Low Power Use for Mobile Devices

Low Power Use for Mobile Devices:

by Anusha

As the usages of handheld devices are increased now-a-days, the consumers need larger display screens, more memory and especially the ability to play high definition video files. If the users of mobiles such as tablets, smart phones and notebooks want to share data from on device to another, a great deal of time and effort are needed.

One of the possible methods of high speed data transmission is Giga Bits per Second (GBPS) wireless communication, operating over 60 gigahertz (GHz) frequency band.  Already some of the commercial applications are available for streaming full-HD videos by using 60 GHz band. But mobile applications have not been developed yet because 60 GHz radio frequency (RF) circuit consumes 100 milli watt of DC power.

Professor Chul Soon Park from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and his research team developed a low power radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC). It has an energy-efficient modulator performing both amplification and modulation and also it contains a sensitivity improved receiver employing high gain boosting demodulator.

The research team said that the RFIC draws a little power of 67mW in 60 GHz frequency band. In that 31mW to send data and 36mW for receive data. And the salient feature of this IC is it is small enough to mount on a smart phones or notebooks, requires only one chip (chip length, width, height are 1mm. Also it has an antenna (4x5x1 mm) for receiving and sending data.

Professor Park, Director of the Intelligent Radio Engineering Center at KAIST, gave an upbeat assessment of the potential of RFIC for future applications:

“The IC what we have developed is a low-power 60-Ghz RF chip with transmission speed of 10.7gigabits per second. In tests, we were able to stream full-HD videos from one mobile to another without a cable. Our chip can also be installed on mobile devices or on camera for virtual connecting with other and large data transmission.”