The electronics industry has caught the scent of new opportunities, empowered by wireless technology. The continued demand for wireless solutions is now being fed by much more than the cellular sector; the plethora of frequencies and protocols in use is evidence of that.
But it comes at a time when there is an equal and, to a degree, opposing force, in the form of demand for ultra low power (ULP) devices, something wireless transceivers have battled against since their inception. With signal quality a direct result of transmission power, can the two ever be conjoined to create the ideal solution?
Adding to the maelstrom is the emerging trend for turning background radiation in to reusable power, or energy harvesting.
Ostensibly, creating devices that require no external power supply or batteries couples perfectly with wireless telemetry. It would allow devices to be placed in the most remote of locations without ever being truly out of contact.
Creating the right conditions
Another feature in its favor is that energy harvesting typically only returns enough power to run ULP devices. Together, energy harvesting, low power wireless transceivers and the ongoing developments in ULP CMOS could be combining to create the right conditions for the perfect storm, technologically speaking.
Instantiating RF circuits in a standard CMOS process has, for some time now, been a prerequisite for success; in order to make their production cost effective they must use the most cost efficient manufacturing platform. While this imposes some performance barriers, the industry has rallied in overcoming them, which has promoted the widespread adoption of wireless technologies.
In reality, the performance barriers " while being eroded all the time " only limit the technology in terms of range and frequency, two parameters that match the trend for license free technologies coming under the remit of the Industrial, Scientific and Medical bands (ISM).
Prerequisites for ULP are a microcontroller/microprocessor that has been developed with ultra low power operation in mind. Here, Texas Instruments has shown a commitment to this application area through its MSP430 architecture, which when operating at a peak of 25MHz consumes just 160A/MHz.
With TI's acquisition of Chipcon and its low power transceiver technology in early 2006, the company has been developing low power two-chip wireless solutions for some time. It demonstrates TI's commitment to wireless technologies across all wavebands.
