News

Freescale Semiconductor has demonstrated a direct-sequence ultra wideband (DS-UWB) chipset operating at more than 110Mbit/s over 20m. The firm said the extended range is a direct result of a regulatory waiver granted in March by the FCC. The XS110 device is packaged in a mini-PCI card and used inside a media gateway from Taiwanese original design manufacturer USI. Martin Rofheart, ...

Making supercomputer data processing performance more accessible for engineering and scientific users, FPGA-based board firm Nallatech has teamed with programming tool specialist Mitrionics of Sweden. The firms have demonstrated a technique for scaling the processing performance of an FPGA-based system to match the needs of practical applications such as protein analysis. According to Allan Cantle, president and CEO of Nallatech: ...

Mobile operators will fight back to prevent any loss of business to BT’s recently launched Fusion service which allows a phone to roam seamlessly between fixed and mobile networks, according to analyst firm ABI Research. “The mobile operators will not be standing still,” said Jake Saunders, European research director at ABI. “They will continue to improve coverage and intend to ...

Comtech has unveiled a product that it said allows firms to add machine-to-machine capabilities with minimal design work. The µWeave telemetry system includes a central web-based management application, remote GSM/GPRS gateway module and services hosted by Comtech. According to the Bolton-based firm, µWeave takes the effort out of adding telecoms to remotely-located products, such as industrial machines, vending machines, security, ...

Schaffner is offering local companies access to lower cost offshore manufacturing through its facility in Northern Thailand. The target customer is likely to be a small or medium sized domestic manufacturer looking to reduce assembly costs but without the volume to justify investing in their own offshore manufacturing plant or joint venture. “To make this service viable we are looking ...

Chelmsford-based e2v Technologies has won the contract to supply 1.5Gpixel worth of CCD image sensors for the European Space Agency’s GAIA space mission, scheduled to fly in 2011. The company’s CCDs are in single crystal silicon with a polysilicon/metal/dielectric fab process, and combine a number of technologies to deliver high efficiency, low-noise performance across the 1µm – 350nm wavelength range. ...

Imperial College has designed a novel semiconductor structure to extract the power of a capacitive energy scavenger. “The design criteria were an extraordinary combination of specifications,” said designer Dr Tim Green. “There truly wasn’t anything we could buy. Commercial devices could do the voltage and current, but not the other properties.” The vibration scavenger generates 4nC per cycle at about ...

Axeon, the Aberdeen semiconductor IP company specialising in automotive engine control, is to float on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in June with the intention of raising £1.5m which will value the company at £9.5m “The reason for doing it now is because we have targeted our automotive IP at the key chip suppliers into the automotive supply chain, and ...

A detector that can count single photons with 88 per cent efficiency has been demonstrated by physicists at the National Institute of Standard and Technology in the US. The sensor was made from a 25µmx25µmx20nm square of tungsten cooled to 110mK – the temperature at which the metal goes from being a normal conductor to a superconductor. A photon striking ...

There are two types of reflective displays; watches, calculators and personal organisers use them but the other type of...