Communications

U-blox and University of Bristol have developed a tunable frequency-division duplexing RF front-end that combines passive and active self-interference cancellation. With the proof-of-concept demonstrator, an electrical-balance duplexer is used to passively cancel transmitter noise in the receive band, and an active canceller is employed to suppress self-interference in the transmit band. It has been characterised in duplex configurations working between ...

Infineon is claiming a first, with an industrial-grade embedded SIM (eSIM) in a 2.5 x 2.7mm wafer-level chip-scale package (WLCSP). It is aimed at machine-to-machine comms and IoT applications, for example vending machines, remote sensors and asset trackers. “Providing robust quality on a miniature footprint that works even under harshest conditions remains a challenge for silicon providers,” said the firm. Called ...

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a plasmonic receiver that can convert millimetre waves directly into light for an optical fibre. “Our modulator is completely independent of external power supplies and, on top of that, extremely small so that it can, in principle, be mounted on any lamppost. From there, it can then receive data via microwave signals from individual ...

Renesas is aiming at industrial robots by adding support for DDS-XRCE (data-distribution service for extremely resource constrained environments), one of the protocols planned for the ROS 2 communication standard. Specifically an XRCE-DDS client (‘Micro XRCE-DDS’ from eProsima) has been implemented on Renesas’ 32bit RX65N MCUs. “Robot Operating System – ROS – is a key framework that provides libraries and tools ...

Side-stepping traditional laser local oscillator down-conversion techniques, Australian engineers are using acoustic interactions to retrieve frequency and phase information from Gbit/s modulated optical signals. “Our technique uses the interaction of photons and acoustic waves to enable an increase in signal capacity and therefore speed,” said Dr Elias Giacoumidis of the University of Sidney. “This allows for the successful extraction and ...

Cypress adds support for 'AliOS Things' embedded IoT operating system to some of its microcontrollers

Cypress is claiming better audio from all-wireless earbuds – headsets without a wire between the transducers. According to the firm, which is sadly not naming names or numbers, the solution features a link budget that is 6dB better than competetors, resulting in up to twice the range – with the extended range improving cross-body performance for uninterrupted earbud audio from ...

Leti and semiconductor IP supplier VSORA demonstrate 5G New Radio Release 15 on a new DSP architecture

MEMS timing specialist SiTime and Intel are to work together on integrating timing for Intel’s 5G multi-mode radio modems, Intel’s 4G chips, and its  millimeter-wave wireless, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GNSS products. SiTime’s MEMS timing solutions enhance system performance in the presence of stressors such as vibration, high temperature, and rapid thermal transients. Such stressors can disrupt the timing signal and ...

California-based design firm Aricent is developing 5G networks software frameworks running on the Intel FlexRAN reference architecture. Aricent’s 5G framework will be integrated with the Intel FlexRAN reference architecture, supporting features compliant to 3GPP specifications for non-standalone modes. The firm’s 4G LTE framework based on Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) architecture also supports Intel’s FlexRAN. Harmeet Chauhan, president, software and internet at Aricent, ...