The latest development trend of green semiconductor technology

Green power technology is an extremely broad topic in the industry. For a long time, there are very few electronic design fields that are rash to deal with power consumption. In fact, most designers strive to minimize power consumption and optimize their products. However, as the concept of “green power” emerges along with “smart grid”, we find that this concept covers not only power consumption. In fact it is a conceptual change of design community and end user. At the most basic level, "green" means energy efficiency. Therefore, in today's world, which is increasingly dominated by battery operated devices and the "grid" power supply is limited, consumers have become concerned about their power consumption (see the cross section of the house in Figure 1).

At the same time, designers urgently need to improve all aspects of battery life, function combinations, speed, accuracy, communications, and user actionable information. Unfortunately, few products today provide users with more intelligent feedback or detailed information on the actual power consumption of a particular device or product. This evolution has brought greater challenges to designers. The user expects more and more functions, but at the same time it must reduce power consumption and costs. So, the key question has become "what can designers do to provide leading performance when there are often conflicting variations in design formulas?"

HVAC Control Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) Control, Security System Security System/Kitchen Appliances Kitchen Appliances, White Goods White Goods, Lighting Control Lighting Control/Sprinkler&Irrigation Systems Sprinkler & Sprinkler Systems, Energy Management Energy Management Specifically, how do you add Traditional power-intensive functions such as communications while reducing total power consumption? Or, how can you measure power and integrate information without power consumption yet accurately? The only realistic answer is to study every aspect of the design. Currently, progress has been made in the areas of lighting/lighting, microprocessors, and display panels. However, there are many components to choose from in the metrology and communications fields, but very little power is provided to provide ultra-low power consumption (less than 1 mA in some cases). Many advanced products have moving elements, so the impact of motor drive energy efficiency quickly becomes a field that can be drastically improved. Communication, metrology, and electromechanical systems provide system engineers with an excellent opportunity to solidly improve functionality, power consumption, and overall system intelligence.

The communications infrastructure is at the heart of Green Energy. Power users and electricity providers need detailed and enforceable information in their hands, and a fully connected ecosystem in the HAN and NAN is essential. In many places, Power Line Communication (PLC) solutions have become the preferred solution for high-reliability communications between network nodes. The AMIS-49587 PLC modem has become the standard for moderate data rate PLC communications, while ON Semiconductor continues to develop more products in this area. The baud rate of next-generation PLC transceivers has increased dramatically while power consumption remains at the level of existing solutions.

Watchdog Watchdog, Power Regulator Power Regulator, Charge Pump Charge Pump, Interface Interface, Logic & Registers Logic and Buffer SLA Speed ​​and Load Angle (SLA), Stall Detect Stall Detection, Positioner Positioner, Translator Converter, Current PWM Regulator Current, PWM Regulator, Pre-driver Pre-driver, Driver Driver, In all products All products include this feature In the "green energy" field, wireless solutions are becoming more common. Surprisingly, the main power consumption of the radio frequency (RF) transceiver is in the receiving part, and digital signal processing technology is needed to manage this special protocol stack. Some system architectures require a variety of protocol stacks, and may also require complex encryption algorithms. The "over the air" update further complicates the requirements for RF transceivers. Companies such as ON Semiconductor are developing next-generation radio solutions designed to address the power consumption issues of the physical layer and the protocol stack at the same time, thereby advancing respective technologies and adaptations. Certain wireless communication standards are evolving and will reduce the load on the signal processing chain while maintaining the flexibility and bandwidth of integration. Finally, system designers are responsible for optimizing the protocol complexity, work cycle (sleep, sniff, launch, receive, etc.).

We also noticed that the current consumption of the receiving mode has been steadily declining from generation to generation due to the promotion of certain architectural-level improvements in more advanced semiconductor technologies and received signal chains. Most "smart grid" or "green power" scenarios do not have much data movement inside their particular network, but there are also some data movements at lower carrier frequencies. This provides an advantage because the frequency of the solution is lower, not only reducing power consumption, but also improving signal propagation. The advent of private radios is unavoidable because power requirements force designers to abandon general-purpose radios to avoid excessive programmability and power loads from parasitic inactive circuits.

Technologies in the field of power metering design have always been driven by traditional AC meters. These traditional cases are often large system-on-chip (SoC) components with embedded microcontrollers. One of the key drawbacks of this type of solution is the microcontroller. It sounds counterintuitive, but every microcontroller (per core, if applicable) executes only one instruction at a time. Some instructions require more than one system frequency cycle, introducing a random element to execute the code. For example, you can try to perform some kind of software function on your computer with a resolution better than 1 ms. You may be surprised to find that even a processor that uses multi-GHz is actually It is also impossible to maintain a periodic event without some kind of precise timing hardware intervention.

The latest development trend of green semiconductor technology The by-product of this problem is the inevitable error at the same frequency. SoC-based metering components use an innovative and often proprietary solution to this problem. The natural evolution of "green power" metering will be to optimize the metering components in terms of accuracy, bill of materials (BOM) complexity, and power consumption. This evolution can best be achieved using dedicated full synchronization and optimal sampling accuracy. This ensures that post processing is minimized and has a significant impact on the power consumption of the final solution. ON Semiconductor is developing next-generation metrology products with fully synchronous sampling and signal paths that provide a complete metering solution with power consumption less than 1 mW. This provides designers with extremely high integration flexibility with minimal impact on power budgets. Real-time power consumption information not only provides end-users with executable data that may affect usage behavior, but also provides system designers with valuable diagnostic feedback. An unexpected by-product of this degree of optimization is the reduction in silicon area; this component is significantly more traditional than the microprocessor due to the large area occupied and the code “flash” read-only memory (ROM). Smaller and cheaper.

Historically, motor control has been constrained by a fundamental limitation: Your design must take into account the worst conditions of load, temperature, and physical degradation of the electromechanical system. The end result is that the system always consumes the power under the worst conditions. In recent years advanced motor control products such as the AMIS-305xx and AMIS-3062x directly feed back the speed and load angle (SLA) of the motor (see Figure 2 - motor controller product function summary). This makes it possible to know in real time what load force is on the motor and precisely adjust the drive current to correspond to the load force. These motor controllers provide designers with an embedded adaptive motor control algorithm that ensures that the electromechanical system operates at peak efficiency at all times. The cost of this technology has dropped significantly in recent months, and when considering the overall BOM, the cost of integrating advanced motor control solutions with sensorless feedback is now comparable to traditional solutions. This allows designers to substantially improve power consumption and heat dissipation without affecting or minimally affecting the total cost of the system. ON Semiconductor has integrated the same SLA technology in its new series of high-current stepper motor drivers, so the potential benefits in terms of energy efficiency will be considerable. The AMIS-3042x family of stepper motor drivers incorporates SLA technology, high-resolution micro-stepping control, and advanced MOSFET technology. BOM cost is low, providing unmatched energy efficiency and value (see Figure 3 - AMIS- 3042x block diagram).

The future of “green power” is to provide richly-functional connected components that can self-monitor and provide users with high-value operational information. The fully optimized Application Specific Standard Product (ASSP) will be able to be used to develop next-generation electronic products that emphasize the total energy efficiency of the system. Optimizing the components that consume the most power in the design is no longer a must. Each system must be extended down to optimize at the transistor level to provide the best possible balance in terms of energy efficiency, cost, and performance. Wireless products will continue to evolve, and the physical layer power consumption will be lower, but the most substantial energy efficiency improvements will be obtained in the protocol stack. The protocol stack will optimally balance programmability and fixed logic functions, simplifying the protocol stack. Integration in specific applications. Power metering elements are also changing to meet new market goals with the best accuracy, low cost sensors, and greatly reduced functionality. Next-generation metering solutions will no longer rely on the main controller to process power data. Motor drives use advanced features such as motor speed and load angle (SLA) feedback to provide the most appropriate drive current, providing an important opportunity to reduce power consumption. This is especially true in high-power/high-current motors that can save several amps of current consumption. The only thing that can be identified in the "green power" field is that designers will continue to push the limits of their design's performance to provide end customers with a higher level of performance and energy efficiency.