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Friday, May 28, 2010

Wireless mesh networking for smart lighting

Chipset pairs ISM transceiver with mesh controller for 10 years operation from a single battery

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Mesh sensor provider Virtual Technology in Israel has teamed up with chip maker Semtech in the US for a two-chip wireless mesh network chipset that brings a new level of performance and signal robustness to smart lighting applications.
The chipset pairs Semtech’s SX1211 transceiver for industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band applications with Virtual Extension’s VE209S wireless mesh controller. Smart lighting designers now have a low-power, high-performance solution for building a wireless sensing network with no single point of failure and very robust signal processing. This low-power chipset is also perfectly adapted to battery-operated applications with a 10-year operating lifetime.
The SX1211 is part of Semtech’s platform of ISM-band transceivers and is optimized for asynchronous sensor network designs in unlicensed ISM frequency bands (868-870 MHz and 902-928 MHz). The device features the industry’s lowest receiver current consumption (<3mA) for increased battery life. All of the transceiver’s major RF communication parameters are programmable and can be configured dynamically, with RF output power programmable up to +12.5 dBm.
The VE209 family of high-performance mesh controllers serves as the main building blocks of a VEmesh unit, either a gateway or a node. These mesh controllers have the necessary internal elements for performing all the interfaces and network management.
VEmesh units provide highly reliable bi-directional communication and best-in-class range and coverage for distributed monitoring and data collection of sensor and metering systems. All VEmesh nodes also act as relays to retransmit data from other units in order to create a modular solution with no practical limitation to the number of nodes or size of coverage area.
“This new chipset is great news to smart lighting designers, who now have now a highly reliable network that also has great potential for additional applications, such as smart metering or home and building automation,” said Sameer Vuyyuru, Semtech Vice President Marketing for Semtech’s Advanced Communications and Sensing Group. “The relationship with Virtual Extension means we can offer good integration between two of the industry’s highest performing ICs, and comes at the right time for Semtech to expand its leadership in these times of growing focus on energy efficiency.”
“Until now, the market has not had a mesh option that offers the winning combination of high performance, low power consumption and low cost,” said Yariv Oren, CEO of Virtual Extension. “Semtech brings the high-performance transceivers that, when combined with our ‘diversity path mesh’ technology, results in networks that are easier to design and build, are much more robust, easier to install and maintain, and have higher scalability. This chipset offers a simple, low-power, robust routing solution for wireless mesh networks.”

Key Features:

Fully bi-directional
Built-in unicast and broadcast capabilities
Farthest range in class
Fastest response in class – lowest and most predictable latency
Secure (frequency diversity) and resistant (space diversity) to multipath fading and propagation changes
No-knowledge, no-training installation and maintenance
No need for managing software
Instant addition and removal of nodes, with no network downtime
Practically unlimited number of hops, thousands of nodes per network
Highly scalable: robustness and network range increase when the network expands

Availability Evaluation kits (SX1211MESH-868 and SX1211MESH-915) are available immediately from Semtech.

Monday, May 17, 2010

LED lighting gets wireless links

Wireless lighting control system will involve each lighting fixture being wireless enabled

The move to LED technology will require a redesign of a lighting fixture, says Stephen Page, VP of Engineerig at Cyan Technology in Cambridge. At this redesign stage, for a very small incremental cost it is also possible to add wireless control to a lighting fixture, making home automation much more feaible.

Production ready wireless modules, design-in guides, and reference design lighting interface boards make this a straight forward process. Each light will then become a node on an ISM band mesh network. This is used because it is robust (self-healing) and easy to deploy (self-forming).

More on this at LED lighting gets wireless links, says Cyan - 17/05/2010 - Electronics Weekly

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

GE looks at ultra thin OLED lighting

Flexible paper-thin lighting sheets

GE Lighting has teamed up with Konica Minolta (KM) to develop sheets of OLED that could be as thin as a sheet of paper, potentially changing the design of homes and electronic systems dramatically when production starts next year.

“Lighting is becoming more than just a functional, utilitarian aspect of an environment,” says Zoltan Vamos, GE Lighting’s Budapest-based global general manager of lighting technology. “We’re still experimenting and imagining a future with OLEDs but we think our approach will allow us to apply light to literally any surface at a thickness of just a few sheets of paper.”
“OLED technology represents the biggest potential for new product development and advances in the lit environment,” said Simon Fisher, director of product design with LAPD Lighting Consultants in Lemsford, Hertfordshire. “The potential contained within flexible thin film lighting is enormous and holds the key to changing the way we design and coordinate lighting into our architecture and environments.”
Researchers and product development teams from GE Lighting in Cleveland and the Konica Minolta Technology Centre and GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, have been working together on OLED technology since 2007. "The time is right for OLEDs to emerge as an option for consumers, as new energy regulations taking hold around the world are impacting the design, use and disposal of lighting products,” said Vamos. “OLEDs are a gateway to limitless design possibilities that can keep pace with protocols today and anticipate those yet to come.”

What are OLEDs?
OLEDs are thin, organic materials sandwiched between two electrodes, which illuminate when an electrical charge is applied. In addition to widespread design capabilities, OLEDs have the potential to deliver dramatically improved levels of efficiency and environmental performance, while achieving the high quality of illumination found in traditional light-emitting diode (LED) systems.
KM was the first company to develop proprietary blue phosphorescent materials. In 2006, KM combined this material with multi-layer film design and innovative optical design technologies to successfully develop white OLEDs. KM’s experience making photosensitive materials and coatings has enabled the development of a highly productive roll-to-roll coating process using advanced barrier films that are considered indispensable for prolonging the life of OLED lighting. This approach, similar to newspaper printing, is expected to be less costly than the common evaporation method that forms films one by one on glass substrate. The few organic electronic products on the market today are made with more conventional batch processes and are relatively high in cost.
KM sees OLED lighting as one of its most promising new businesses. It began the construction of a new pilot line in November 2009 to establish a mass production capability. The line will be completed in the autumn of 2010. A roll-to-roll manufacturing infrastructure that enables high performance and low cost devices will allow a more widespread adoption of GE’s OLEDs when commercialization of the product—various sized panels of light (based on 75-mm X 150-mm or 3-inch x 6-inch)—starts in 2011.
“OLEDs push the boundaries of how we think about lighting,” says Vamos. “For consumers, the advent of LEDs and the emergence of OLEDs means the next five years will likely bring the most fast-paced rate of change in how we light our homes and commercial spaces. We’re in the midst of a lighting revolution.”

OLED lighting patent filings see explosive growth since 2000

Growth coincides with increasing UK Government funding of OLED lighting

OLED lighting patents filings are growing rapidly with more than 90% of filings appearing since 2000 according to the latest OLED Lighting: A review of the patent landscape report from cintelliq. This recent study identifies more than 1,800 patents focused on white OLED for lighting applications.

According to the report, the traditional lighting companies account for 22% of the patents filed, closely followed by imaging/optics companies, and OLED technology providers.

Analysing the patents filed show six main innovation clusters, device structures, materials, applications, outcoupling, manufacturing, ancillary with the top three accounting for 67% of the patents. Several organisations, for example Kodak and Konica Minolta, are present in the top three of more than one cluster

The report is the first of its kind to clearly identify in details the filing strategies of the leading OLED lighting developers. "Looking forward, the explosive growth in OLED lighting patents is set to continue over the next 5 years. Government funding, Government legislation and commercialisation will help drive OLED lighting into homes," said Craig Cruikshank, lead analyst at cintelliq.

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