hf/rf ZONE Products for the week of December 22, 2003
Agilent Technologies Says . . .
HSDL-3220: Small, Fast Infrared Transceiver For Portables
Compact device offers high transmission speed for transferring
megapixel images, MP3 files
Agilent Technologies Inc. announced the industry's smallest fast infrared (FIR) transceiver for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and digital cameras. With a height of only 2.5 mm, the Agilent HSDL-3220 features the lowest profile of any medium infrared (MIR) or FIR transceiver on the market, providing mobile phone manufacturers greater flexibility when designing clamshell and ultra-slim handsets.
"As consumer demand increases for the newer megapixel camera phones, handset manufacturers need IR transceivers that support higher transmission speeds, extend battery life, and are compact enough to fit in constrained spaces," said Kee Hane Ngoh, operations manager of Agilent's Infrared Products Operation. "Our new transceiver meets these requirements. Its ability to quickly transfer high-resolution photos or MP3 files at four megabits per second is increasing the popularity of wireless infrared transfers."
The HSDL-3220 transceiver supports the IrDA (Infrared Data Association) low power specification and operates at transmission speeds ranging from 9.6 kb/s to 4.0 Mb/s. It is capable of operating with logic levels as low as 1.8V and from power sources ranging from 2.7V to 3.6V. This allows the transceiver to work with today's low-power microprocessor chipsets and ASICs that operate at 1.8V or greater signal levels, and in mobile products operating from a single lithium-ion cell. The device consumes only 70 nA in shutdown mode.
The HSDL-3220 IrDA-compatible IR transceiver can offer improved performance
and increased battery life in applications ranging from PDAs and mobile
phones to digital still and video cameras and medical data-collection devices.
Its small footprint package -- 2.5 mm (height) by 8 mm (width) by 3 mm (depth)
-- is pin-compatible with the Agilent HSDL-3211 1.15 Mb/s MIR transceiver,
making it easy to update existing handheld device form-factors with higher
performance infrared connectivity. The new transceiver module is IEC 825-1
Class 1 eye safe.
The HSDL-3220 also supports infrared financial management (IrFM) and other
data transfers with a link distance of up to 50 cm. The IrFM point-and-pay
profile is designed to enable users to perform wireless financial transactions
between a mobile device such as a cellular phone or PDA and a point-of-sale
terminal or ATM equipped with an IR port. It supports the use of most financial
instruments, including credit and debit cards, and provides digital receipts.
analogZONE Says . . .
The market for infrared transceivers is huge and is not getting any smaller. And the demand is for smaller size and faster communications speeds. This week another transceiver was launched -- from Vishay -- which is smaller than this product from Agilent but which is far from achieving the speeds claimed here. The Agilent part is 2.5 mm x 8.0 mm x 3.0 mm (height x width/length x depth) while the Vishay part is 1.9 mm x 6.0 mm x 3.1 mm. In speed terms the Vishay part claims 115 kbit/s whereas here with the HSDL-3220 we have 4.0 Mbit/s, fully compliant with the IrDA 1.4 physical layer low-power specification from 9.6 kbit/s to 4.0 Mbit/s offering a link distance of up to 0.5 m and allows for the light loss of using cosmetic windows. The part is also a direct pin-for-pin replacement for Agilent's HSDL-3211, which was rated up to 1.15 Mbit/s, allowing OEMs to retain an existing form factor but offering higher speeds.
The part is designed to operate from 2.7 V to 3.6 V with the I/O at any level from 1.8 V up to the rail being used. The supply idle current is a typical 1.8 mA which drops to 100 nA in shutdown. The EMI performance is said to be excellent and it is IEC 825-class 1 eye safe.
The data sheet gives guidance for a couple of useful applications for mobile phones and PDAs but the half-duplex part will find sockets in many, many different applications, including portable devices such as phones, pagers, PDAs, printers, medical equipment, data collection systems, and security systems.
The HSDL-3220 is in production in its miniature lead-free package and is priced under $2.00 in moderate volumes.