of excessive thickness prone to stress-cracking, delamination and other coating defects. Ultimately this will lead to premature failure of the assemblies and should be avoided if at all possible!

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CONFORMAL COATINGS < There may also be an unexpected interaction with some other process material used to prepare/build the PCB. Flux residues are particularly illustrative of this type of problem.

In a ‘no-clean’ process, for example, these can inhibit the cure of some types of coating or lead to a loss of insulation of the system, greater than either material in isolation. Unless there has been meticulous attention to preparation or precoat cleaning regimes, corrosive residues bridging the PCB’s conducting tracks can, over time, cause failures. And while the coating may delay failure for many years, at some point failure will inevitably happen.

The greatest test of conformal coating’s performance is posed during power-up under wet conditions, whether this is due to condensation, immersion or salt-spray. Water with soluble impurities is electrically conductive and, finding any weak spots in a coating, will eventually leading to short-circuits at the PCB surface. In order to provide protection in these circumstances, it is essential to achieve 100% defect-free coverage of the PCB’s metal surfaces, and this poses a real challenge for both the material itself and the application process. Fortunately, a new class of two-part conformal coating materials dubbed ‘2K’ enable a much greater thickness and perfect application coverage to be achieved, resulting in a far higher level of protection. The superior performance advantages of Electrolube’s 2K coating materials, which combine the tough, resistant properties of an encapsulation resin with the easy application of a coating, have been positively demonstrated in three of the harshest tests that these materials can be

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subjected to, including powered condensation testing and powered immersion testing in salt-water.

Conclusion

PCBs are the life force of all electronic devices that we rely on every day, from smart phones, tablets, PCs and laptops to street lighting, TVs, refrigerators, microwaves and cars.

When a PCB fails it can be enormously disruptive and in cases such as aerospace applications, it can be critical. Therefore, the materials selected to protect electronic assemblies can literally make or break a printed circuit board, particularly if it is required to endure substantial physical shock and thermal cycles. Pre and post coating inspections and tests are essential to ensure that the PCB will perform reliably and increase its lifetime, particularly if the PCB is destined to operate in a harsh environment. Select the appropriate material for the protection required, apply and cure it well. Check for interactions with other process chemistries and thoroughly clean the assembly prior to coating. If possible, spend time simplifying the coating process at the design stage. By the simple action of placing as many connectors and components that must not be coated, as possible along one edge of the assembly, the conformal coating application process will be simplified. PCB failures can unfortunately occur following the application of a conformal coating but the positive news is that failure can be prevented with systematic pre-coat inspections, correct material selection/application method and further rigorous post-coating tests.

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TEST & MEASUREMENT

“Testing Consumer Electronics” Under Test And Measurement

Madhukar Tripathi

Head-MARCOM & OPTICAL PRODUCTS at Anritsu India Pvt. Ltd

An introduction to Consumer Electronics & Market Trend: Smartphone Testing: Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic (analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Some of the most popular consumer electronics are, Smartphone, TV, Radio, Smart Watch and similar wearables, Video Game consoles, Bluetooth speakers, Set Top Box (STB), Music System, Camera, Laptop, Tablets, PC etc. Consumer electronics industry has largely merged with the software industry in what is increasingly referred to as the consumerization of information technology. This is enabling new customer experience and customer expectation has increased – better customer experience and better-quality products. *According to IBEF, Indian appliance and consumer electronics (ACE) market reached Rs. 76,400 crore (US$ 10.93 billion) in 2019.

Appliances and consumer electronics industry is expected to double to reach Rs. 1.48 lakh crore (US$ 21.18 billion) by 2025. *National Policy targets production of one billion mobile handsets by 2025. Production linked incentives (PLI) are being provided to companies to establish manufacturing plants in India.

All these data show India is emerging as big market and ready for consumer electronics production hub. In order to meet time bound production and good quality product, test and measurement will play an important role.

A smartphone or mobile phone undergoes various testing right from design/ R&D phase to components integration and then final assembly testing or final QA before packing and dispatch from factory.

Mobile phone testing can be divided in to 2 major parts (A) Functional Testing (B) Non-Functional Testing Functional Testing is a type of black box testing whereby each part of the system is tested against functional specification/ requirements. Functional testing verifies that the software performs its stated functions in a way that the users expect.

The process of functional testing involves a series of tests: Smoke, Sanity, Integration, Regression, Interface, System and finally User Acceptance Testing Further in mobile production zone following types of testing is carried: • mobile application testing • hardware testing • battery (charging) testing • signal receiving • network testing • protocol testing • mobile games testing • mobile software compatibility testing Non-functional testing includes: • Security.

• Accessibility.

• Performance and availability.

• API testing.

Sometimes local government regulation requires specific testing to be mandated and many mobile service providers also have specific provision for mobile testing before this is launched in market. These testing are referred as certification testing.

SAR Testing is one of them. Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) testing is the radiofrequency (RF) dosimetry quantification of

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TEST & MEASUREMENT < the magnitude and distribution of absorbed electromagnetic energy within biological objects that are exposed to RF fields.

These levels are expressed as watts per kilogram (W/kg). Every manufacturer must specify SAR value for each model.

Smartphone Production Challenges

Today's smartphones use 3G and 4G/LTE and 5G cellular wireless technologies with MIMO antennas for faster data transfer rates. With more RF components, smartphone manufacturers need more calibration and testing. As well as meeting the need for faster data communications, the fusion of cellular wireless and connectivity wireless technology is essential to smartphones. In implementing connectivity wireless, the module maker tests the connectivity wireless technology when the smartphone vendor purchases connectivity wireless modules for their smartphone. However, when implementing both cellular wireless and connectivity wireless in one chipset or when mounting a connectivity wireless chipset on-board (CoB: Chip on Board), the smartphone manufacturing vendor tests the connectivity wireless technology.

The many RF components and wireless technologies to test complicate the calibration of the test system by adding splitters and switches and control software. In addition, the many wireless technologies to test increase production costs through additional investment in test equipment at production ramp-up. In future smartphone manufacturing, a key issue in adapting to multiple wireless technologies is how to simplify test systems and cut production costs.

Wireless Test Set to expedite mobile handset manufacturing testing. MT8872A have below features • One module supporting multiple wireless standards Supported standards: 5G NR sub-6GHz, LTE/LTE-Advanced, LTE-V2X, NB-IoT, Cat-M, W-CDMA/HSPA, TD-SCDMA, GSM/ EDGE, CDAM2000/1xEV-DO, WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n/p(V2X)/ ac/ax, Bluetooth v5.0, ZigBee, Z-Wave, FM/RDS, GPS/Galileo/ GLONASS/BeiDou/QZSS, DVB-H, ISDB-T/ISDB-Tmm • Built-in audio analyzer/audio generator • Simultaneous Measurement of Two Devices with Direct Connection of up to 12 Device Antennas Installing two test units in the MT8872A main unit supports simultaneous parallel measurement of up to two connected devices under test. Since the number of antennas in wireless communications devices is increasing to facilitate more wireless communication methods, each installed MU887002A test unit supports connection of up to 12 antennas to greatly simplify the test setup Two TRX Test Modules can be used to measure multiple wireless technologies in one wireless device or module. The multiple antennas for the various wireless technologies in the wireless device or module are connected all at one time to execute measurements in parallel, greatly reducing the problems of moving smartphones between test stations and re-booting time for smartphone.

Key Testing Parameters:

Testing of Mobile parameters are performed according to various standards such as 3GPP, IEEE etc. today handset supports multiple wireless technologies and interfaces. Below picture gives an idea about various wireless technologies incorporated in one mobile handset.

Conclusion:

Testing plays an important and crucial role in success of consumer electronics be it smartphone or laptop or printer or digital camera or smartwatches. Todays customers are demanding better high-quality products and manufactures have pressure to deliver product in market in less time.

Therefore, less testing time, cost and energy efficient, future proof test instruments are demand of today manufacturers.

Anritsu Solution to Smartphone Manufacturing Test:

References:

Anritsu recently introduced new test platform MT8872A Universal

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*Source-www.ibef.org ** www.anritsu.com

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ARTICLE

Conserve battery power in HEV/EVs with automatic host reverse wakeup As more vehicles become electrified, the need to achieve the highest levels of functional safety with high-accuracy battery monitoring is paramount. Yet to improve battery-monitoring accuracy, the vehicle’s battery management system must work efficiently in real time to monitor the performance of the individual battery cells within.

In typical hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and electric vehicle (EV) configurations, the battery management unit (BMU) is powered from a 12-V battery. This battery remains on even when the car is parked or turned off, in order to support features like remote key entry, security and battery monitoring. When the car is parked, to ensure proper health of the battery, the microcontroller (MCU) has to periodically wake up to look for faults in high-voltage battery packs. This periodic wakeup draws current and can prematurely discharge the 12-V battery.

Design engineers and automotive manufacturers can now consider a new automatic host reverse wake-up feature that enables the host MCU to be off and rely instead on a supply power-management integrated circuit (PMIC) to remain in low-power mode and conserve 12-V battery power.

Deepak Uppal System Engineer, Texas Instruments

The BMU board holds the host MCU, its supply (a PMIC or system-basis chip [SBC]) and a communication interface, which links the MCU and battery-monitoring devices on the cell monitoring unit, which then connects to the actual battery cells. A ring connection is supported to reverse the daisy-chain communication direction in the event of cable failure. The host MCU interfaces with the control unit of the vehicle through a Controller Area Network bus. By effectively monitoring each battery cell, an EV’s MCU can ensure the proper operation of all battery cells.

Examining a wake-up-at-fault battery design

As illustrated in Figure 1, EV battery packs can stack up to 800 V and beyond to support the demanding loads of the AC motor. These battery packs comprise hundreds of cells stacked together in series. A distributed battery pack system supports high-cell-count packs by connecting multiple highaccuracy battery monitors on separate printed circuit boards called cell sensing units.

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Figure 1: Simplified battery management system diagram

Improving accuracy with TI’s battery monitors and balancers

TI’s BQ79616-Q1 battery monitor, and balancer can continuously monitor the high-voltage battery even in sleep mode. In case

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TECHNICAL ARTICLE <

of a fault in the battery, the BQ79616-Q1 transfers the fault information through the daisy-chain configuration to the BQ79600-Q1 communication interface. In turn, the BQ79600-Q1 wakes up and commands the PMIC and MCU to wake up.

The MCU does not have to periodically wake up on its own and can instead rely on the BQ79616-Q1 monitor. Thus, the BQ79600-Q1 – along with the BQ79616-Q1 automatic host reverse wake-up feature – allows the MCU to be off and its PMIC to be in lower-power mode, which minimizes current draw on the 12-V battery and conserves battery power.

As illustrated in Figure 2, when the BQ79616-Q1 is in sleep mode, the low-power operation mode, cell overtemperature and under temperature, cell overvoltage and undervoltage, and thermistor overtemperature and under temperature fault detections are still active. Because communication is not available in sleep mode, the device provides an option to transmit the fault status through heartbeat (device in no fault state) and fault (device in fault state) tones.

These tones are transmitted in the same direction as a communication command frame. Unlike communication tones, heartbeat and fault tones are transmitted periodically.

The heartbeat and fault tone receivers are always on in sleep mode. For the tone signal to return to the base device (in order to trigger NFAULT), a ring architecture is necessary to support transmitting fault status in sleep mode. Once the BQ79600-Q1 sniffer detects a fault tone, it puts itself into validate mode to check if a true fault exists or not. If a true fault exists, the BQ79600-Q1 triggers the INH pin, a high-voltage output pin that provides voltage to enable the PMIC.

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Figure 2: Automatic host reverse wakeup with TI battery monitors and balancers

Conclusion

The BQ79616-Q1 family of battery monitors and balancers supports automatic host reverse wakeup, which enables the host MCU to remain off and its power supply to be in the lowest-power mode while the BQ79600-Q1 monitors for faults coming from stacked battery-monitoring devices. The BQ79600-Q1 wakes up the SBC through the INH pin, which then further wakes up the MCU if the event of an unmasked fault detected by the BQ79600-Q1 or stacked BQ79616-Q1s.

This enables the conservation of 12-V battery power and supports functional safety requirements like cell monitoring for overvoltage, undervoltage, overtemperature, under temperature, thermistor overtemperature and thermistor under temperature, even when the EV is parked or turned off.

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PAPER

OpenStack Automation with Ansible Moinul Islam Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide insight on an alternative approach to provisioning virtual machines aside from VMware.

The target audience includes, but is not limited to, software developers who deal with virtual machine automation. Due to the high expense of VMware’s service provider license and its infrastructure that supports vRealize, vCenter, and other tools, we utilized our resources to put together a cost effective, alternative approach that accomplishes the same tasks.

Our solution is an approach that makes use of open-source technologies that have DevOps methodologies using Ansible Tower® to interact with OpenStack®, which are implemented via playbooks to provision virtual machines. We integrated this technology in our Cyber Range™ software, described as a case study in this article to prove this methodology a success.

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Introduction

Analog Devices

This article covers how Ansible Tower is one of the easiest ways to create, deploy, and configure virtual machines from OpenStack using playbooks. System performance, IT automation, deployments of complex systems, and speed productivity are the key criteria in software development in regard to interacting with virtual machines. All these features are available in Ansible Tower, which have REST APIs to easily embed it into existing tools and processes. A secure portal where users can request new IT services and manage specific cloud and IT resources can be achieved using Ansible Tower as an open-source tool for automating application deployment and upgrades, as well as the configuration of software for networking and security.

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WHITE PAPER < Why Ansible?

Ansible ® is a simple automation tool that can perfectly describe an IT application infrastructure. It’s easy-to-learn, self-documenting, and doesn’t require a grad-level computer science degree to read. Automation shouldn’t be more complex than the tasks it’s replacing. ► Simple ■ Human readable automation ■ No special coding skills needed ■ Tasks executed in order ■ Become productive quickly ► Powerful ■ App deployment ■ Configuration management ■ Workflow orchestration ■ Orchestrate the app life cycle ► Agentless ■ Agentless architecture ■ Uses OpenSSH and WinRM ■ No agents to exploit or update ■ Predictable, reliable, and secure

Why OpenStack?

OpenStack easily integrates with Ansible Tower, VMware hypervisor, and Hyper-V to utilize existing infrastructure.

OpenStack and KVM hypervisor are free, but require configuration by skilled administrators. OpenStack is an opensource platform for deploying, developing, and building cloud platforms. It is a command line interface and it is powerful, with administration, APIs, and RESTful web services as well as web-based control panel controls. This open-source cloud software is used for managing computing (Nova), block volume storage (Cinder), virtual machine image service (Glance), and networking constructs (Neutron). OpenStack is a foundation that simplifies not only the deployment process, but also the development, storage, networking, monitoring, management, and applications.

OpenStack

► Open source: the technology is supported by a large community of developers ► Provides clients with value, efficiency, and agility ► Comprised of modular, scalable, and flexible set of utilities ► Tried and tested by large businesses What Is Ansible Tower? ► Interoperability and open-source APIs allow admins Ansible Tower is a web-based user interface for managing to manage hybrid IT environments without the additional Ansible. It centralizes and controls Ansible infrastructure overhead layer with a visual dashboard. It can be referred to as the hub for Ansible Playbooks automation tasks.

A playbook is a YAML file which describes a list of tasks to be Ansible Tower performed against a set of hosts, which are defined in the ► Web-based user interface for managing Ansible Ansible inventory. A playbook is made up of one or more ► Centralizes and controls Ansible infrastructure with a visual plays, which are used to group the tasks. It defines virtual dashboard machine names, the VMDK file, networking, IP addresses, and ► Provides REST API for Ansible scenario information. Playbooks are the basis for a really simple ► Ansible configuration management and multimachine deployment ■ Is an open-source automation tool system. Playbooks can declare configurations, but they can ■ Designed to be easy for anyone to understand and learn also orchestrate steps of any manual ordered process.

■ Does not require custom scripting or code Playbooks ■ Provides automation engine ► Define tasks to be performed on hosts ■ Manages networks, infrastructure, operating systems ■ Provides prebuilt modules for managing and configuring ► Tasks are executed in the order in the playbook ► YAML format of hosts (over 450) ■ Provides an API based on Python® ■ Uses OpenSSH ■ Provides automation and orchestration through playbooks.

What Is OpenStack?

OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. It is an open-source project that provides an infrastructure-as-a-service platform to build cloud-aware applications, and it supports multiple hypervisors for provisioning and orchestrating the cloud. It can run multi-tier workloads or open-source development tools.

End users can easily provision resources and support almost all the hypervisors including VMware ESXi, Xen, and KVM.

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Figure 1. Sample playbook.

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Interaction of OpenStack with Ansible

An Ansible playbook defines a series of tasks and configuration on the OpenStack environment. Examples of tasks include provisioning instances of virtual machines, defining the IP of the virtual machines, and a switch to network the virtual machines.

Case Study: Cyber Range a Real-Life Software

The Cyber Range provides customers with an extensible virtualized platform for cyber security training, modeling, simulation, and advanced analytics. We offer our solution to multiple customers which include the U.S. Department of Defense, the Singapore Cyber Security Agency (CSA/SITSA), and the Kyushu University at Japan.

automated process. We can summarize the key point of this article as follows: ► Ansible can automate a variety of IT tasks, including system provisioning, software package installation, network configuration, and security, as well as instance provisioning of a cloud service. ► The approach of using playbooks, which simplify the tasks of orchestrating and configuring the virtual machines, as well deployment of complex scenarios that may contain multiple virtual machines in a custom network, may need to run custom scripts during deployment. ► The unit of the process in which commands are executed one-by-one using a playbook is called task. ► To implement OpenStack automation with Ansible, one needs OpenStack, Ansible, Ansible Tower, and a source control (for example, Git repository).

We recommend Ansible and OpenStack be considered for automation and cloud infrastructure deployment on other cloud projects of Analog Devices.

About the Author

Figure 2. Cyber Range web application interacts with Ansible and OpenStack through REST API.

Moinul Islam is a software engineer at the Trusted Security Solutions (TSS) Group of Analog Devices in Tampa, Florida. He has 20 years of experience in software engineering, design, and development. He received an M.C.I.S. degree from Cleveland State University, Ohio in 1997. In TSS Group, Moinul focused on the design and development on a product called Sypher Ultra, a security add on to a Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+™ device. He is also focused on another project called key management, that integrates with nCipher® hardware security modules. He can be reached at moinul.islam@analog.com.

1. User clicks the start button to start an exercise (hands-on cyber security training).

2. The Cyber Range software calls the training scenario name and user name via the REST API to Ansible Tower using a POST request.

3. Ansible Tower executes the exercise playbook tasks and provides configuration information to OpenStack. This information includes the virtual machine images and networking information.

4. OpenStack provisions the virtual machine image and configures the network.

5. OpenStack returns the status back to Ansible Tower and Ansible Tower returns back the status to the web application.

6. If status is successful, Cyber Range software displays the Windows or Linux icon that enables a hyperlink to open the console.

Summary

With the integration of the Ansible Tower with OpenStack to the Cyber Range software, we are able to build an application that provides on-demand training and real-world scenarios to our customers throughout the globe. The integration with the Ansible REST API with the playbooks has greatly leveraged many of the codes required for provisioning to a more systemized

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UPDATES < Alliance Memory Now Reseller of Micron Products

HONGFA Awarded by CCIA China Components Industry Association has recently released the list of China’s TOP 100 electronic components enterprises in 2020 (the 33rd session).

With its strong strength in scale, R & D ability and financial situation, Hongfa was honorably listed in the TOP 10, and ranked the eighth among the top 100 electronic components in China, becoming the only enterprise in the relay industry to enter the TOP 10 of the list.

Alliance Memory has recently become an authorized reseller for additional legacy NOR Flash devices from Micron Technology.

In addition to the previously announced M29F 5V Parallel NOR Flash devices, Alliance is now reselling select offerings from Micron's M45PE Serial NOR Flash, the N25Q Serial NOR Flash, the J3 Parallel NOR Flash, and the P30/P33 Parallel NOR Flash families, all of which Micron previously discontinued product change notification #32163 (last time buy: March 2018). Micron is continuing to produce these devices for Alliance Memory and intends to only supply Alliance Memory for any new orders placed through mid-2021.

The Micron-made legacy NOR Flash parts highlighted in the following sections are now available directly from Alliance Memory:

So far, Hongfa has been one of the top 100 electronic components enterprises in China for 26 consecutive years.

In 2019, with the global economic downturn, the development of the main downstream application market of electronic components is experiencing a slowdown, even decline.

Affected by this, the overall situation in the electronic components industry is not promising.

M45PE 3V Serial NOR Flash Micron's M45PE Series products are 3V page erasable Serial NOR Flash memory devices accessed by the SPI-compatible bus. The memory can be written or programmed 1 byte to 256 bytes at a time using the PAGE WRITE or PAGE PROGRAM commands.

However, the performance is still commendable for China’s TOP 100 electronic components enterprises in 2020 (the 33rd session). The TOP 100 electronic components enterprises of this year have achieved ¥ 589.9 billion in main business income, ¥ 40.2 billion in total profits, ¥ 16.4 billion in taxes, and provided more than 500 thousand job vacancies.

Indium’s New Approved Jetting Solder Paste Indium Corporation’s newest jetting solder paste, PicoShot NC-5M, has received official approval from Mycronic as a qualified jetting solder paste.

PicoShot NC-5M and its associated purging gel are designed for customers needing a halogen-free no-clean SAC305 solder paste for their Mycronic jetting systems or add-on and repair modules.

• Reflows in air or nitrogen (ppm O2 level from 50-1,000) • Has a clear residue with minimal flow-out • Significantly reduces head-in-pillow (HIP) • Eliminates or significantly reduces graping • Minimizes reflow spatter

Developed jointly with Mycronic, PicoShot NC-5M is a no-clean, halogen-free solder paste designed to meet the specifications of Mycronic’s MY600/MY700 jetting systems.

PicoShot can be used in standalone applications such as systemin-package (SiP), jetting into cavities, stencil-replacement, shield attach, and microBGA. PicoShot NC-5M’s formulation meets or exceeds: • ANSI/IPC J-STD-004B ROL0 requirements • Halogen-free requirements per IPC and IEC61249-2-21 standards • IPC standards for SIR and ECM Additionally, PicoShot® NC-5M: • Provides exceptional jetting performance for a halogenfree Pb-free solder paste

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UPDATES

Ola E-Scooters Powered by ABB Ola has chosen ABB as one of its key partners for robotics and automation solutions for its megafactory in India that will roll out the much-anticipated Ola electric scooter.

lines, while the ABB robots will be deployed extensively for the battery and motor assembly lines.

Ola’s scooter megafactory billed to be the world’s largest scooter factory, is expected to be ready and operational in the coming months.

ABB robots will be digitally integrated into Ola’s AI-enabled mega-factory, to optimize robot performance, productivity and product quality.

Ola will utilize ABB’s automation solutions in its factory’s key manufacturing process lines, including its painting and welding

These include ABB’s “IRB 5500” paint and “IRB 2600” Integrated Dressing robots in its painting and welding lines, and “IRB 6700” robots for assembly and material handling in the battery and motor assembly areas.

The use of ABB’s robots and automation solutions will ensure remote digital connectivity and monitoring of the robots that will ride on Ola’s proprietary AI engine and tech stack.

ADI’s BMS ICs to Power Volvo’s All Electric XC40 SUV

“Electric vehicles are the future of Automotive, and the market is growing significantly with up to 10 million fully electric vehicles per year expected by 2025,” said Patrick Morgan, Vice President, Automotive at Analog Devices. “We are committed to continuing delivering innovative technologies with all of our collaborators that lead the Automotive industry to a sustainable future.”

Analog Devices and Volvo Cars have reported that Volvo Cars’ first pure electric SUV—the Volvo XC40 Recharge, will feature ADI’s integrated circuits (ICs) that support the battery management system (BMS) and Automotive Audio Bus (A2B).

ADIBy saving vehicle weight and maximizing range, these advanced technologies deliver an attractive total cost of ownership for electric vehicles while also supporting a sustainable future.

“The BMS performance is critical to the electric XC40 Recharge delivering on its promise of a silent-but-powerful, carbon emission-free, safe driving experience,” said Lutz Stiegler, Solution Manager Electric Propulsion at Volvo Car Corporation. “An extraordinarily high level of thought and research went into every single aspect and component in our first pure electric SUV to ensure more miles per charge, longer vehicle life and peace of mind while lowering the cost of ownership.”

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The Volvo XC40 P8 Recharge was a 2021 semi-finalist in the North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year Awards (NACTOY) utility vehicle category. The NACTOY awards honor excellence in innovation, design, safety, handling, driver satisfaction and value. The awards are intended to recognize the most outstanding new vehicles of the year.

ADI’s ICs provide industry-leading accuracy over the life of the vehicle that significantly increases miles per charge and is scalable across the vehicle fleet from hybrid vehicles to fully electric vehicles. The ICs meet the highest global security standards, and scale across multiple battery chemistries, including the zero-cobalt chemistries such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) that support social and environmental sustainability.

ADI’s solutions enable the audio system to be connected into a low-latency bus architecture that guarantees high audio fidelity and saves up to 50 kg of wire and insulation in the vehicle.

This combination is especially important in electric vehicles, such as the XC40 Recharge, as the reduction in weight translates directly to increased range.

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Electrolube Applies New Resin Solution for EVs

As the demand of hybrid and electric vehicles are advancing at a rapid pace, a need for effective counter of thermal heat effect on the performance of these electric vehicles has arisen. To tackle this issue, Electrolube has successfully executed a new resin solutions for EV customers that have proven highly successful in solving their heat, performance and protection issues.

For issues with securing the battery at the base and ensuring

effective heat dissipation away from the battery, Electrolube’s SC4003 is a thixotropic two-part silicone potting and encapsulating resin, initially designed for the Indian market, which was primarily developed for the protection of LED Drivers.

However, its properties make it ideally suited for battery protection. The Thermal Conductivity of SC4003 is 1W/mK, which is the highest in the industry for a silicone resin. It has excellent high-temperature properties, suitable for use in applications where the operating temperature will be up to 200°C, while its flexibility allows for temperature cycling.

Another key product for battery protection includes the thermal gap filler - GF400. Electrolube’s thermal gap filler, GF400, is a highly effective heat transfer solution, providing excellent thermal performance at 4.0 W/m.K. To seal the battery pack, Electrolube has the ER6001 two-part epoxy encapsulation resin, which has also been developed for the Indian EV market.

To achieve prolonged battery life and higher efficiency, Electrolube’s Thermally Conductive Epoxy Potting Compound, ER2221, is a highly thermally conductive resin with low viscosity, ideal for potting cells within electric vehicle batteries.

New Motor Driver Launched for MHEVs safety development process, helping enable up to Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) D. To help decrease greenhouse gas emissions globally, automobile manufacturers are increasing the production of MHEVs, which use 48-V motor-drive systems to help reduce emissions from a vehicle’s internal combustion engine.

Texas Instruments (TI) has released a highly integrated Grade 0 brushless DC (BLDC) motor driver for 48-V high-power motor control systems, such as traction inverters and starter generators in mild hybrid electric vehicles (MHEVs).

The DRV3255-Q1 can help designers shrink their motor system size by as much as 30% while providing the industry’s highest gate-drive current for increased protection and output power.

Meeting the most stringent safety requirements, the new motor driver was designed according to TI’s TÜV SÜD-certified functional

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The TI Functional Safety-Compliant DRV3255-Q1 allows manufacturers to design a motor-drive system to help enable MHEV systems up to ASIL D, supplying as much as 30 kW of motor power which can improve the response time of a 48-V motor-drive system in heavy vehicles.

The DRV3255-Q1 is the industry’s first three-phase, 48-V BLDC motor driver to integrate high- and low-side active short-circuit logic, which eliminates external transistors and control logic.

By integrating the active short-circuit logic and dynamic fault response, the new motor driver enables designers to not only simplify their designs but also supply as much as 30 kW of motor power while reducing board space and bill-of-materials cost in 48-V motor-drive systems.

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MediaTek New M80 5G Xilinx, Fujitsu to Provide 5G Deployments in US Modem MediaTek has released its new M80 5G modem which combines mmWave and sub-6 GHz 5G technologies onto a single chip.

The M80 supports ultra-fast speeds on both non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) architectures, with a peak rate of 7.67 Gbps in the downlink and 3.76 Gbps in the uplink.

The M80 also supports dual 5G SIM, dual 5G NSA and SA networks, and dual Voice over New Radio (VoNR) for more reliable connectivity.

MediaTek’s 5G modems are ideal for a range of devices, including smartphones, PCs, Mi-Fi hotspots, broadband customer premise equipment (CPE), industrial IoT applications and more.

MediaTek’s first generation 5G modem, the M70, is built into MediaTek’s Dimensity series of powerful and power-efficient chipsets for 5G smartphones. The company’s 5G portfolio also includes the MediaTek T700, which will power 5G PCs set to hit the market in 2021, along with MediaTek’s T750 chipset for 5G fixed wireless access routers (FWA) and mobile hotspot devices.

Xilinx has collaborated with Fujitsu to supply its leading UltraScale+ technology to Fujitsu Limited for its O-RAN 5G radio units (O-RUs).

Fujitsu O-RUs using Xilinx technology will be deployed in the first O-RANcompliant 5G Greenfield networks in the U.S. Fujitsu is also evaluating Xilinx RFSoC technology to further reduce cost and power consumption for additional future site deployments.

Fujitsu O-RUs are ideal for a broad range of spectrum and multi-band applications for 5G O-RAN networks.

The Xilinx UltraScale+ devices used within Fujitsu O-RUs deliver the best balance of cost economies as well as the adaptability and scalability required for the evolving needs of 5G O-RAN network requirements.

Additionally, Xilinx will continue to work with other O-RAN ecosystem partners to ensure continued validation of the hardware and software necessary for world-class 5G networks.

Spirent Releases 5G Outlook Report (NSAs) inability to really wow customers and deliver a solid new revenue proposition.

• Because 5G is moving so fast, operators are turning to partners to deliver key elements: Through service contracts, elements that would previously have been delivered in-house are now being delivered by trusted partners.

Spirent Communications has published its 5G outlook report, based on analysis from over 600 global 5G engagements.

The “5G 2021: Market Drivers, Insights & Consideration” report provides insights from across the 5G eco-system on the current status of 5G, illustrating the accelerated timetables from service providers in upgrading to 5G standalone (SA) with the new 5G Core and revealing how 5G is driving new initiatives and sector engagements.

Key findings from the report include:

• 5G SA core timetables accelerated rapidly: 5G activity surged in 2020 with accelerated timetables from service providers to deliver 5G SA core deployments, following non-standalone’s

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• 5G is driving new initiatives and engagements: The year saw notable growth in engagements with government, military and academia around 5G experimentation and security initiatives, as governments explore new use cases • Automated Assurance and 5G are the new dynamic duo: Whether it was a core network buildout, lab certification, or new service delivered, 5G plus Automated Assurance were the dynamic duo that customers turned to as they sought to continue pushing forward with their 5G plans, with 80% of Spirent’s assurance business focused on 5G work.

• The trend of accelerated timetables is here to stay: While the pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated 5G timetables, it seems likely this accelerated trend is here to stay.

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How Simulation-Based Digital Twins and the Industrial Internet of Things Can Improve Product and Process Performance

Simulation has long been used to improve the design of nearly every physical product or process by providing the opportunity to evaluate a wide range of alternative designs prior to building physical prototypes. Simulation has also long been used to model different operating scenarios to develop control strategies that are incorporated into control algorithms to improve operations. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has created the potential for a transformational journey in which a simulation model of the product or process is tied through the

Internet to sensors capturing data and to actuators controlling its operation. The result is a so-called digital twin of the physical product or process that can be used to analyze and diagnose its operation and optimize its performance and maintenance in real time. By using simulation in conjunction with the IoT, companies can analyze the performance of products in real-world operating conditions and make confident predictions about future performance to improve product operation and productivity, and to reduce the cost and risk of unplanned downtime.

Emergence of the Internet of Things

The IoT is changing the way companies approach the entire product lifecycle from development, testing and manufacturing to operations and maintenance. Smart connected products leverage connectivity with the cloud and other devices to deliver unprecedented functionality. The proliferation of smart connected products offers exciting new capabilities for their users and enormous opportunities to companies developing them. There are already more smart devices connected to the internet today than there are human beings in the world. IoT devices are creating massive opportunities for existing businesses and giving rise to brand new markets and companies. The potential economic impact by 2025 has been estimated to be up to $11 trillion per year.

Early IoT applications focused on relatively simple applications, such as determining the state of assets and issuing simple commands, such as turning an asset on or off. But manufacturers

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Multiphysics-based simulation drives the product development process.

and users of smart connected products are demonstrating that the power of the IoT can be increased through integration with simulation technology. Simulation can perform diagnostics and troubleshooting in real time, anticipate breakdowns and

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DIGITAL TWINS < determine the optimal point to perform maintenance, tune the product to optimize its performance, and capture information that can be used to improve the next-generation design.

Role of simulation in the IoT

Industry leaders use simulation to create complete virtual prototypes of complex products and systems comprising mechanical, electronics and embedded software components, incorporating all the physical phenomena that exist in real-world environments. For example, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software is used to model and predict fluid flow, which is critical to optimizing the efficiency of so many products and processes, ranging from the combustion of gases in an automobile engine to the movement of a chemical solution through pores in a shale gas formation. Structural analysis software is used to predict how a product will react to forces, heat, electromagnetic fields, abrasion and other physical effects to determine whether a proposed design will meet design requirements. Electromagnetics simulation predicts the signal integrity, power integrity and thermal integrity of products such as computer chips, circuit boards, cell phones, automobile electronic components and entire communications systems, making it possible to quickly optimize the design without wasting time building and testing costly prototypes. Furthermore, software engineers leverage software development tools and certified code generators to ensure the high level of quality needed to prevent product failures in the embedded software that is increasingly being used to oversee and control the operation of many products.

Simulation is also used to design simplified reduced order models that are embedded in control algorithms to manage the operation of automobiles, power plants, machine tools, printing presses, chemical reactors and others. As an example, let’s look at the difficult challenge of operating electric batteries in electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).

Batteries provide the primary drive power for the vehicle as well as power for numerous electrical auxiliary systems. The operation of the battery must be carefully managed to avoid overheating, which reduces power-generating efficiency and shortens battery life. Engineers typically employ an air cooling strategy for cylindrical cells that use housings shaped for optimal cooling and a blower and guiding vanes to provide adequate airflow. For rectangular cells, cooling generally is done with liquid circulating through heat exchanger elements in contact with the cells. A control algorithm varies the loads on different cells based on temperature readings and the charger status.

Simulation is typically used to evaluate and optimize the thermal performance of the cells under a wide range of conditions. Fluid dynamics solvers are used to analyze the complex 3-D cooling flows and conjugate (two way solidfluid) heat transfer. Engineers use electronic circuit simulation technology to evaluate control algorithms that manage the thermal performance of the battery while also preventing overcharging, high-current charging/ discharging, external shorts and other electrical problems that could reduce battery

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life and risk battery explosion. Engineering simulation is ideal for designing such algorithms due to its ability to tightly integrate 3-D physical models (fluid dynamics and mechanical) into the control circuit simulation.

Methods such as parameterization and design of experiments are used to identify the best control system parameters at each set of operating conditions. The simulation results are then used to generate reduced order models that are incorporated into the control logic used in a battery’s electronic control units (ECUs).

Digital twin architecture

Advent of the digital twin The IoT connects simulation to the product or process in near real-time, justin- time or in replay mode to aid in operating and maintaining the product or process. The simulation-based digital twin concept incorporates the physical product or process, the simulation models and the connections that facilitate communications between the two. The digital twin may consist of a simulation model that has been developed to duplicate the current condition of the product or process, such as by incorporating wear or degraded performance into the simulation model. The data from sensors connected to the product or process may be used to provide real-time boundary conditions for the digital twin. The digital twin results can be calibrated based on the operation of the actual product or process. These enhancements to the digital twin can improve its predictive capabilities far beyond what can be obtained in the product design process. The predictions made by the digital twin can be used to determine the root cause of performance problems, evaluate results of different control strategies, determine optimized maintenance schedules, etc. The digital twin can also provide information about the product or process that cannot be measured with sensors, such as flow velocities through internal passages. The result is that digital twins can be used to substantially increase the performance and reliability of the product or process while reducing its operating cost.

Pump application demonstrates digital twin concept

ANSYS recently demonstrated how a simulation model can serve as a digital twin to process sensor data generated by an instrumented product or process to predict failures and diagnose problems so that action can be immediately taken over the IoT to fix problems and optimize performance. The demonstration showed a motorized pump operating in a hydraulic system with valves on the suction and discharge sides. The motor and pump were instrumented with sensors to

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Pump operating (left) at the Best Efficiency Point and (right) in cavitation Digital twin used to verify the root cause of low operational efficiency and improve pump operation

measure key operating parameters such as mass flow rate, pressure, vibration and current draw. Actuators on the valves were used to control their operation based on instructions generated by evaluation of the simulation model.

In the recent demonstration, a machine learning algorithm predicted the number of operating days left until failure. Then an operator introduced an anomaly by closing the suction valve to 50 percent. The sensor readings on the physical product immediately indicated that something was amiss. For example, inlet pressure, outlet pressure and flowrate through the pump decreased drastically, while pump noise rose to higher than normal values. But the sensor readings provided minimal diagnostic information, and it was not possible to look inside the pump and see why it was vibrating. Furthermore, the sensor readings provided little or no help in determining what would have happened if various actions were taken to solve the problem.

higher pressure, the voids imploded and generated noise.

Next, engineers used the digital twin to evaluate the impact of changing the operating conditions. After evaluating the effect of different valve settings, they determined that opening the suction valve to 100 percent would restore pressure and flowrate to normal levels.

The digital twin concept is being extended far beyond this simple example to encompass large and complicated assets such as petroleum refineries, automobile assembly plants, distribution centers, wind farms, large scale construction projects, etc. In each case, sensors and other devices capture data that is fed into the simulation model to provide a detailed understanding of the current state of the asset.

Machine learning algorithms running on the edge or in the cloud access information from the physical asset and the simulation model to optimize the performance of the asset by scheduling maintenance, setting control points, sending alerts to operators, providing reports to management, etc.

The information generated by the simulation model can also potentially be communicated by overlaying the flow contours of the fluid flow inside the pump onto an image of the pump so operating personnel can quickly understand and diagnose problems.

Conclusion

Application that demonstrates the potential for the digital twin concept

So the digital twin was used to address these challenges. The sensor readings from the demonstration unit were transmitted over the internet and used as boundary conditions for the system and component level simulation models. The simulation model immediately began exhibiting the same symptoms as the physical model, such as reduced pressure and flowrate.

While engineers could only view the physical product from the outside, the digital twin enabled them to look inside the virtual product and understand what was going on. The digital twin showed that the fluid in the interior of the pump was cavitating. The drop in pressure inside the pump was forming vapor cavities – essentially bubbles – where the pressure was low. In locations where the liquid was subjected to a

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The simulation-based digital twin will help companies analyze smart machines in real-world operating conditions and make informed decisions that will improve their performance far above what is possible today. Physicsbased and system simulations with big data analytics and industrial devices augmented with embedded intelligence can reduce risk, avoid unplanned downtime and speed up new product development. The resulting efficiency and productivity gains will have a dramatic effect on an organization’s bottom line, as well as on the global economy. The combination of machine connectivity with a data lifecycle management platform powered by engineering simulation will enable organizations to perform diagnostics and troubleshooting, determine the ideal maintenance program based on the characteristics of the individual asset, optimize the performance of their assets, and generate insightful data that can be used to improve the next generation of the product.

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BIG PICTURE <

Security Does Not Come In A Single Form The complexity and criticality of developing IoT solutions is not anymore a spiel. Complex projects, helping developers in their development journey and also prompting easy and secure connectivity all lies important while developing IoT solutions and Microchip seems to have the answers and ecosystem for it. Niloy from BIS in this latest interview with Mike Ballard, Global Segment Leader, Microchip Technology Inc elaborates on Microchip’s offerings, how the company is helping customers with technical expertise, key drivers and the security myth busted. Edited Nub below.

Q

While developing IoT solutions, developers look for quick, easy and secure connectivity. Also increasing project complexity and cost is a major factor. How are Microchip solutions helping developers in their development journey to catering innovative IoT solutions?

While direct BOM cost is of importance to OEMs implementing IoT designs, time to market is often more critical in the design process. Missing a project date by months or even years can cost OEMs millions in lost opportunity cost. This is another reason why Microchip’s proven hardware and software solutions are so valuable to our clients. By utilizing our proven software stacks that have been optimized to be used with our hardware, OEMs can reduce engineering time and get to market faster.

Q

Microchip touts to make IoT development journey easy with its offering of a complete embedded ecosystem? Can you help our readers understand more about this ecosystem and what benefits they can unveil with Microchip’s offerings in this space?

The first place to start is our website (www.microchip.com).

There readers will find a vast array of information including reference designs, application notes, and software stacks that aid our clients and help in their development. This ecosystem of information provides customers value by offering corporate and third-party consulting services, hardware design, software design and even assistance with contract manufacturing.

Helping our customers be successful in many different markets is a strength of Microchip in the industry

Q

How is Microchip helping their customers who are need of technical expertise in a timely manner? Hence kindly elaborate about your partner ecosystem?

Since IoT is the marriage of the embedded world and the IT world, hence, creating robust IoT designs can become quite complex. By utilizing our partner network, our clients can gain expertise from us as well as our IoT partners who have extensive experience in connecting these two worlds.

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Mike Ballard

Global Segment Leader|Microchip Technology Inc

Q

The impact of 5G and how it will be a game-changer for IoT? IoT has been growing quickly for the past +10 years in many markets and applications. Some of those applications have had limited growth due to the limitations of wireless technology with both speed, latency, and range. 5G is helping to break down these limitations and is enabling new applications that would not have occurred with older technologies.

Q

Microchip has a gamut of offerings in the IoT space, how do you ensure security in your solutions?

Keeping our client’s proprietary designs, information, software, and access secure is the primary concern of all IoT developers.

Security does not come in a single form but rather is and end-to-end doctrine that must be constantly addressed throughout and IoT design. From secure boot technologies to ensure the software has not been compromised to IP protection to ensure OEM’ intellectual property is not stolen, to secure communication to keep data from getting in the wrong hands, to secure access control, Microchip offers the most prolific security solutions in the industry today which is critical in all IoT designs.

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Q

. Why has cybersecurity become a major concern nowadays and how this issue can be resolved?

With the onset of the pandemic, majority of the businesses have made the shift to online. With that shift, the use of virtual tools like cloud has evidently escalated. However, while remote working and trends like BYOD and IoT shape the current technology landscape, there arises a huge risk of vulnerability to cyber threats, putting sensitive data in danger. The increased interconnectivity at all levels, without sufficient and up- to-date security tools, provides an excellent opportunity for cyber criminals to easily break into your network/system. Thus, making it crucial to invest in cybersecurity for businesses and as well as for individuals.

Senior Member, IEEE

With the usage of advance mobile applications or getting anything in lesser time, sometimes unknowingly we fall ourselves in a trap of cyber-attack. With the increasing use of tech like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing, and data analytics across various industries, Cybersecurity has become a necessity and a challenge. While talking with Nitisha from BISinfotech, Bala Prasad Peddigari, Senior Member, IEEE shared his thoughts about cyber-security and also emphasized the importance of upcoming opportunities in the same field.

Bala Prasad Peddigari

Cybersecurity Practices’ Awareness Necessity for All Digital Citizen

In the current scenario, the issues can be prevented by ensuring rigorous enforcement of the security policy in an organization and its partners by ensuring adequate training and awareness on data protection, implementation of appropriate security software and keeping them updated, data encryption and backing up data regularly. Cybercrimes and data breaches can be avoided by continuous risk assessment, audits and data security testing is a parallel activity that will help organizations proactively identify and plug gaps and secure data.

In case of a data breach, mitigation actions need to begin to contain any further breaches - by taking systems off-line and limiting access, fixing the vulnerability, analyzing the damage for initiating reparative actions, reaching out to the affected parties with clear messages, contacting online sites to scrub off leaked data, initiating an audit and conducting data security tests.

Q

. Please share the challenges, opportunities in securing the cloud.

The most important challenge today, is the lack

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BIG PICTURE < of adequate awareness about securing the cloud arising from the weakest link in the chain - the end-users. While various new technologies are being used to ensure security, at the same time, the same tech is also used by cybercriminals, which in a way creates a constant lag between detection of a new type of cybercrime and the counter for the same.

It is equally important to raise the awareness of each digital citizen on cybersecure practices.

A drastic expansion of the attack surface is another key challenge for cybersecurity professionals. Government, industry, and society have embraced digital as the key enabler across all facets and domains of activity. As these “digital estate” or critical digital resources are not confined to a physical location, new policies, protocols, and technologies are required to ensure cybersecurity. Hence, traditional perimeter and end-point security mechanisms are not sufficient in the “new normal”. The onus on cybersecurity professionals is to protect assets that are connected to a multitude of devices – human-operated or sensors.

With the Internet of Things (IoT) morphing into the Internet of Everything, more than 25 billion devices are estimated to be connected in 2020 (reference – statista.com). Sensors and devices, apps, the internet, and cloud computing are the main building blocks of this digital age. Each block presents a point of weakness. While the cloud and internet are core infrastructure prone to DDoS attacks, there is a greater focus on cybersecurity by service providers due to mission criticality.

The new challenges throw up many opportunities in cybersecurity. It is a mainstream requirement of any organization, and hence the need for cybersecurity professionals is expected to grow. I expect a rise in the requirements for security process automation tools for certain cybersecurity practices, thus partially easing the skills-gap.

and accelerators such as Robotics, 3D microchips, Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, Mobile has opened cybersecurity challenges more than ever now • Modern Workplace: Enabling the remote workforce and employing the gig workers are pushing organizations to manage the IT security model with continuous monitoring • Lack of Security Awareness: Employees are the weakest link in the entire organization. Hence, their awareness can open the tollgates for attackers • Reactive Methods: Organization employing any reactive defense posture to analyze the threats after it happens will create opportunities for cyber criminals to take advantage of known vulnerabilities

Q

. What is the status of cloud adoption in Indian industries?

The novel pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated the adoption of cloud services across sectors. As per IDC, India's public cloud services market will grow to $7.4 billion by 2024.

BFSI and Healthcare industries have adopted cloud in multiple methods while ensuring that the privacy of customer and patient data is maintained following hybrid cloud models, multicloud models, poly-cloud models. They have transformed the overall culture in driving proactive education on cybersecurity and institutionalizing the security standards by setting up Security Operations Center (SOC) for continuous monitoring and management. These two sectors had a faster adoption roadmap to meet the needs of millennials and generation Z workers, where many of the business capabilities were converged to provide the services.

As the technology transformation had increased the service adoption, it also triggered security concerns. According to a recent report, 93% of Indian entities fall prey to public cloud security breaches. Some of the key challenges are as follows: • Manage the privacy and security concerns triggered while delivering services through cloud - There is a heavy reliance . Share your views about digital transformation and in securing customer personal identification data and there increased cybersecurity concerns. is also a greater emphasis required to protect the password, Digital technologies convergence has transformed customer OTP, and other multi-factor authentication methods such as experience and opened many vulnerabilities for industries Face ID and Fingerprints to look at and face. Industries which were early to ride the • Threats resulted because of operational challenges – Today, digital wave are Banking, Financial Services, Insurance and BFSI and healthcare sectors use a hybrid cloud model to drive Healthcare sectors - they primarily wanted to increase the their operations but to access the information, they use the reach of their services to customer segment, improve their channels of OTP, fingerprints, and Face ID. These are increasingly processing capabilities and offer secured services to enable trust facing threats in the form of phishing and hacking methods and confidence of the customer. Today, we see organizations • Integrations with Upstream and Downstream Systems are of every shape and size significantly invest in cybersecurity, exposing to threats - Banks, Insurance, and healthcare operate keeping time as a major essence. their functions with many upstream and downstream systems which need integration in the form of data-based, messageAs the organizations are working in a remote manner owing based, and API-based. All these channels are extremely to the current pandemic, some of the key factors influencing vulnerable because they get continuous attacks in the form the cyber risk landscape are: of Denial-of-Service attacks, SQL-injection attacks, man-in• Elimination of Perimeter: Riding on the cloud wave, organization the-middle attacks are bridging the gap between cloud and on-premise world • Artificial Intelligence: This is leveraged by network defenders According to a recent IDC, more than 60% of the Indian and attackers to identify the loopholes to protect and identify organizations plan to leverage cloud platforms for digital loopholes to penetrate innovation, as the firms re-strategize their IT spending plans • Multitude of Technologies: Convergence of digital forces because of Covid-19. Indian enterprises of all sizes fast-tracked

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their decisions to shun the legacy infrastructure and move their operations -- in piecemeal or in full -- to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-powered Cloud.

Q

. What are the top IT trends for cloud and security in 2021?

2021 is going to set a new benchmark in the Indian IT sector. To counter some of the evolving cyber-risks associated with deep fakes, synthetic IDs, ransomware, quantum arms race, 5G hardware and firmware behaviors. Cloud Jacking is countered by investing in the following cybersecurity trends: data security, infrastructure security, container/microservices security, access management & vulnerability assessment and compliance certifications. Some of the key emerging trends include: • Secured access and end-to-end encryption getting employed to avoid data leaks • Creating depth of defense cloud security strategy ensuring attacks will be reduced • PrivSecDevOps getting adopted as part of application development, integration, and delivery pipeline • Adoption of cloud security shared responsibility between customers and cloud platform vendors with continuous

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awareness and responsibilities to secure IT Infrastructure and application codebase • Adoption of AI-driven security assessments by continuously monitoring the endpoints and workloads, and enabling informed decision making to mitigate the security threats

Q

. How was the response of cloud adoption during COVID 19 pandemic?

According to a forecast by Gartner, spending on public cloud services in India is expected to grow 29.4% to $4.1 billion in 2021 from $3.1 billion in 2020. Prior to the pandemic, India was at an early stage of cloud adoption when compared to more developed countries. The pandemic and nation-wide lockdown accelerated the adoption rate as enterprises had to move critical business applications to cloud so employees could work remotely.

Two industries that have enabled large-scale cloud adoption are BFSI and Healthcare industries that have adopted cloud in multiple methods, while ensuring the security and privacy of customer and patient data on the following models - hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and poly-cloud.

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UPDATES < Infineon’s Annual General Meeting Goes Virtual

New VP and CHRO Announced at Allegro

Infineon Technologies has reported about the 21st Annual General Meeting that took place this year in a virtual format due to the coronavirus pandemic, without the physical presence of shareholders.

In addition to enabling shareholders to submit questions before the AGM, Infineon was the first company listed in the DAX index to enable its shareholders to publish video messages.

Key points of the addresses by members of the Management Board had been posted online almost two weeks before the Annual General Meeting.

The new compensation system creates clear, transparent and sustainable guidelines for Management Board compensation at Infineon. The long-term variable, the share-based compensation component has been strengthened. The newly formulated targets for the Management Board reflect Infineon's strategy in its range of components.

The Annual General Meeting also followed the administration's proposal to adjust the compensation system for Supervisory Board members with a large majority.

As the next major step, Infineon is switching the electricity consumption of its sites in Europe completely to certified green power this year.

Allegro MicroSystems has declared that Joanne Valente has been promoted to Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer.

Joanne is the successor to Sean Burke, Allegro’s former Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, who formally retired in December 2020 after serving in a special advisory role during the transition.

“I would like to thank Sean for his significant contributions to our HR function and strategic business matters. He provided leadership, support and invaluable coaching to many of our employees,” said Ravi Vig, President and Chief Executive Officer. “His positive impact will be felt at Allegro for many years to come, and we wish him well in his retirement.”

“Joanne strengthens our executive leadership team, bringing a strong track record that will help us empower our global workforce and deliver on our core values,” said Vig. “Allegro’s best innovations are born from our diverse, global team, and Joanne’s expertise will help ensure we find, develop, and retain the top talent we need to drive our success.”

Joanne joined Allegro in 2018.

STMicroelectronics Becomes a Part of ZETA Alliance STMicroelectronics has b e c om e a p a rt o f t he ZETA Alliance, the industry body promoting ZETA LowPower Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology for low-cost long-range IoT connectivity.

Joining the Alliance as a Promoter member, ST expects ZETA technology to further accelerate the spread of IoT in all territories worldwide. The standard lets developers create high-value IoT-based solutions to challenges that face extreme cost constraints.

“ZETA has a strong value proposition and is taking its place among established LPWAN technologies, boosting choice and flexibility for solution developers and enabling the IoT to deliver even greater benefits to more end-users,” said Hakim Jaafar, STM32 Wireless Marketing Director, STMicroelectronics.

“ST is actively engaged with the industry bodies for all leading LPWAN standards for IoT connectivity and offers a portfolio of solutions that help developers bring their innovations to market quickly and cost-effectively.”

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Welcoming ST to the ZETA Alliance, Zhuoqun Li, CEO of Zifisense, a major contributor to the ZETA technology and a founding member of the ZETA Alliance, said, “We believe ST will greatly strengthen the ZETA developer ecosystem chain and promote further evolution and deployment of ZETA technology. We look forward to working with ST to create a broader LPWAN 2.0 global IoT ecosystem.”

ZETA technology is quickly becoming established throughout China, Japan, and beyond, bringing together innovative wireless technologies that enable low-power, low-cost devices to rely on robust connections over extended distances. Also, native support for mesh networking, which allows peer-to-peer communication among the network nodes, boosts network coverage and resilience.

ST is working with ZiFiSense to port the technology to the highly integrated STM32WL wireless System-on-Chip (SoC) devices, which combine ultra-low-power microcontroller functionality with a wireless stage certified to international radio-equipment regulations on the same chip.

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Detecting Hardware Trojans using Machine Learning State-of-the-art measurement technology and extremely fast clustering algorithm

Introduction In our modern society, literally billions of electronic devices are used every day. In the future, this number will rise dramatically with the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Accompanying this increase is the growing cybersecurity threat of hardware Trojans embedded in semiconductor chips for malicious purposes. With the increase in the outsourcing of circuit design, manufacturing, and the use of IP from outside suppliers, the risks from hardware Trojans are on the rise.

Deploying devices with these vulnerabilities could put our society at huge risk, especially if they impact critical systems like e-commerce encryption, autonomous driving vehicles, or aviation controllers. Since it is essential that these systems are free of any malicious circuitry, the ability to detect hardware Trojans in electronic systems is extremely important.

A research team headed by Nozomi Togawa, a professor at Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Engineering, who have been researching hardware Trojan detection, used Keysight’s CX3300A Device Current Waveform Analyzer to dramatically improve their Trojan detection capabilities. The CX3300 has state-of-the-art dynamic current measurement technology capable of capturing hard-to-measure signatures at high bandwidth. It also supports an advanced machine learning algorithm capable of identifying small anomalies in very large databases (>1 Terabyte). In this article, we will describe how these technologies improved Trojan detection.

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Trojan detection challenges

Hardware Trojans can cause serious damage via operations such as signal stoppage and destruction. These operations can be achieved by inserting only a dozen gates into the circuit in the IC design phase (making them hard to discover). The best way to detect Trojans is from circuit schematics or main channel communication signals. Unfortunately, increased outsourcing of circuit design and manufacturing, as well as the use of IP from other companies, make it difficult to understand and verify every detail of chip design and I/O patterns. This makes post silicon detection of Trojans by examining the main channel signal difficult and unreliable. On the other hand, the side channel signal from the supply current contains rich information about the semiconductor chip’s internal operations.

If any malicious activities are present, then they will appear as supply current deviations. However, detecting Trojans by monitoring the supply current presents several challenges: A. High-bandwidth, high-resolution current measurement Semiconductor chips operate under high frequency clocks with multiple activities running concurrently, so their supply current deviations are fleeting and very small. This means that high-bandwidth and high-resolution current measurement technology is needed to identify Trojan activity.

B. Machine learning for big waveform data analytics Since hardware Trojan activity rarely occurs, the ability to continuously measure at high speed and with high resolution uninterrupted for long time periods is required. However, this

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TEST & MEASUREMENT < long-term, high-resolution data collection can create extremely large databases. For example, recording a 10MSa/s data stream for 24 hours creates a waveform database greater in size than 1 Terabyte. This mandates the use of some sort of machine learning algorithm that can rapidly sort through huge databases. Until recently, existing technologies fell short of meeting these requirements. The following sections describe how Keysight Technologies solved these challenges.

High-bandwidth, high-resolution current sensing

The following figures show an example of detecting Trojan activity through analysis of the side-channel supply current signal.

In this example, a low-power MCU has been programmed to encrypt payload data using AES-128 during its active period, with no activity occurring during sleep mode. However, in this case, there is a Trojan that disables the encryption occasionally.

A supply current pulse train infected by the Trojan is shown in Figure1 (a). It is difficult to distinguish the pulses that are normal and infected visually. The magnified views show the signal differences when the Trojan is active (b) and inactive (c). Still, it is hard to distinguish between the two signals. If we expand the initial portion of the pulses, then we can see that there are micro-ampere-level differences with frequency components of several MHz. Figure 1 (a). Side channel signal is shown when MCU operates AES-128 encryption during its active period. The encryption is disabled once in thousand times to simulate Trojan.

(b) When Trojan is active (AES is deactivated). (c) Normal state (AES is not deactivated).

Detection is only possible using high-resolution and highbandwidth current sensing technology (beyond the performance capabilities of conventional current probes).

Many current sensing technologies exist. For example, popular clamp-on current probes have a minimum measurable current of only at around 1-3mA [2]. This is insufficient for Trojan detection. In contrast, Keysight’s CX1101A current sensor can measure currents as small as 3μA with up to 100 MHz of bandwidth using an internal shunt resistor of 0.41ohm [3].

This low-level and high-bandwidth measurement capability is enabled by an innovative current sensing scheme that combines resistive current sensing at DC and low-frequency with magnetic current sensing at higher frequencies. Due to its small insertion resistance, large current spikes cannot cause a large power rail voltage drop sufficient to trigger MCU device brown-out. For these reasons, Keysight’s CX1101A current sensor can precisely capture dynamic current flow of the side channel signals.

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Machine Learning for Big Measurement Data Analytics

Machine learning algorithms are classified into two categories: supervised and unsupervised. Supervised learning is used to detect known patterns, while unsupervised learning is best when the goal is to detect unknown anomalies. Since the signature created by Trojans is unknown, unsupervised learning is more useful when attempting to detect them. Among unsupervised learning algorithms, clustering has become an essential tool for analyzing big data in many applications.

While many implementations of unsupervised machine learning algorithms utilizing clustering have been developed, most have been unable to handle large amounts of waveform data.

The issue is that waveforms are numerical arrays containing thousands of data points. A waveform database containing millions of waveform segments each consisting of thousands of data points presents a difficult challenge in terms of data analysis and classification. Sorting and classifying such a massive database using conventional algorithms requires extensive computing resources and long processing times.

However, Keysight has developed a new algorithm that can process huge amounts of waveform data using a low-cost PC platform in the same amount of time as large computing server solutions. The computation time of Keysight’s algorithm is linear versus data volume and dimension, even if the size of the measurement database exceeds far beyond the CPU main memory (Figure 2 (a)). Due to numerous innovations, the performance of Keysight’s algorithm running on an offthe-shelf PC is equivalent to that of comparable algorithms running on large computing servers containing 300-400 CPU cores. This represents a x100-x1000 speed improvement over conventional algorithms.

During data acquisition, the software uses the oscilloscope trigger function to define waveforms, which are simultaneously pre-sorted into approximate clusters (or tags) by a Real-Time Tagging process (Figure 2 (b)). The pre-sorted results are stored into the Tag database, which is a concise summary of all the waveforms. The size of the tag database is about 1/100 to 1/500 of the lossless database, which contains a complete archive of all the waveforms. These capabilities enable a user to begin analysis immediately after data acquisition completes.

Because the tag database utilizes waveform meta-data, major data analysis operations can complete in 10 seconds or less. Changes to the number of clusters and sub-clustering (breaking a selected cluster down into further clusters), also complete very quickly. If the tag database does not have enough resolution to allow sub-clustering, then detail clustering using the lossless database can be performed. In addition to these features, a cluster focused playback capability allows near real-time viewing of captured waveforms, as well as the ability to locate specific waveform shapes rapidly. This technology allows quick and easy identification of even a one-in-a-million waveform.

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Figure 2. Ultra-fast Clustering Algorithm.

Successful Trojan detection

Figure 3 shows an example of Trojan detection through analysis of the side channel supply current waveforms. Immediately after data acquisition completed, the software divided the captured waveforms into four clusters. The two main clusters (coded yellow and green) comprise the majority of the waveforms, but the software can differentiate the infected waveforms (coded in red) even though they only differ slightly from the main clusters. This type of analysis is not possible using an oscilloscope and current probe, because they lack the necessary resolution and bandwidth. In addition, conventional machine learning algorithms cannot handle waveforms of this number and complexity. Only the combination of the CX3300’s high-bandwidth high-resolution dynamic current measurement capabilities and Keysight’s ultra-fast clustering algorithm can provide such an efficient means to identify Trojans.

Kiyoshi Chikamatsu is an R&D project manager at Keysight Technologies.

Before joining Keysight, he was involved in military surveillance radar project for Japan Self-Defense Forces at NEC corporation, where he engaged in the development of 4GHz silicon power amplifiers. At Keysight, he pursued the cutting-edge device development to be used for high-sensitive precision test and measurement instruments, such as low-current relay which can switch on and off current down to a femto-ampere, equivalent to the current when ~6000 electrons move per second. Also, he invented the new type of current sensing technique combining resistive and magnetic method, described in the article, to measure the unmeasurable. These unique devices and techniques differentiated the Keysight Parametric Test System, Device Semiconductor Analyzer, and Device Current Waveform Analyzer. His interest is always somewhere around enabling technologies to break through the limitation in test and measurement to meet the unmet customer needs.

Masaharu Goto

Figure 3. Clustering result of Trojan detection.

This technology has many uses beyond just hardware Trojan detection, as it is a very general-purpose tool for detecting anomalies in any big measurement data environment. Keysight plans on continuing to develop leading-edge machine learning algorithms and the state-of-the-art measurement technologies in the future.

References

[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”, IEEE International Conference of Big Data, Los Angeles, CA. USA. 2019, pp. 1794-1803.

[2] Keysight Technologies, “Evaluating current probe technologies for low-power measurements.” http://literature. cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/ 5991-4375EN.pdf.

[3] Keysight Technologies, “CX3300 Series Device Current Waveform Analyzer Datasheet.” https://literature.cdn.keysight. com/litweb/pdf/ 5992-1430EN.pdf?id=2727780.

[4] K. Hasegawa, K. Chikamatsu, and N. Togawa, “Empirical Evaluation on Anomaly Behavior Detection for Low-Cost Micro-Controllers Utilizing Accurate Power Analysis”, IEEE International Symposium on On-Line Testing and Robust System Design (IOLTS), 2019, pp. 54-57.

> MARCH 2021

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Ma sa ha ru Go t o is a Pr i nci pal Research Engineer in Keysight Technologies. He co-developed the ROOT/CINT scientific data analysis framework (https://root.cern.ch) for CERN's LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment which was the world's first big data project. He provided C++ interpreter (https://root.cern.ch/cint) for seamlessly connecting interactive big data exploration and highperformance computing. At Keysight, he spearheaded the research and development of various test and measurement systems for big measurement data environments. These systems enable the massive parametric measurements for the most advanced semiconductor research and highvolume production. His current research project combines big data analytics with real-time data processing for various test and measurement applications.

Alan Wadsworth

Alan Wadsworth is the Business Development Manager for Precision and Power Products for the Americas region at Keysight Technologies.

He has over 30 years of industry experience in both IC design and parametric test, and he is the author of Keysight’s 277-page Parametric Measurement Handbook.

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> TECH

INSIGHT

STM32WL5x, The 1st Wireless MCU with Embedded Multi-Modulation LoRa Radio, Now With Dual Core

ST recently launched the STM32WL5x, a dual-core version of the STM32WL, the first wireless MCU with an embedded multi-modulation radio (LoRa, (G)FSK, (G)MSK, BPSK). The new models offer a Cortex-M0+ and a Cortex-M4 core for greater flexibility and security. We also released an update to the STM32CubeWL MCU package that includes a Sigfox stack. Hence, engineers will be able to take advantage of the modulation schemes available and reduce their time to market. The increased polyvalence of the STM32WL series also opens the door to new applications for smart cities or smart agriculture, among others. Therefore, let’s look at the journey that would lead engineers and decision-makers to choose an STM32WL5x.

Prototyping Starts Here

The first challenge for most teams is the ability to come up with a proof-of-concept rapidly. Being able to demonstrate how to use these two cores will be crucial when convincing managers. Hence, ST is launching its NUCLEO-WL55JC1, the first development board with an STM32WL55JC.

> MARCH 2021

On the software side, the latest version of STM32CubeWL includes application examples for this new Nucleo board to hasten developments.

For instance, we provide a reference template to help build software that takes advantage of the two cores.

Additionally, STM32CubeMX received an update enabling the configuration of the LoRaWAN and Sigfox stacks straight from the utility. We also offer demonstration programs that can send sensor data to a gateway or “Concentrator.”

Since seeing is believing, a demo application running on this Nucleo board is the fastest

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The STM32WL55JC

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TECH INSIGHT < way to show why the dual-core version of the STM32WL brings greater flexibility and security to projects.

STM32WL5x: A Fully Open Dual-Core Architecture for Greater Flexibility

2 Cores to Avoid Re-Certification With Every Update The first STM32WL that we launched in January 2020 has a single Cortex-M4 that runs everything. Engineers that don’t need to update their application frequently tend to prefer such architecture for its simplicity. However, some teams with more demanding constraints could have felt trapped.

Let’s take the example of a product that needs frequent upgrades. If the network and applications stacks are on the same core, modifying the code means re-certifying the communication protocol. Thanks to the dual-core architecture of the STM32WL5x, developers sidestep this problem. Indeed, engineers can put the network stack on the Cortex-M0+ and run the application on the Cortex-M4. Hence, updating the latter doesn’t automatically trigger the need to re-certify the network stack.

2 Cores to Avoid Multiple Qualifications Another challenge comes from the need to qualify components.

A small startup working on an IoT project tends to prioritize the most straightforward approach. In this regard, the STM32WLE and its single-core architecture is a great answer. For instance, we recently saw an automated rubber collection system that used the MCU to send alerts to the cloud. This smart agriculture system used the STM32WLE and relied on LoRa to help farmers optimize their operations. The system is a popular and high-volume product because of the integrated nature of the microcontroller and its single-core architecture that made it easy to develop a proof-of-concept.

STM32WL5x: A Cortex-M0+ for More Security

2 Reasons Behind our Dual-Core Architecture ST decided to use the Cortex-M0+ for a myriad of reasons, but two particularly stand out. First of all, the dual-core approach offered similar performance and a more costeffective structure for sub-gigahertz applications than the use of one larger core. Second of all, we understood the necessity of integrating a hardware platform geared toward security. The new STM32WL5x thus offers hardware isolation between each core as well as a key management service.

The system stores and manages user application keys in a secure area for greater security. It also enables features like authenticity verification, strong data decryption, and data integrity monitoring. The dual-core STM32WL5x also comes with many of our STM32Trust features, such as secure firmware install and update. Additionally, it has two very useful unique IDs (64-bit and 96-bit) and it offers multiple protection levels against read and write operations.

2 Different Approaches to the Cortex-M0+ The response from ST’s customers has been both positive and creative, with some using the STM32WL in an unexpected fashion. Indeed, most systems use the Cortex-M0+ for their sub-gigahertz protocol and the Cortex-M4 for their application.

However, thanks to the flexibility of our implementation, some ST partners did the exact opposite. Some companies chose to enjoy the security benefits of the Cortex-M0+ for their sensitive application layers. Their teams then put the radio stack on the Cortex-M4, thus releasing a more secure and cost-effective solution for their application. Engineers are always trying to adapt to new security demands while making their products more accessible. The new dual-core architecture of the STM32WL offers them a new tool to reach their objective.

For further info, check the link: https://blog.st.com/stm32wl5x/

(The article is an original piece written by ST.)

The STM32WL5x

However, when a large corporation works on a myriad of projects and supports multiple protocols, using one device for all of them is a tremendous asset. Indeed, the need to qualify only one component means a greater return on investment and a faster time to market. With the STM32WL5x, teams can create an application for the Cortex-M4 and use a different sub-gigahertz protocol on the Cortex-M0+ to suit their needs.

Furthermore, it enables them to test various protocols more easily.

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> ARTIFICIAL

INTELLIGENCE

Evolving instrument cluster systems Automotive integrated cockpit control is a challenging space due to the integration of multiple and diverse cockpit functions. Besides the IVI and the Cluster systems, other ADAS functions such as DMS, FCW, SVS and connected vehicle telematic functionalities are finding attractive use-case and value add to the end customers. Many OEM’s are striving to deliver such high-level integration.

The instrument cluster system in a vehicle informs critical driving information such as speed, RPM and tell-tale functions.

The instrument cluster is a mandatory system for safe driving and is mounted in all mainstream vehicles. In modern ECU’s instrument cluster have stringent requirements to integrate safety compliance.

At present, driver assistance functions and autonomous driving capability of the vehicle are progressing rapidly. This in turn increases the number of information transfer between the instrument cluster and various sensors, ECU’s and control devices. This is leading to an increased amount of information that the instrument cluster has to display and realize, including

> MARCH 2021

Shinichi Asano

Principal Specialist Renesas Electronics Corporation

complex visualization information on nearby vehicles while driving. At the same time, from the point of view of safety, the need for increased visibility is increasing, and it is necessary to render graphics smoothly. Digital cluster system rendered by automotive LCD displays are becoming the de-facto standard, and system evolution continues onward from there.

1. Cluster digitalization can support increased safety critical content and provide more user convenience. For example, it is possible to concurrently show a local map via smartphone connection and to safely warn driver using DMS (Driver Monitoring System).

2. Furthermore, Integrated Cockpit System growth is accelerating due to continued focus on CASE (Connected Autonomous Shared Services & Electronic) In summary, inurement cluster system needs to keep robustness despite the high level of system integration. Current solutions are using system isolation implemented by a hypervisor system and developing highly robust systems across all applications.

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AUTOMOTIVE < Image

Renesas can realize a simpler solution to provide benefits such as: “High Performance”, “Low Cost” and “High Robustness “. R-Car Gen3 has multi-core CPU and GPU that enables to isolate the cluster system from other ECU’s in the vehicle. The real time “CRx” core that includes a dual lock step operation to perform real time operations and fast boot solutions. With the Hypervisor or container-based approach, dual operating systems with shared memory services can operate on a single R-Car based ECU. 1. Without Hypervisor, it is possible to easily isolate the instrument cluster from other systems such as IVI. However, a hypervisor is needed for integrated cockpit system that has multiple applications and complex operation, and it can utilize this CPU/ GPU isolation technology for an instrument cluster.

2. It is possible for cluster system to quickly bring up display, sound, and camera using simple RTOS on the CRx real time core.

3. It is possible to realize high a performance system with each CPU and GPU operating simultaneously.

4. With the above techniques, it is possible to utilize the same cluster software completely from Low-end to High-end systems

by R-Car H3/M3/M3N/E3 line-up.

Image

Renesas R-Car family of SoC’s provide seamless integration of other evolving vehicle functions with the Instrument cluster with its high level of application, graphics processor and peripheral integration. Also, the need to achieve ASIL functionality is taken care through the built in CR7 processor. Moving into the future, Renesas aims to develop and deliver suitable solution that is optimized for performance, functions and reducing system cost to customer.

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INTELLIGENCE

Agri-start up from

Bengaluru Creates AI-Based Tech to Examine Seeds Quality

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Q

. Please explain Agdhi as an organisation. Key focus and what states you out when compared to other AI Companies?

Agdhi is on a mission to combine digital technology and human creativity to create sustainable methods in agriculture.

NO VA TO

RS

Agdhi, a Bengaluru based start-up company has recently launched an AI technology to examine the quality of seeds. This technology -- along with photometry, radiometry and computer vision -- offers efficient methods for seed classification and seed quality analysis. During an interaction with Nitisha from BISinfotech, Nikhil Das, Founder, Agdhi shares the specialities of its products and also emphasized that the government should come out with policies in place that allows farmers to be better aware of technology-centric approaches.

Today, India is seeing a huge disruption in agriculture through technology. Agriculture which is both a major industry and foundation of the economy is looking for innovative approaches in protecting & improving crop yield. With this aim we plan to introduce next Generation Electronics products optimized for agriculture.

We have a team of dynamic engineers, agri expert, bio-technologist bringing in cross domain expertise from agriculture, biotechnology and engineering domains of embedded, Software, AI , ML and mechanical.

Nikhil Das

> MARCH 2021

TE CH

Founder, Agdhi

We have our team working closely with the agricultural industry and farmers, understanding their problems to the core and bringing in solutions to their needs.

Q

. Please describe your latest project and how it will be helpful for farmers?

We are bringing out three flagship products for the farmers.

SeedVision - Seed is the most critical input in agriculture. Besides the regular cultivation practices, it is the quality of seed that determines the uniformity, vigour, growth, development and finally, the yield of crops.

Seed quality refers to its uniformity, physical purity (size, shape, colour etc), genetic purity (true to its type), physiological purity (gemination %, vigour) and the presence of admixtures. It is reported that in hybrid rice for example, 1% reduction in seed purity results in yield loss of 100 Kgs/ha. The traditional methods of testing seed quality generally rely on manual inspection, “grow-out tests (GOT) which is time consuming, labour intensive and involves higher costs.

With seedVision we are bringing in AI based seed phenotyping method which is a game changer in the agriculture

•Vol - 02 / 01

TECHNOVATORS < Planto - Timely attention and care to crops and unawareness of crop diseases are few of the major reasons why new farmers fail to make their efforts to market. Planto brings you the power to diagnose your plants from your mobile. It provides analysis and suggestions of what you are growing, how's it growing and what can you do to help. Be a crop doctor yourself by recognizing infected crops and treating for any pests or deficiencies.

Farmers Network India - When it comes to farming, every enthusiast has the question of what, when , where and how.

Here comes the one stop solution for all your farming needs.

Dive into a network filled with years of experience and knowledge. Farmer Network India empowers the farmers by providing the right data and services at the right time.

Q

. What are your marketing strategies? Please explain your further plans to improve agriculture sector in India?

We mainly work with B2B (Seed manufacturing companies) which are based in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala and our team is present in these regions. Presently, we are increasing our presence through these seed companies and plan to expand our presence from South to Middle and Northern India. We are also planning to release our B2C products by the early terms of the new financial year.

Q

. Apart from Indian market, are you planning to promote your product overseas? Please explain.

We are planning to introduce SeedVision to the global Market by the next financial year. We are already in talks with some of the global leaders in the Seed Industry who can take us . Agriculture has a huge role in economic growth. What to the global market. are the current needs of the industry and how solutions can empower this sector?

Agriculture plays a strategic role in economic development and ensuring the food security of the country. With the rapid increase in population in the under-developed and developing countries the production of agricultural products has to be increased largely. Also, the changes of climatic conditions and over usage of pesticides and fertilizers are adversely affecting the agriculture in India.This call for scientific, sustainable and digital development for the agricultural sector ensuring the increase in production and per capita income for the farmers.

Q

Q

. Challenges and scopes in this sector and the impact of digital transformation?

Today, leveraging the advancements in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), farms across the world are transforming digitally from mere precision farming to smart and digital farming, mainly smart farming modernizes the agriculture sector through the use of automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics. Unlike precision farming, smart farming involves the conversion of farm data into actionable insights by enabling mass data communication in real-time among various digital technologies. Thus, it paves way for an efficient route for monitoring, tracking, analyzing, and optimizing various agricultural assets and production processes.

Digitalization also currently ensures that the agricultural input resources are managed in a highly optimized, personalized, and intelligent manner. With the growing awareness among consumers to know how their food is being produced, the digitalization of farms will enable traceability along the entire agricultural value chain. Ensuring the last mile reach of the technology is most important. Agdhi is working Hand in Hand with farmers to make sure that information and technologies are reaching the farmers.

Q

. During Covid-19 there was a huge economical breakdown. How Agdhi has coped up with such situations?

We would like to this as a new learning curve which has shown us new ways to connect and work. Education sector has revolutionized, digitalisation has accelerated like never before. We take this opportunity to bring in new technologies and digitalised methods to agriculture

Q

. Your expectations from the Indian government?

We envision a future where technology has a significant role in providing the average farmer with the best productivity from their limited means. The government should come out with policies in place that allows farmers to be better aware of technology-centric approaches and should enable them to endorse these technologies at viable costs. This can be . How was the year 2020 in terms of business and what done as an offshoot of the much-publicized “Digital India” are your plans for this year? where there was added impetus on the adoption of digital We have started the operation by June 2020. Agdhi is technology. We believe that the government will provide bootstrapped with over 5cr investment now. We are planning agritech the necessary opportunities & incentives to grow to raise 25 to 30Cr the coming financial year. And currently as a robust sector within the Indian economy. we are having a team of 40 members. This year, we plan to expand to 100 numbers across technology and sales.

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TECHNOVATORS

An EdTech Startup: DcodeAI Aims to Democratize AI for Everyone Noida based EdTech startup; DcodeAI offers DIY modules on Data Science, Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing for age groups 12-18. The company uses specialised orchestrated containerization to help learners run AI models without the need for any special computing resources or GPUs. The aim of DcodeAI is to make the next generation of learners equipped with AI without having even coding background.

During an interaction with Nitisha from BISinfotech, Kartik Sharma, Co-Founder, DcodeAI shares ahead strategies and the upcoming trends.

Q

. Kindly explain DcodeAI and its special offerings?

DcodeAI is an India based EdTech startup focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI). We have launched a new DIY learning platform including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer Vision (CV), Data Science for children aged between 12 and 18 years. With Angel funding of USD 500,000

> MARCH 2021

Kartik Sharma Co-Founder, DcodeAI

from Sultan Chand & Sons (P) Ltd., Educational Publishing House, DcodeAI was launched earlier this year, with the vision to equip the next generation of learners with AI skills, without having a formal coding background. It aims to democratize AI learning among primary and secondary level students across 10,000+ schools that are currently part of its network.

DcodeAI focuses on low code / no-code tools and usage of AI to make learning easy, intuitive and personalized.

Hence, even those without any coding background can start to learn and implement AI models. The new set of DIY learning programs is designed for students who can learn the concept of AI and hone their skills in data manipulation, data visualization, statistics, machine learning, deep learning and more. These learning programs are suitable for students who want to learn about developing Chatbots, Image Recognition Models, as well as Voice Recognition-based Bots and Home Automation Systems.

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TECHNOVATORS <

Q

. How do you differentiate DcodeAI with other AI companies?

We are extremely focused on using AI to teach AI leveraging low code / no code tools. We are providing an integrated learning environment for exploring and executing AI models which is a first of its kind approach given the complexities involved in learning AI. We use hands on activities and projects at each stage and provide an industry interface for learners to solve real world problems. We are holistically looking at Statistics, Python, Data Science, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing as integrated components of AI which makes us unique in this space.

etc. We have been focused on building a strong product and training support ecosystem. Our approach in 2021 is to continue building relationship with educational institutions and strategically align with teacher community to deliver AI experiences with practical hands on projects and integrated industry interface. AI will also help learners become future ready and open new career avenues for them.

Q

. During COVID-19 what were your strategies to be viable in the market?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic has created a new normal, and many businesses were struggling to adapt, there was a need to develop a mindset to drive flexibility and emerge . Recently, you have launched DIY learning platforms stronger. We conducted weekly webinars to build a community including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer of AI educators and lot of training sessions were organized to Vision (CV), Data Science for children aged between 12 and align teachers around AI. We focused on building a robust 18 years. Please describe. programme that is adaptive in nature and comprehensive in We are heavily focused on all the components of AI (Data scope. Our focus has been to develop low code / no code Science, Computer Vision and Natural language Processing) tools to learn AI which makes it easy for anyone to get started for all round learning of the subject. The curriculum is aligned in a DIY format. to CBSE standards and is covering various practical aspects . What are your targets markets apart from India, which of the topics as well. Through this, we aim to revolutionize of the geographies you are planning to expand in the education system in India and its age-old subjects through its growth into the digital era by combining AI tools with the year 2021?

We believe in India-first strategy and there is a huge opportunity classroom to make more engaging and interactive. in India which should keep us busy in 2021. India is one of . Any other project you are planning for this year? the biggest markets for us considering the technological We are focused on deepening our ties with AI startups innovations taking place in the education ecosystem. It is a and subject matter experts to provide hands on experiences fast-changing market where we can bring advancements in and projects. We also want to create the largest community learning platforms for students. But we have already received of AI educators in the world wherein educators can connect, interests from partner in US, UK and UAE so we would be taking share and learn together. AI has emerged as an indispensable a strategic partner-led approach in these markets. subject in the worldwide education market to equip the . Apart from education, are you planning to expand your workforce of future with relevant skills and simplify the learning business in any other industry also? Kindly elaborate. curve of students who want to use AI for solving problems and We are dedicated to the mission of democratizing AI for driving impactful innovations. everyone. We feel deeply associated with the mission of NITI . How has been the growth of business in the year 2020? Aayog - #AIforALL. We feel the responsibility of upskilling our What will be your marketing strategy for the year 2021? young minds to future proof them in an AI ready world and We have witnessed rapid growth in 2020-21 with parents looking are completely focused on this vision. We, however, wish to for opportunities to engage their kids in meaningful activities continue building a stronger interface with industry so that such as coding, learning emerging technologies such as AI students trained on AI are employable.

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SPACE Now

Book THIS

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LAUNCH

Infineon’s New iMOTION SmartDriver Series Infineon Technologies new IMD110 SmartDriver series. The smart motor controller family combines the IMOTION Motion Control Engine (MCE) with a three-phase gate driver in a compact package.

Features: • Drive a wide variety of MOSFETs and IGBTs in variable speed drives.

• The family uses the latest MCE 2.0 providing readyto-use motor and, optionally, PFC control.

Applications: Motors in major home appliances as well as fans and pumps.

Availability: Devices in LQFP-40 packages are in mass production, they are pin-compatible with LQFP48 packages.

Condition-Based Monitoring Development Platform Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) has released complete condition-based monitoring (CbM) development platform designed to help accelerate condition monitoring hardware, software, and algorithm development.

Features: • Wide-bandwidth (DC to 10 kHz) MEMS vibration sensor, compatible with existing piezoelectric IEPE compliant interfaces.

• Characterized mechanical mounting cube that enables full-bandwidth mechanical transfer function of the MEMs vibration sensor.

Applications: Unmatched technologies that sense, measure, power, connect and interpret.

Availability: Available Now

Allegro Unveils Sensor Interface IC Allegro MicroSystems has released the A17700, an automotive-grade interface IC for resistive bridge pressure sensors featuring top-of-the-line signal conditioning algorithms.

Features: • Flexible compensation algorithms for accuracy over temperature and sensing bridge variation; • Precise pressure information delivery in low delay analog, PWM, or SENT outputs; • A suite of advanced integrated system diagnostics.

• Automotive AEC-Q100 Grade 0 qualification and EMC robustness with minimized external components;

Applications: Today’s efficiently designed cars.

Availability: Available Now

Microchip High-Side Current Sense Amplifiers Microchip Technology has released its high-side current sense amplifiers, featuring the industry’s lowest offset for AEC-Q100 Grade 0 qualified high-side current sense amplifier devices.

Features: • Combat electrically noisy environments.

• Addresses the need for higher accuracy current measurement.

• AEC-Q100 qualified.

• Delivering a maximum offset error of only 12 µV.

> MARCH 2021

Applications: Creating a current-controlled feedback loop for a power supply or motor, monitoring and charging batteries, or monitoring current levels for safety reasons.

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ST’s USB Type-C Power Adapters STMicroelectronics has released a USB Type-C Power Delivery 3.0 reference design with Programmable Power Supply (PPS) support to accelerate the design of easy-to-use, compact, and efficient power adapters up to 27W with the zero-power operation when no cable is connected.

Features: • USB PPS helps to save power, and reduce device-charging times and heat dissipation • Lower bill-of-materials costs on the device side.

• The STEVAL-USBPD27S reference design combines the STM32G071 microcontroller (MCU).

Applications: USB Type-C Power Adapters

Availability: Available Now

5th Gen P-channel MOSFETs with Low ON Resistence ROHM Semiconductor new 24-model lineup of 24V input, -40V/-60V withstand voltage P-channel MOSFETs available in both single (RQxxxxxAT/RDxxxxxAT/RSxxxxxAT/RFxxxxxAT) and dual configurations (UTxxx5/QHxxx5/SHxxx5).

Features: • Class-leading low ON Resistance • New design improves the quality • Expanded lineup improves reliability while reducing design load in a wide range of applications

Applications: I ndu st ria l a nd c o nsu mer applications such as factory automation, robotics, and air conditioning systems.

Availability: Available Now

Vishay’s SMD Ceramic Safety Capacitors Vishay Intertechnology has released a new series of surface-mount AC line rated ceramic disc safety capacitors that are the industry's first such devices to offer a Y1 rating of 500 VAC and 1500 VDC. Features: • Withstand harsh, high humidity environments.

• Vishay BCcomponents SMDY1 series devices offer industryhigh capacitance to 4.7 nF. • Used for EMI / RFI filtering in power supplies.

• Higher humidity resistance with a Class IIB humidity grade (under IEC60384-14 annex I) and a moisture sensitivity level of 2a.

Applications: Solar inverters, smart meters, and LED drivers.

Availability: Available Now

Renesas’ Automotive SoC Technologies Renesas Electronics Corporation has introduced processor technologies for automotive systemson-chip (SoCs) used in applications such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) systems that aim to optimize both performance and power efficiency while supporting a high level of functional safety.

Features: 1) A convolutional neural network (CNN) hardware accelerator core that delivers a world-class combination of deep learning performance of 60.4 trillion operations per second (TOPS) and a power efficiency of 13.8 TOPS/W;

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Applications: Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) systems Renesas’ successful development announced includes:

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UPDATES ST’s New Energy Meter Evaluation Board

TSMC’s Stock and Revenue Hiked in 2020

STMicroelectronics has introduced a new evaluation board that speeds design of 3-phase AC Watt meters. The board meet the most stringent international quality and accuracy standards using low-cost, electromagnetic-immune shunt sensors and advanced galvanic-isolation technology for superior reliability and robustness.

The EVALSTPM-3PHISO evaluation board combines the highaccuracy STPMS2 metering front-end IC and the advanced STISO621 digital isolator, with customizable turn-key firmware running on an STM32 microcontroller to compute metrology and power-quality data. The sensing circuitry and PCB layout are optimized to ensure robustness against EMI and a strong signal-to-noise ratio, for high-accuracy measurement and post-processing computation. ST’s metering evaluation board meets EN 50470-x, IEC 62053-2x, ANSI12.2x standards for AC watt meters.

The application provides active wideband, active fundamental, reactive and apparent power and energy data, both per-phase and cumulative, reaching accuracy Class 0.5 according to IEC 62053-22 on 3-phase active/apparent power measurement and accuracy Class 1 according to IEC 62053-21 on 3-phase reactive power measurement.

and high-end PCs.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) had a great year in 2020 as a sudden boom in the market occurred with an increase in demand for notebook PCs, 5G smartphones

According to the research data analyzed and published

by Stock Apps, TSMC’s net revenue soared by 25.2% to NT$1,339.26 billion ($47.78 billion) in 2020. It was the highest annual revenue figure in the company’s history.

TSMC stock shot up by around 60% in 2020 and was trading at $138 as of February 11, 2021.

According to Marketwatch, it had increased by 120% over the previous year.

To spend $25 Billion to $28 Billion in 2021 on Advanced Chip Production TSMC’s record sales in 2020 were attributed to the high demand for chips.

Its consolidated sales in Q4 2020 totaled NT$361.53 billion, up by 1.43% QoQ. Profits shot up by 23% to NT$142.8 billion ($5.1 billion), setting a new record

Philip Harting Named as ZVEI’s CEO Again HARTING Technology Group has re-elected Philip Harting as the CEO at the virtual general meeting of ZVEI’s “Electronic Components and Systems” (ECS) trade association.

Philip Harting had already served as chairman of the trade association for three years, and will now be on board for another three-year tenure.

mobility,” said Philip Harting in his assessment of the current situation following his re-election.

Harting has been an elected member of ZVEI's board of directors since 2014. The “Electronic Components and Systems” trade association represents one of the most important and highest-turnover sectors within the electrical industry.

With its segments of semiconductors, passive and electromechanical components and microsystem technology – sensors/actuators, the industry generated sales of some EUR 17 billion in 2020.

“With our components, we represent the “T” in the Internet of Things and are thereby positioned right at the outset of the supply chain. The component industry makes a significant contribution to the networking and intelligence of products and influences all sectors of the electrical industry such as Industry 4.0, the energy transition and smart grid, smart home, medical technology or electric

> MARCH 2021

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WHAT IF WE COULD STOP DISEASES BEFORE THEY COULDN’T BE STOPPED? The key to beating more illnesses is earlier detection, and ADI’s precision sensing technology is powering new, ultra-fast disease testing, bringing us one step closer to a healthier future for all.

Analog Devices. Where what if becomes what is.

See What If: analog.com/WhatIf