8 March 2007 -- Abingdon-based Toumaz Technology is close to shipping its low-power short-range wireless transceiver chip.
“We are putting it on to the development boards and will be delivering it in March,” Toumaz COO and Co-Founder Keith Errey told EW.
The chip implements a proprietary protocol and is designed to be used in disposable medical devices which require a personal area network (PAN).
The chip is for both base station (likely to be a PDA) and sensor node with up to six nodes talking to the base station.
The firm specialises in low-power CMOS design and it claims the chip can send 50kbit/s continuously at 1V for 2.5mA.
“We challenged our designers to save every last microamp,” said Errey. “There are significant parts of it running sub-threshold, particularly at the input.”
Each chip has six sensor inputs which are register-configurable in electrical characteristics to suit sensors including: EEG pick-ups, accelerometers, thermometers, or amperometric (blood glucose) sensors, said Errey.
A multiplexer and 10-bit ADC combined with analogue and digital domain filters prepare the signal for transmission, with a low-power 8051 handling configuration and available to run the user’s application.
“We chose the 8051 because development kits and tools are easily available, don’t cost a fortune, and our customers don’t have to pay royalties - which is good for disposable silicon,” explained Errey.
The chip has 2x32kbyte of RAM for programme and data memory plus hardware MAC layer and protocol control.
What features less in this first chip is Toumaz’ own exclusive intellectual property: tightly-coupled digital control of a reconfigurable sub-threshold CMOS analogue chain, dubbed AMx. “Rather than going straight into an AMx process, we went with the 8051,” said Errey. “In discussion with customers, we will be looking to implement the mixed signal co-processor in future products.”
The 4x4mm die taped-out on Infineon’s 130nm RF CMOS process in November 2006 “less than 18 months after initial specification”, said the firm. “It met all the targeted accuracy and performance parameters in initial functional testing.”
--Steve Bush--
