Skywater’S Match Our Preferences
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www.eenewseurope.com February 2019 electronics europe News News Cover story on pages 6 & 7 european business press 351531-Cover AI Drones.indd 1 15.01.19 14:32 190205_WLMAP_EENE_EU.indd 1 2/4/19 11:53 AM An Excellent Duet! © eiSos #INDUCTORDUET Coupled Inductors The WE-MCRI is an innovative molded coupled inductor with fully automated bifi lar winding process. embedded world Hall 3 Booth 247 It offers an almost ideal coupling coeffi cient up to 0.995. The WE-MCRI features a soft saturation behavior with its crystalline core structure and distributed air gap. The coupled inductor range includes Up to 0.995 coupling coefficient high voltage isolation versions up to 2 kV, low profi le types and versions with various turns ratios. Up to 2.0 kV isolation Soft saturation For further information, please visit: www.we-online.com/coupled Up to 120 A ISAT and 48 A IR Large portfolio High High Various Low High High Saturation Coupling Voltage Turns Ratios Profi le Current Current WE-MCRI WE-CPIB HV WE-EHPI WE-TDC WE-CFWI WE-DCT AUTOMOTIVENews www.eenewsautomotive.com News News MW Embedded EUROPE RF - Microwave european business press ANALOGNews LEDN IGHTINGews PO NAGEMENTews TEST & MEASUREMENTNews CONTENTS FEBRUARY 2019 Dear readers, www.eenewseurope.com February 2019 Embedded World and Mobile World Congress will once more move electronic engi- neers into two opposite directions at the end of February, both shows promising electronics europe News technology breakthrough announcements and wowing the crowds with high-tech News demos. eeNews Europe will be represented at both events. Our main feature this month, AI & Machine Learning, looks like it will expand into other editions, until AI’s pervasiveness finally makes it irrelevant to cover as a topic, becoming a given in every field of industry. Other topics covered in our February edition include Circuit Protection and Pro- gramming Tools & Development Kits, though with the rampant versatility of AI, it seems every new kit on the block want to be part of the AI revolution, claiming intelligence at the edge or a connection to cloud-based AI. Enjoy this edition of eeNews Europe and don’t hesitate to get in touch to tell us your stories, from starting up a company to developing your first proto- types, achieving your first product design-in, sharing your insight on this fast- paced industry or to contribute your expertise on some of the topics we’ll be covering along the year. european business press Cover story on pages 6 & 7 Julien Happich 351531-Cover AI Drones.indd 1 Editor in Chief 15.01.19 14:32 4 - 50: OPINION 30 - 37: AI & MACHINE LEARNING Uncommon Market: AI takes the guesswork out of being human Silicon-Based Electro-Optical In 2035, artificial intelligence Gyroscope Overcomes SNR will be everywhere, but it Deficiencies will be invisible. Behind the scenes, it will help steer the Last word: Be brave choices we make, offering us the best options to lead a 6 - 27: NEWS & TECHNOLOGY good, healthy life. It will help customize the services and products we buy to best CEO interview: Sonderman on SkyWater’s match our preferences. Rudy Lauwereins, VP at imec technology foundry model responsible for the digital and user-centric solutions SkyWater Technology Foundry unit, ponders about the pervasiveness of AI and the Inc. is approaching the second implications for society. anniversary of its formation as a “technology foundry” housed 38 - 39: PROGRAMMING TOOLS in mature facilities in Blooming- & DEVELOPMENT KITS ton, Minnesota. We connected with company Embedded AI solution boss Tom Sonderman for an detects motor failure on- update on the development board home appliances and plans for one of the indus- Aimed at motor-equipped try’s newest foundries. home appliances, the failure detection e-AI 28 - 29: CIRCUIT PROTECTION solution launched by Renesas Electronics is to be embedded in the com- Four tips to select a dimensioned and efficient pany’s RX66T 32-bit microcontroller. drive system Electric motors are the 46: READER OFFER unsung hero of the Fourth This month, Nordic Industrial Revolution, Semiconductor is giving bringing to life anything away ten nRF9160 devel- from robots to 3D print- opment kits, worth 140 ers. Unfortunately, they are Euros each, for eeNews not unbreakable and, when they do fail, can bring an Europe’s readers to win. entire production line to a halt. 49: DISTRIBUTION CORNER eeNews Europe www.eenewseurope.com February 2019 News 3 UNCOMMON MARKET SMALLER STRONGER Silicon-Based Electro-Optical Gyroscope FASTER Overcomes SNR Deficiencies By Bill Schweber 2mm-square silicon-based optical gyroscope devised at photonic optical gyroscope with reciprocal sensitivity enhance- Caltech overcomes the major source of error in these tiny ment” explains the approach, which is somewhat analogous units thanks to the use of a self-cancellation technique. to using differential signals to cancel common-mode electrical AThose tiny gyroscopes—along with accelerometers, the founda- signals. As with all optical gyros, their device uses the relativistic tion of inertial guidance—keep getting better. The mechanical Sagnac effect to determine angular velocity, by measuring the rel- spinning-wheel and laser-based optical gyro have been supplant- ative phase-shifting between two counter-rotating optical waves ed in most applications by fiber-optic and MEMS gyros, but the (one as a reference path, the other as signal path) created via a latter pair have difficulties reaching the precision performance of beam splitter from a single source. These are then recombined the former. Attempts to miniaturize the fiber gyro have fallen short after their transit. When the reference frame of the gyroscope is due to second- and third-order errors that result from thermal rotating, the effective path lengths as seen by the two beams fluctuations, component drift, and fabrication mismatch brought change, and thus fringing occurs between the light beams at the on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation as size and optical- receiving-end sensors. path length shrinks. Overall performance is normally closely linked to the path Engineers know that intrinsic errors in systems can be reduced length, with a longer path offering greater precision and less sen- by using techniques such as upfront or ongoing calibration. sitivity to dynamic differences between the two paths. Miniatur- They minimize the sources of the errors through ever-better izing the path by using a waveguide in a silicon substrate rather components and materials, and—perhaps the best technique than lengths of optical fibers or a vacuum path means increased where feasible—devise an architecture that causes the errors to sensitivity to any path-related changes. self-cancel. Applying that last principle, a team at Caltech funded To work around this issue, the Caltech team set used a design by the Rothenberg Innovation Initiative has that continually alternates the optical paths devised, built, and tested a new approach to at a rate much higher than any fluctua- tiny, silicon-based electro-optical gyros that tions. The “polarity” of the signals that travel provides precision performance with little through the silicon’s optical waveguides is cost or other negatives. reversed, while undesirable common-mode HIGH VOLTAGE SUPERJUNCTION MOSFETS Their solution leverages what they denote components such as thermal-based fluc- as the “reciprocity” of passive optical net- tuations and mismatch, are attenuated. In works to greatly reduce thermal fluctuations this context, “reciprocal” means that both FOR EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE and mismatch, and thus yield superior results beams of light within the gyroscope optical compared to previous approaches. Their waveguides are affected in the same way by TM demonstration device is capable of detect- imperfections. PrestoMOS JN series 600V Body diode recovery wave form of TM ing phase shifts—a primary figure of merit The overall design uses a significant • Part number R60xxJNx PrestoMOS for these units—that are 30 times smaller amount of electronics, of course, including a • Body-diode of SJ MOSFET is optimised for use as FRD than state-of-the-art, miniature fiber-optic pair of channels comprised of photodiodes, • Best-in-class fast & soft recovery body diode gyroscopes, even though the unit itself is 500 transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs), and vari- • Suitable for inverter application times smaller. The overall improvement in able gain amplifiers (VGAs), plus low-pass • Max. current up to 70A performance of optical gyroscopes is one to filtering and demodulation. • Packages: TO-220FN, TO-247, TO-3PF, D2PAK, DPAK two orders of magnitude. The all-integrated optical gyroscope As published in Nature, their paper “Nano- device fabricated by the researchers, headed by Ali Hajimiri, Bren Professor of Electri- Super Junction-MOS EN series 600V / 650V cal Engineering and Medical Engineering • Part number R60xxENx (600V) & R65xxENx (650V) in the Division of Engineering and Applied • Low switching noise and easy to use Science at Caltech, measures just 2×1mm. • Usable for SMPS The team maintains that their reciprocal • Max. current up to 76A sensitivity approach has greater benefits The optical gyro and the Sagnac effect: • Packages: TO-220FM, TO-247, TO-3PF, D2PAK, DPAK and much lower complexity than alternatives The silicon nanophotonic waveguide such as using a non-coherent light source, supports a single mode at 1550 nm (a); Super Junction-MOS KN series 600V / or employing a low-loss waveguide (which rotation of the ring induces