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Communications

More on: China’s lunar comms satellite

Queqiao-lunar-comms-satellite

Chinese scientists have revealed details of Queqiao, the lunar communications satellite that relays data between the Chang’e-4 moon lander and Earth. Needed because the lander is on a part of the Moon which does not have direct line-of-sight with the Earth, Queqiao has been placed in orbit around the second Lagrange point in the Earth-Moon system. Lagrange points are gravitational coincidences ...

World’s first electronic private telephone exchange returns to Cambridge

Pye Historic Trust

A prototype Pye telephone exchange from the 1950s is to be exhibited at the Cambridge Museum of Technology. It is an example of the world’s first electronic private branch telephone exchange (PBX), designed by Don Delanoy at Pye Telecommunications in 1956. This particular one is thought to be one of the five original field trial models, donated to the trust by James ...

Wireless-to-DALI Gateway specification from DALI Alliance

DALI-wireless-gateway

The DALI Alliance has specified wireless-to-DALI gateways to link existing DALI wired products with Bluetooth mesh or Zigbee wireless ecosystems. “Wireless to DALI gateways provide the flexibility to incorporate DALI luminaires and other DALI devices into the control network, so it becomes straightforward to add lighting capabilities alongside the other features of the wireless ecosystem,” according to the Alliance. “Existing ...

Microchip opens USB Power Delivery software to customer code

Microchip-Power-Delivery-Software

For USB Type-C with Power Delivery, Microchip has created a framework allowing designers to add their code to the its Power Delivery software stack. “With our Power Delivery software framework, all Microchip MCUs and standalone controllers that support USB-C now share the same PD code base,” said Microchip v-p Charles Forni. “This code is provided free to customers and is easy ...

Inmarsat takes on Dutch government over 5G spectrum allocation

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Inmarsat has launched civil court proceedings in the Netherlands over 5G spectrum allocation. It is looking to protect its provision of maritime and aviation safety services from its ground station in Borum. The UK satellite operator says it is seeking a judge’s ruling on potential illegality of the country’s proposed National Frequency Plan. Basically, it is seeking an injunction to ...

£1.3m for flexible electronics in UK recycling pilot scheme

PragmatIC-Sprite

Cambridge-based flexible electronics company PragmatIC has been awarded a £1.3m by the UK Government Sustainable Innovation Fund for a recycling scheme based on NFC tags. “PragmatIC consider this to be a commercial pilot, with the next step being commercial rollouts with global partners,” company chief commercial officer Alastair Hanlon told Electronics Weekly. In the year-long scheme, called Sprite (sustainable plastics recycling ...

ETSI reveals emergency comms plugfest results

ETSI-emergency-comms

ETSI’s international emergency communications interoperability plugfest revealed that 87% of 285 test pairings were interoperable. The remote event was a cooperation between ETSI, EENA (European emergency number association) and NENA (9-1-1 association) – this was the first time the European event partnered with NENA’s US ICE 9 event. “Crossing borders and oceans, the event helped to ensure efficient, interoperable emergency communications for ...

ISSCC 2021: MIT links silicon chips at 100Gbit/s with dielectric ribbon

ISSCC2021-paper11.9-MIT-silicon-subTHz-optic-link

In a silicon-compatible parallel to fibre optics, MIT is using polymer-based ribbon waveguides to carry data between chips at 105Gbit/s – waveguide dimensions and material are chosen so that it propagates electromagnetic radiation between 200 and 335GHz, over 300mm of waveguide. To handle suitable sub-Thz frequencies, transmitter and receiver were made on a 130nm SiGe BiCMOS process using largely bipolar transistors in ...

Sending uncompressed 8K video over a 300GHz link

OsakaURohm-6G-block

Osaka University has teamed up with Rohm to send 8K video at 48Gbit/s over a 300GHz carrier using a simple modulation technique. “In general, such ultra-high-speed data transmission experiments are performed using multi-level modulations via a complex system with high power consumption that uses off-line or on-line digital signal processing,” said team leader Masayuki Fujita. “The present real-time demonstration, which ...

Electronica: Maxim majors on industrial automation with new parts and designs

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Maxim has announced a suite of integrated circuits and reference designs for industrial automation using IO-Link communications. IO-Link is a short-range (<20m) point-to-point industrial bus developed to connect sensors and actuators to a local hub, from which the data is transferred to a remote PLC (programmable logic controller) via Ethernet or other long-range field bus. “The IO-Link interface allows every ...