Author | Cheng Qian
Edit | Heart
Zhidong reported on April 22 that Qorvo, a global connectivity and power solution provider, recently held a media day, where Lin Jianfu, senior marketing manager of Qorvo's Asia-Pacific wireless connectivity business unit, Zhang Yichi, senior account manager of Qorvo, and Lei Yimin, senior account manager of Qorvo, demonstrated Qorvo's innovative achievements in mobile communications, infrastructure, power management, Internet of Things, automotive electronics, consumer electronics and other application fields.
In the field of wireless communications, Qorvo offers a complete radio frequency module (RF Front-End). Module, FEM) and Filters solutions, which can combine the advantages of low power consumption and small packages, in the field of motor drives, Zhang Yichi revealed that Qorvo integrates high-performance MCUs and analog front-end (AFE) into a single chip, simplifying the foundation of the system architecture, creating the industry's first BMS solution that can support the precise management of up to 20 strings of cells on a single chip; Software and complete mechatronic structural solutions create Sensor Fusion, which is already used in a wide range of applications, including smartphones, AR/VR, automotive, wearables, and smart homes.
Qorvo's products are used in a wide range of applications, including mobile communications, infrastructure, power management, Internet of Things, automotive and consumer electronics.
1. The three key innovations of Wi-Fi 7 include Qorvo's solution that combines low power consumption and small package
From Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 7, Wi-Fi 7 plays an important role in its bandwidth and throughput, which leads to more applications, such as intelligent infrastructure, high-definition monitor equipment, AR/VR and other headsets, smart factory applications in Industry 4.0, and Internet of Vehicles.
Jianfu Lin, senior marketing manager of Qorvo's Wireless Connectivity Business Unit in Asia Pacific, said that this is why many people are beginning to talk about how Wi-Fi 7 can break through the bottleneck of these applications and connect the entire industry.
There are three key innovations in the Wi-Fi 7 standard, the first is the modulation method, from the previous Wi-Fi 6 1024 QAM to the current 4K QAM, Lin explained that the higher the QAM, the larger the amount of data that can be transmitted in the same organization.
In addition, Wi-Fi 7's 320MHz frequency band is theoretically twice as large as Wi-Fi 6, meaning it can transmit a larger amount of data.
Wi-Fi 7 also has a killer technology called MLO, which supports the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz frequency bands.
Lin Jianfu mentioned that in addition to the transmission rate and throughput, the biggest improvement of Wi-Fi 7 is that it will try to improve the efficiency of Wi-Fi connection, so that data can be transmitted without duplication or waste of time, and the available transmission frequency band can be quickly found.
Wi-Fi 7 brings many technological breakthroughs, but it also places higher demands on the RF front-end, such as requiring more front-end modules (FEMs), achieving at least -47dB EVM, compatibility with digital predistortion (DPD), efficient use of discontinuous spectrum, and enhanced filtering to improve signal isolation.
Qorvo does PA in two ways, linear PA and non-linear PA. Linear PA ensures that it can be predicted within the specified operating range. Among the non-linear PA solutions, Qorvo uses a non-linear (non-Linear) FEM+DPD solution, which not only solves the EVM problem, but also improves power efficiency.
For example, a tri-band 12-stream router using Qorvo's nonlinear FEMs is expected to save about 6 watts of power, Lin said. In addition, Qorvo offers a range of filters for Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 that are designed for different radio bands, from U-NII-1 to U-NII-8. ”
He introduced Qorvo's Wi-Fi 7-compliant Front End Module devices and bulk acoustic wave (BAW) filters covering the entire 5GHz (UNII1-3) and 6GHz (UNII5-8) range. Qorvo's FEM modules are available in both linear and nonlinear formats. The Linear Wi-Fi 7 FEM features excellent Linearity with low power consumption, small package, and high integration, while the Non-Linear front-end RF module significantly reduces power consumption while maximizing PAE.
This innovative nonlinear front-end RF module solution uses digital predistortion compensation to achieve performance comparable to linear FEMs and with higher efficiency with little to no processor power consumption.
Second, pointing to the changes in the motor drive market, the two series of BMS have been mass-produced
Qorvo has three main categories of power products, the first is the full line of Active-Semi semiconductors acquired by Qorvo in 2019, mainly including power management ICs, motor driver ICs, and BMS chips, and the second category is Qorvo's acquisition of United Silicon Carbide in 2021 to expand the product line into the field of silicon carbide. The third category is software solutions, which Qorvo has launched so far are mainly based on QSPICE, which is an analog and mixed-signal simulation solution.
Yichi Zhang, senior account manager at Qorvo, said that the motor drive market is gradually shifting from traditional AC motors and gasoline engines to more advanced motor systems such as BLDC (brushless DC motors) and PMSM (permanent magnet synchronous motors).
In this context, how to ensure the safety, stability and service life of batteries has become the focus of attention in the industry. Qorvo addresses the power, protection and control needs of industrial, enterprise, consumer and automotive sectors with a broad portfolio of products such as power management chips (PMICs), power loss protection (PLP), DC/DC regulators, battery management, intelligent motor control and silicon carbide products.
At the same time, Qorvo introduced QSPICE software for analog and mixed-signal simulation. Qorvo Power products provide low-power, compact and efficient solutions for the industry.
Specifically, Qorvo combines high-performance MCUs and analog front-ends (AFEs) into a single chip, enabling a BMS solution that supports precise management of up to 20 strings of cells on a single chip.
Qorvo BMS chips are already in production in two series: the PAC2214x and PAC2514x, both of which are single-chip solutions. Among them, the PAC2214x has a built-in Arm Cortex-M0 MCU with a frequency of 50MHz and a flash capacity of 32KB, while the PAC2514x uses an Arm Cortex-M4 MCU with a frequency of 150MHz and a flash capacity of 128KB.
At the same time, Qorvo's BMS chips optimize and manage battery efficiency and longevity through six functions: charge and discharge management, short-circuit protection, over-current and over-voltage protection, battery monitoring, battery balancing, and low-power control.
"Qorvo's single-chip battery management solution uses hybrid digital-analog technology with integrated controller, storage and communication interfaces to provide charge/discharge control and monitoring for battery packs of up to 20 cells connected in series," said Zhang. With abundant software and hardware development resources, this solution can greatly reduce the development cycle of customers, reduce product costs, and improve product reliability and flexibility. ”
He concluded that Qorvo BMS has four major advantages: first, high integration, its 2-in-1 chip can achieve a smaller size and more concise design, second, it can shorten the customer development cycle on a 2-in-1 basis, third, it can provide better cost compared to discrete solutions, and fourth, the single-chip solution helps improve the reliability of the entire system, and the failure rate of the single chip is low enough to make the whole system more reliable.
3. Sensor fusion integrated structure solution, Sensor Fusion subverts traditional button interaction
In the digital era, being able to provide a better user experience and more intelligent human-computer interaction is becoming the core demand of electronic devices. Qorvo's Sensor Fusion provides a complete solution that integrates MEMS sensors, ASIC chips, software and mechatronic architecture.
Qorvo's Sensor Fusion product consists of two parts, one of which is a MEMS-based sensor chip that converts force into an electrical signal. There is also a CMOS ASIC chip, which is mainly used to process the analog voltage signal converted by the sensor, including signal amplification, analog-to-digital conversion and internal integrated algorithms, based on a total solution provided by Qorvo, the end user can obtain a quantified force signal value.
"Sensor Fusion solutions are unaffected by most environmental factors, can be used on any material, and offer high accuracy, high sensitivity, high linearity and ultra-low power consumption to transform traditional touch buttons into sleek, intelligent and reliable user interfaces," said Yimin Lei, senior account manager at Qorvo. ”
Sensor Fusion solutions can be used in a wide range of applications such as smartphones, AR/VR, automotive, wearables, and smart homes. In the case of smartphones, it can be applied to functions such as edge touch, 3D touch, and wake-on-screen. In vehicle design, Sensor Fusion combines pressure sensor technology with smart surfaces to prevent accidental touches. In wearables, the technology overcomes the challenges posed by traditional capacitive touch and swipe control.
Conclusion: Open a new era of wireless communication and human-computer interaction
Qorvo has built an extensive product matrix that has been used in white goods, consumer electronics, industrial, Internet of Things, automotive electronics and other fields to meet the market demand for high-power, energy-efficient and high-performance systems.
In addition, Qorvo's previous technology accumulation and layout based on its market judgment and trends in wireless communications, human-computer interaction, motor drives, and other fields enable it to quickly create high-availability products in response to market trends.