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Powerbox introduces two board mounted DC/DC converters to power industrial and railway applications; the extra wide input PQB50U-72S and the ultra-high power density PFB600W-110S. With an unprecedented extra wide input of 12:1 (14V to 160V) the PQB50U-72S delivers 50W in quarter brick packaging, bringing simplicity to power designers addressing EN50155 applications (one unit covering all bus voltages).In full brick packaging, the PFB600W-110S delivers industry’s first 600W unit within a 4:1 input voltage range of 43V to 160V, accommodating 72V, 96V and 110V bus voltages. Both products can be operated from -40°C up to +100°C case temperature, matching very demanding and ruggedized requirements such as in construction vehicles, mining equipment & heavy machinery process control.Demanding Industry and Railway power designers always face challenges to optimize board power solutions when designing standardized equipment for worldwide operation on a very large variety of system bus voltages. In the railway industry, designers are permanently seeking the best power architecture to operate within the overall EN50155 input voltage range, from 24V up to 110V (including continuous operation in the 14.4V brownout condition and 154V transients). To guarantee board power designers the highest level of flexibility, the PQB50U-72S has been developed to deliver full and stable power within an extended input voltage range from 14V up to 160V.In Demanding Industry and the forthcoming Industry 4.0 applications, system designers have to guarantee full performance in a multitude of applications operating from 24V to 72V and fixed industrial battery backup systems using 110V in which the quality of line is often disturbed. In those applications, the PQB50U-72S is designed to sustain high level of line disturbance within a range as low as 14V to a 200V surge. In such environments, the PQB50U-72S guarantees full output performance, simplifying design for systems architects and by having only one power module covering all ranges of input voltage, thus reducing inventory.PQB50U-72S comes in a standardized DOSA quarter-brick package. The module is available in four output voltages (5V/6A ; 12V/4.2A ; 24V/2.1A and 48V/1.05A). The device sustains 200V/100ms surge input voltage, includes short circuit and over-voltage protection, meets UL60950-1-2nd edition basic insulation and meets the EN50155 (EN61373) shock and vibration standard. The unit can be operated from -40 up to +100°C case temperature and has an efficiency of 86%. The PQB50U-72S includes an aluminum baseplate, making it possible to fix a heatsink or mount it directly to a cold-wall or chassis.Used in demanding applications, the PQB50U-72S has an isolation voltage of 3,000VDC (min) between input/output, 1,500VDC input/case and 1,500VDC output to case.“From the early days, board mounted DC/DC converters simplified the design process, whilst shortening the time to market” says Martin Fredmark, VP Product Management. “With the increased demand from Systems Designers to meet a large variety of bus voltages and from Supply Chain Managers to reduce inventory and fewer product-codes, Powerbox has been working on Swiss-knife power solutions, of which the PQB50U-72S and PFB600W-110S are perfect example of products responding to those needs”Part of the railway and industry modernization programs introduce more digital communication, entertainment systems, local computers and radio-communication, requiring higher power board mounted converters, able to operate independently of the system bus voltage, such as the EN50155 input bus voltage (72V, 96V, 110V), industrial 48V while delivering 600W output power.Designed and optimized for railway 110V systems, the new Powerbox PFB600W-110S can be operated from 43V up to 160V input, sustaining 180V/100ms surge voltage. The 4:1 input voltage range makes it easier and simpler for the system designer when developing new equipment for international railway applications.Packaged in an industry standard full-brick, the PFB600W-110S is available in four output voltages (12V/50A ; 24V/25A ; 28V/21.4A and 48V/12.5A) with an output power up to 600W. The PFB600W-110S is fully regulated and operates at a fixed switching frequency of 250 KHz and includes a PI type input filter reducing the input and noise. PFB600W-110S includes current limiting, continuous short-circuit protection, under/over-voltage lockout and an over-temperature protection with thermal shutdown with automatic recovery. For safety, the module complies with the UL60950-1 2nd edition (Basic isolation) has an input/output and input/case isolation of 2,500VDC and 500VDC output/case.For additional power or operational redundancy, the PFB600W-110S can be used in parallel. A paralleling control circuit is included within the product, guaranteeing true load-sharing, without the need to add external components. PFB600W-110S has a typical efficiency of 89% and designed carefully to optimize the thermal dissipation through the baseplate.The product complies with EN50155 (EN61373) shock and vibration standard and environmental EN50155 (EN60068-2-1). PQB50U-72S and PFB600W-110S meet CE Mark 2004/108/EC requirements.Reference:DS1200DEZ1582CM-2.5SC2608AS  

A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics (IME) and Cubic Micro today announce that they have developed and demonstrated a 400 MHz radio frequency (RF) transceiver with the highest power efficiency and leading performance reported to deliver high quality signals over industry's widest coverage in wireless sensor network applications. The transceiver is integrated with a highly configurable baseband, which allows users to customize transceiver performance for specific applications ranging from wireless smart energy management and security control in homes and buildings to long-range remote industrial monitoring.To achieve low power consumption in RF transceiver, performance is typically sacrificed, resulting in degradations of sensitivity, channel selectivity and interference immunity during the wireless signal communication process.To address the performance and power consumption dilemma, the IME team has employed a low-power low-noise linear RF chain and a 75-dB-dynamic-range band-pass analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) so that channel filtering is conducted in the low-power digital circuits. This strategy cuts energy consumption by up to 55% while providing unprecedented wireless communication range that supports highest reported sensitivity along with excellent selectivity compared to commercially available RF transceiver integrated chips. These features translate into fewer sensor nodes to achieve similar network coverage in a wireless sensor network, further reducing costs and power consumption.The design is amenable to mass production and is compatible with both Japanese standards[1], while also meeting the emission limits of Europe and US."IME's commitment to continually demonstrate strong R&D capabilities in CMOS RF design has attracted partners who look forward to developing next-generation smart energy metering solutions," said Professor Dim-Lee Kwong, Executive Director of IME. "We look forward to strengthening customer adoption to benefit the community with a wider range of innovative applications.""We are glad to have developed the lowest power and high performance RFIC in Asia together with IME," said Mr Yutaka Kumagai, Managing Director of Cubic Micro. "This kind of joint developments will be needed for high diversity business environment, and we believe IME will be one of the best technology partners in the area of wireless solution to create new product and technologies."Reference:BC417143B-GIQN-E4CC430F5147IRGZTLMX9838SBX/NOPB 

Sending a password or secret code over airborne radio waves like WiFi or Bluetooth means anyone can eavesdrop, making those transmissions vulnerable to hackers who can attempt to break the encrypted code.Now, University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body—using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads on consumer devices."Fingerprint sensors have so far been used as an input device. What is cool is that we've shown for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body," said senior author Shyam Gollakota, UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.These "on-body" transmissions offer a more secure way to transmit authenticating information between devices that touch parts of your body—such as a smart door lock or wearable medical device—and a phone or device that confirms your identity by asking you to type in a password.This new technique, which leverages the signals already generated by fingerprint sensors on smartphones and laptop touchpads to transmit data in new ways, is described in a paper presented in September at the 2016 Association for Computing Machinery's International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2016) in Germany."Let's say I want to open a door using an electronic smart lock," said co-lead author Merhdad Hessar, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. "I can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on my phone and transmit my secret credentials through my body to open the door, without leaking that personal information over the air."The research team tested the technique on iPhone and other fingerprint sensors, as well as Lenovo laptop trackpads and the Adafruit capacitive touchpad. In tests with 10 different subjects, they were able to generate usable on-body transmissions on people of different heights, weights and body types. The system also worked when subjects were in motion—including while they walked and moved their arms."We showed that it works in different postures like standing, sitting and sleeping," said co-lead author Vikram Iyer, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. "We can also get a strong signal throughout your body. The receivers can be anywhere—on your leg, chest, hands—and still work."The research team from the UW's Networks and Mobile Systems Lab systematically analyzed smartphone sensors to understand which of them generates low-frequency transmissions below 30 megahertz that travel well through the human body but don't propagate over the air.The researchers found that fingerprint sensors and touchpads generate signals in the 2 to 10 megahertz range and employ capacitive coupling to sense where your finger is in space, and to identify the ridges and valleys that form unique fingerprint patterns.Normally, sensors use these signals to receive input about your finger. But the UW engineers devised a way to use these signals as output that corresponds to data contained in a password or access code. When entered on a smartphone, data that authenticates your identity can travel securely through your body to a receiver embedded in a device that needs to confirm who you are.Their process employs a sequence of finger scans to encode and transmit data. Performing a finger scan correlates to a 1-bit of digital data and not performing the scan correlates to a 0-bit.The technology could also be useful for secure key transmissions to medical devices such as glucose monitors or insulin pumps, which seek to confirm someone's identity before sending or sharing data.The team achieved bit rates of 50 bits per second on laptop touchpads and 25 bits per second with fingerprint sensors—fast enough to send a simple password or numerical code through the body and to a receiver within seconds.This represents only a first step, the researchers say. Data can be transmitted through the body even faster if fingerprint sensor manufacturers provide more access to their software.Reference:HMR3400HMC6343HMR3000-D00-232HMR2300-D00-485 

cientists have created a material that could make reading biological signals, from heartbeats to brainwaves, much more sensitive. Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are designed to measure signals created by electrical impulses in the body, such as heartbeats or brainwaves. However, they are currently only able to measure certain signals.Now researchers led by a team from Imperial College London have created a material that measures signals in a different way to traditional OECTs that they believe could be used in complementary circuits, paving the way for new biological sensor technologies.Semiconducting materials can conduct electronic signals, carried by either electrons or their positively charged counterparts, called holes. Holes in this sense are the absence of electrons - the spaces within atoms that can be filled by them.Electrons can be passed between atoms but so can holes. Materials that use primarily hole-driven transport are called 'p-type' materials, and those that use primarily electron-driven transport are called, and 'n-type' materials.An 'ambipolar' material is the combination of both types, allowing the transport of holes and electrons within the same material, leading to potentially more sensitive devices. However, it has not previously been possible to create ambipolar materials that work in the body.The current most sensitive OECTs use a material where only holes are transported. Electron transport in these devices however has not been possible, since n-type materials readily break down in water-based environments like the human body.But in research published today in Nature Communications, the team have demonstrated the first ambipolar OECT that can conduct electrons as well as holes with high stability in water-based solutions.The team overcame the seemingly inherent instability of n-type materials in water by designing new structures that prevent electrons from engaging in side-reactions, which would otherwise degrade the device.These new devices can detect positively charged sodium and potassium ions, important for neuron activities in the body, particularly in the brain. In the future, the team hope to be able to create materials tuned to detect particular ions, allowing ion-specific signals to be detected.Lead author Alexander Giovannitti, a PhD student under the supervision of Professor Iain McCulloch, from the Department of Chemistry and Centre for Plastic Electronics at Imperial said:"Proving that an n-type organic electrochemical transistor can operate in water paves the way for new sensor electronics with improved sensitivity. "It will also allow new applications, particularly in the sensing of biologically important positive ions, which are not feasible with current devices. For example, these materials might be able to detect abnormalities in sodium and potassium ion concentrations in the brain, responsible for neuron diseases such as epilepsy." Reference:2N3811DMA204020RDMMT5551S-7-F 

when University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers announced in the journal Nature Communications that they had developed transparent sensors for use in imaging the brain, researchers around the world took notice. Then the requests came flooding in. “So many research groups started asking us for these devices that we couldn’t keep up,” says Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma, the Lynn H. Matthias Professor and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in electrical and computer engineering at UW–Madison.Ma’s group is a world leader in developing revolutionary flexible electronic devices. The see-through, implantable micro-electrode arrays were light years beyond anything ever created.Although he and collaborator Justin Williams, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in biomedical engineering and neurological surgery at UW–Madison, patented the technology through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, they saw its potential for advancements in research.“That little step has already resulted in an explosion of research in this field,” says Williams. “We didn’t want to keep this technology in our lab. We wanted to share it and expand the boundaries of its applications.”As a result, in a paper published in the journal Nature Protocols, the researchers have described in great detail how to fabricate and use transparent graphene neural electrode arrays in applications in electrophysiology, fluorescent microscopy, optical coherence tomography, and optogenetics. “We described how to do these things so we can start working on the next generation,” says Ma.Now, not only are the UW–Madison researchers looking at ways to improve and build upon the technology, they also are seeking to expand its applications from neuroscience into areas such as research of stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, cardiac conditions, and many others. And they hope other researchers do the same.“We didn’t want to keep this technology in our lab. We wanted to share it and expand the boundaries of its applications.”“This paper is a gateway for other groups to explore the huge potential from here,” says Ma. “Our technology demonstrates one of the key in vivo applications of graphene. We expect more revolutionary research will follow in this interdisciplinary field.”Funding for the initial research came from the Reliable Neural-Interface Technology program at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Other authors on the Nature Protocols paper include Dong-Wook Park, Sarah Brodnick, Jared Ness, Lisa Krugner-Higby, Solomon Mikael, Joseph Novello, Hyungsoo Kim, Dong-Hyun Baek, Jihye Bong, Kyle Swanson and Wendell Lake of UW–Madison; Farid Atry, Seth Frye and Ramin Pashaie of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Amelia Sandberg of Medtronic PLC Neuromodulation; Thomas Richner of the University of Washington; and Sanitta Thongpang of Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.Reference:ISL29120IROZ-T7ADJD-J823TCS3200D-TR Like this Article? Register to receive updates here 

Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited today announced the launch of the 4 Mbit ReRAM MB85AS4MT, the world's largest density mass-produced ReRAM product. This is the first ReRAM product to be jointly developed with Panasonic Semiconductor Solutions Co., Ltd.The MB85AS4MT is an SPI-interface ReRAM product that operates with a wide range of power supply voltage, from 1.65V to 3.6V. It features an extremely small average current in read operations of 0.2mA at a maximum operating frequency of 5MHz.It is optimal for battery operated wearable devices and medical devices such as hearing aids, which require high density, low power consumption electronic components.Up to this point, Fujitsu Semiconductor has contributed to resolving issues for clients with a need for specifications with greater performance than conventional non-volatile memory, such as EEPROM and serial flash memory, by providing FRAM products, which have such features as high read/write endurance and low power consumption. By adding the new 4 Mbit ReRAM MB85AS4MT to its lineup, Fujitsu Semiconductor can now further expand the options it offers to meet the diversifying needs of its customers.This product features the ability to operate with a wide range of power supply voltage, from 1.65V to 3.6V, can be operated at a maximum of 5MHz through an SPI interface, and uses extremely small average current during read operations (0.2mA operating at 5MHz). It offers the industry's lowest power consumption for read operations in non-volatile memory.The package is a 209mil 8 pin small outline package (SOP), pin-compatible with other non-volatile memory products such as EEPROM. Fujitsu Semiconductor has mounted a 4 Mbit memory density, exceeding the maximum density of serial interface EEPROM, in a miniature 8-pin SOP package size.Fujitsu Semiconductor expects that the MB85AS4MT, featuring high density and low power consumption, will be used in battery-operated wearable devices, medical devices such as hearing aids, and IoT devices such as meters and sensors.Going forward, Fujitsu Semiconductor will continue to provide products and solutions aimed at improving the value and convenience of customers' applications.Reference:GP1S036PKGS-00GXP1-RRB-3R0232-50PKGS-25SXAP1-R