NEWS & TECHNOLOGY WIRELESS
Spark launches 1nJ/bit short-range,
high bandwidth transceivers
CBy Peter Clarke anadian startup Spark Microsystems International Inc.
has launched its first products – two low power ultrawide
band (UWB) transceivers suited for megabit per
second data streaming.
Spark (Montreal, Canada) was founded in 2016 to develop a
specialized low-power, short range wireless transceiver aimed
at the Internet of Things believing that while Bluetooth could be
low power it could not provide sufficient data rates for IoT and
that Wi-Fi while offering the appropriate data rate was not sufficiently
energy efficient.
For short-range applications up to about 100 metres, Spark
believes a well-designed UWB system is the answer and could
achieve energy efficiencies of 1nJ/bit, a factor of 30 below Bluetooth
Low Energy. The Spark system is also has extremely low
latency opening up duplex applications and has great inherent
immunity to electromagnetic interference.
The SR10X0 family of transceivers is so energy efficient that
it opens up the prospect of battery-less wireless sensors for use
in IoT.
“Bluetooth is not suitable for the next wireless explosion,”
said Fares Mubarak, CEO of Spark, in a phone interview with
eeNews.
Frederic Nabki, a professor of Electrical Engineering at the
École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) who cofounded the company
and serves as CTO, said Spark made the decision to use
the unlicensed 3.1GHz to 10.6GHz band and tackled the challenge
of low power by allowing both transmitter and receiver
switch off between the nanosecond bursts of signal. To do that
the transceivers would need to be synchronized and Spark has
found a way to do that but still only using a simple, low-cost
32kHz crystal oscillator as an external component.
That most likely uses some sort of on-chip clock multiplier,
probably with self-calibration and auto-tuning and some sort
of handshake between transceivers. Nabki was reluctant to
reveal too much. “We massage the clock in chip to make it
good enough,” he said. He confirmed that this is a solid-state
solution.
The technology supports data rates of up to 20Mbps and
is suitable for application with gaming peripherals and AR/VR
headsets, smart home devices, and battery-less internet of
things sensors.
Spark has produced two chips – the SR1010 and the
SR1020 – to cover the spectrum from 3 to 6GHz and from 6GHz
Worldwide UWB regulation. Source: Spark Microsystems
International
to 10GHz. This is partly because different regulations cover the
outdoor deployment of this spectrum in Europe and elsewhere
in the world, Nabki said.
Compared to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which typically
has an airtime of a few milliseconds causing noticeable latency
of tens of milliseconds, the SR1000 UWB transceiver can send
1 kb of data in only 50 microseconds, yielding significantly
shorter wireless latency in a wide range of applications, such as
audio streaming. The Spark transceiver’s power consumption,
typically 1nJ/bit, is typically 40x lower than BLE when operating
at 1Mbps. With a data transfer rate up to 10x higher than BLE,
the SR1000 series’ 10 Mbps capability suits content-rich applications,
such as video streaming, where high bandwidth low
latency links are essential.
The SR1000 series comprises two pin-identical product
variants to accommodate the different regional spectrum allocations;
the SR1010 for 3.1GHz to 6GHz, and the SR1020 for
6GHz to 9.5GHz. Spark Microsystems’ wide-spectrum UWB
transceivers aid product development teams to differentiate
their products by enhancing the user experience, requiring
less battery changes. The SR1000 series can also be used for
a variety of ranging and positioning applications in addition to
provisioning a low emissions, low power, low latency symmetrical
data link.
Sanjay Jha, previously the CEO of Globalfoundries and COO
of Qualcomm and a recent addition to the Spark board of directors
said: “Spark has developed and delivered the first truly
differentiated solution which allows for predictable and ultralow
latency communication for both the consumer, home and
industrial applications. Additionally, it delivers accurate ranging,
interference resistance and enables a trade-off between range
and throughput rates.”
CEO Mubarak said: “We are in a sub-90nm process with
foundry TSMC and not using the LP low power form of the
process.” The SR1000 series is currently sampling and with production
quantities available from 3Q20 onwards.
24 News April 2020 @eeNewsEurope www.eenewseurope.com
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