原创 Reliable ultra-low power IP for wearable devices

Wearable wireless devices and healthcare device ICs will be a huge market in the next few years, with devices like fitness activity trackers, human body characteristic trackers, mobile body area network devices (MBANs), and home monitoring devices gaining popularity in the market.

This is backed up by research from industry analysts – in mobile healthcare, wearable wireless device revenues will grow to exceed $6 billion in 2018, dominated by sports, fitness and wellness.  “Fitness activity trackers are quickly gaining popularity in the market. Different from other more single-use or event-centric devices, activity trackers monitor multiple characteristics of the human body including movement, calories burned, body temperature, and sleep tracking,” says senior analyst at ABI Research, Adarsh Krishnan.

The second largest market—home monitoring devices—which, primarily target the growing elderly care market, is also expected to witness strong growth over the next five years with overall device revenue growing at CAGR exceeding 39%. This segment is also anticipated to see the development of cross-over devices such as personal emergency response devices supplemented with activity tracker features.

For the communications in these devices, standards-based wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and IEEE 802.15.4 will dominate, and over the next five years, Bluetooth Smart will lead in shipments and Wi-Fi will lead in revenues in the healthcare device IC market – the overall market is expected to exceed $100 million by 2018, according to ABI Research.

Markets for Bluetooth Smart devices include healthcare, sports and fitness, security, and home entertainment. According to industry analyst IMS Research, Bluetooth Smart will be present in 35 percent of all wireless sports and fitness monitoring devices (like pedometers and heart-rate monitors that run on small batteries) shipped this year, and in over 70 percent by 2018. Adding a sports and fitness monitor to a mobile phone can enhance the user experience via downloaded apps. Fitness parameters such as heart rate can be tracked more easily this way.

In home entertainment, integration of this technology in remote controls can add functionality not possible with infrared technology – such as non-line-of-sight control, voice control, gesture control, touch control and motion detection. With these additional features, device manufacturers can create a richer control environment for consumers, such as in interactive smart TVs.

To address this market, Silicon Vision Technologies Ltd and Mindtree Ltd. have partnered to bring to market a state-of-the-art, integrated RF-baseband-stack intellectual property (IP) solution for Bluetooth Smart technology. The integrated solution has already been proven with a lead customer in Asia, and will enable wireless personal area networks (WPAN) that rely on extremely low power consumption wireless connectivity.

The two companies have successfully integrated Silicon Vision’s RF PHY (radio) intellectual property for Bluetooth low energy (BLE), with Mindtree’s product-proven, fully-qualified baseband (link layer) and low-footprint protocol stack. This integrated solution is compliant with Bluetooth Low Energy 4.0 (single mode) specification with a highly competitive power consumption figure, enabling system-on-a-chip (SoC) designers to deliver power and area efficient chips for BLE using qualified and proven silicon over several nodes, including TSMC and SMIC.

The combination of Silicon Vision and Mindtree pairs the unique licensable RF intellectual property solution that supports Bluetooth low energy from Silicon Vision with Mindtree’s leading independent IP for BLE baseband, protocol stack and profiles. Mindtree’s investment in BLE technology spans more than 100 person-years, with several design wins and customer products shipping in volume already.  Silicon Vision adds a silicon-proven RF-PHY solution for BLE, a strong team with ultra-low power RF expertise, and design services ability to quickly scale and meet customer requirements across foundries.

This will help realize the vision of millions of consumer electronics products to operate wirelessly for months or even years on tiny cell batteries.  Indeed the market demand for wearable devices and wellness reporting devices will be huge as consumer expectations and habits adapt as a result of the ubiquitous availability of mobile technology, and more and more demand is placed on portable and remote devices to continuously provide vital information to those who need it most.