New NFC Tag-Side Controller From Infineon Integrates Energy-Harvesting to Enable Battery-Free IoT Solutions

[Fouquin]

NFC-based sensing controllers with energy-harvesting capabilities are critical for the development of passive smart devices that can operate with high accuracy, efficiency, and design convenience in a wide range of IoT applications. With the NGC1081, Infineon Technologies AG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY) expands its product portfolio of NFC tag-side controllers. The new IC is a single-chip solution that enables the IoT industry to develop low-cost, miniaturized, smart edge computing/sensing devices, maximizing the benefits for both end-users and manufacturers. Such devices can be controlled and powered by mobile phones, with potential applications ranging from medical patches and disposable point-of-case testers to data loggers, smart thermostats, and sensor inlays.

The tag-side controller supports a dual power supply function, allowing it to operate in a passive mode (battery-free) based on energy harvesting, or in a battery-powered mode, operating as a self-contained sensing node via a 3 to 3.3 V external power supply. In passive mode, the entire sensing system, including the IC and its connected sensors, can draw power via energy harvesting from the NFC field of a mobile phone. Together with its naturally galvanically isolated sensing interface, these features open up countless possibilities for creating many innovative sensing use cases that require no batteries and minimal maintenance. This is particularly useful for applications where the power supply needs to be galvanically isolated to meet the safety requirement.




The NFC tag-side controller is based on a low-power ARM Cortex -M0 microcontroller and integrates several key components. These include an NFC front-end compliant with the ISO14443 type-A standard and a motor control driver that employs an H-bridge circuit with a current drive capability of up to 250 mA. NGC1081 also features a sensing unit based on a 12-bit SAR ADC with four analog inputs and a 10-bit DAC with one analog output. The sensing unit also comprises an I2V converter and an integrated temperature sensor that provides an accuracy of ±0.3°C over the temperature range of 0°C to 45°C and ±0.4 °C from -20°C to 0°C and 45°C to 85°C.

This highly-integrated single-chip solution enables customers to implement smart sensing devices with miniaturized product design and reduced system bill-of-material costs. In addition, the tangible IC architecture and the well-designed hardware/software partitioning allow customers to create fully flexible software-defined functions. The configurability and versatility of the controller make it an ideal choice for adapting to the specific requirements of various applications and systems.

In addition, the availability of seamless connectivity to mobile phones enables the adoption of a cloud-based business model. This is supported by a lean and scalable mailbox concept that ensures robust access management to maintain data integrity and security. Application-specific commands and messages from an open protocol interface can extend the protocol layer.

Availability
The new NGC1081 NFC tag-side controller for smart sensing applications is available in a VQFN-32 package. More information is available at www.infineon.com/ngc1081.

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[Chrispy_]

A bit off-topic but the phrase "energy-harvesting" spurred me into thinking how awesome it would be if phones had a kinetic generator as per Seiko Kinetic watches.

Potentially they could offset 'connected standby' power draw and extend standby time from the "probably won't last the weekend" of a modern phone to something that might be close to indefinite for an active enough person who just uses a phone for comms and not intensive apps/games.

As for NFC-powered, that's just piggybacking wireless Qi or similar via the NFC field, right?

 

[thewan]

A bit off-topic but the phrase "energy-harvesting" spurred me into thinking how awesome it would be if phones had a kinetic generator as per Seiko Kinetic watches.

Potentially they could offset 'connected standby' power draw and extend standby time from the "probably won't last the weekend" of a modern phone to something that might be close to indefinite for an active enough person who just uses a phone for comms and not intensive apps/games.

Been there done that. Current efficiency of such kinetic power generators, meaning that for subtle movements of using a phone or leaving them in the pocket and moving around, requires the size of at least an average power bank just for it to generate a meaningful amount of power to charge a phone . There is no way to integrate something of that size in to a phone. Meanwhile powering just a one or two components is impossible seeing that phones are highly integrated with as many things as possible packed into multipurpose chips to reduce size and power usage. You would have to increase complexity and size just to "separate" the power sources or adding multiple sources of power for different parts/function of a chip.

For larger movements, it requires being attached to the leg or arm of a person for it to be more effective and in this case can be made smaller.

As for NFC-powered, that's just piggybacking wireless Qi or similar via the NFC field, right?

Nope. NFC by design already transfers power to wake up the other device to communicate, like when you phone taps some unpowered NFC tag on your table. This chip is just a single chip design to have two sources of power, one of them via NFC, to power up the entire device. Meaning lets say you have nfc lock that uses batteries. The batteries have died. But you can continue to unlock the nfc lock just by leaving your phone on it long enough for it to power up the device and unlock it so that you can enter your house and recharge or change your lock's batteries. This is a single chip implementation of that so it reduces BOM, reduces the amount of components required and subsequently reduces power consumption and improves efficiency. Also reduces the overall size since everyone these days wants things smaller and smaller. Except phones, where it keeps getting larger and larger.