Introduction to IDT Wireless Power IC Solutions (Inductive Charging)

Hi, my name is Eric Itakura, I'm the Director of Marketing for IDT's Analog and Power Division. Today we're going to be taking a look at IDT's offerings in the area of wireless power.

 

We'll start off by taking a look at the market. We'll then look into a high-level view of the technology, and then we'll get into IDT's offerings in this area.

 

Wireless power offers the promise of charging anywhere and everywhere without the need for cords, wires, or device specific chargers, simply by placing your device onto a charging mat or charging surface. This is a relatively new technology to the market. It's forecasted to grow very quickly, with iSuppli forecasting over 800 million transmitters and receivers shipped in 2015 with a value of over $24 billion. Today, you can find products supporting wireless power from such manufacturers as Motorola, Samsung, and LG, just to name a few companies.

 

Now, standardization is very critical in the early stages of technology to ensure a great user experience. The wireless power consortium, or WPC, has created a Qi standard to ensure interoperability between different devices bearing the Qi logo. There over a double hundred members of the WPC today.

 

The types of products that benefit from wireless power include mobile handsets, tablets, portable media players, digital still cameras, and on the transmitter, or charging surface side, there's a huge number of applications from aftermarket charging pads to charging surfaces that get implemented in places such as hotels, coffee shops, airports, or your automobile.

 

On this slide, we see a variety of different application examples. Some of these products are already out on the market, such as the iPhone chargers you see there. On the lower left, you can see a charging table in an airport, and on the upper left, you see charging coming to automobiles. So you have a charging surface in the middle of your console, and you'll be able to place your devices there to be charged.

 

Now, let's take a look at a high level at some of the technology and technology components.

 

Now, to start out, to be clear, the wireless power consortium, and the Qi standard and IDT are focusing on a type of wireless power called inductive charging. This involves power transfer over short distances using a transmitter coil and a receiver coil that then get coupled together.

 

There are two elements to a wireless power system on the charging side. We start out with the wireless power transmitter. What the wireless part transmitter does is convert a DC input voltage into an AC power that gets then transmitted through a transmitter coil to a compatible coil on the receiver side. On the receiver side, the AC power gets converted to a DC voltage, and then gets stepped down to a lower DC voltage for inputting into a battery charger IC or charge management IC. There's one-way communication supported in the Qi standard from the receiver to the transmitter to communicate messages such as increase power, decrease power, or stop transmitting power if it's fully charged.

 

Now, let's take a look at IDT's offerings starting with the IDTP9030 wireless power transmitter.

 

On the slide, you see a block diagram of the different major blocks within our transmitter solution. What we're bringing to market is a few really big innovations that set ourselves apart from today's existing offerings. The first significant thing is that we are the industry's first true single-chip transmitter solution. That means that we don't require any other ICs, just a set of asset components that then enable the transmitting solution. Now, we are designed to support the WPC Qi standard, which is a 5 watt standard, but we also have options to transmit power above that to up to 7.5 watts in proprietary modes. We also support a wider voltage range than the Qi standard requires. Instead of 18 to 20 volts, you can see in the table, we offer 10 to 20 volts, so an application such as the automobile where you have 12 or 16 volt supply, and we can also support the lower voltage input. We also have other options that are enabled in our device when you use our transmitter and receiver together, including such features as programmable security, 64-bit encryption and two-way communication. So in addition to the communication channel going from receiver to transmitter, we also offer an option for the transmitter to communicate with the receiver. This can be used for authentication purposes, to name one application. We also offer multilevel foreign object detection. Foreign object detection is used to detect metallic objects that should not be on the transmitter, and that you don't want to transmit power to. On the transmitter by itself, if you use it with any other Qi-compatible device, we offer two levels of foreign object detection: Smaller objects and larger object detection.  Depending upon how you want to configure our transmitter, you can either choose to still transfer power, if you have a small object on the transmitter, or you can choose to completely stop power or not initiate power transfer if you have a larger device on the transmitter. We focus on high efficiency on both the transmitter and the receiver side. On our transmitter side, the DC to AC conversion happens at an efficiency of over 90 percent. 

 

If we look at IDT’s solution compared to one of the leading competitors, second-generation solution, we can see that IDT offers a true single-chip transmitter, and the ability to offer, again, over the 5 watts required by Qi, up to 7.5 watts. Now, if we take a look at the fourth item in the table, this is what we call multilingual, or multimode support. And what this means is that in addition to the Qi standard, we can support proprietary protocols. One example of a proprietary protocol that's out there in the market today would be power map. We can also support other standards that are defined by end customers where they want to add unique features that the Qi standard isn't currently define in their specifications. I mentioned the multilayer FOD, back channel communication and authentication, and on the next slide, I'm going to get into the implications and the positive benefits of having a true single-layer, single-chip transmitter.

 

If we look on this slide, you can see actual pictures of the evaluation kits for both IDT as well as a leading competitor. And you can see that by having a true single-chip solution, we're able to reduce the application area from 1800 mm2 to 360 mm2, so there's a big reduction, 80 percent reduction in your board footprint, your solution area. If we look at the number of components, we’ve reduced the number of components from the competitors 91 down to 30 components. So this also helps you reduce area, it helps you reduce cost. And the competitor's solution uses nine different ICs to enable the solution. IDT, again, requires a single-chip. All this results in a total solution BoM cost, this includes coil, transmitter IC, and all these different components. We can cut that system BoM in half.

 

Now let's take a look at our wireless power receiver, the IDTP9020.

 

The IDTP9020, you can see the block diagram there on the right. So this is again, designed to meet the Qi standard, but we also, again, support proprietary modes to enable power delivery up to 7.5 watts. This higher power means that you can support more power-hungry devices, or you can enable faster charging modes. Again, we focused on efficiency on a receiver side as well, so we have high efficiency synchronous buck to do that final DC to DC conversion. This results in a total efficiency if you use the IDT transmitter and IDT receiver of over 70 percent. We estimate 73 to 75 percent, when you use our solutions together. We also offer the option for integrated USB adapter switches, so for the USB charging path, you can eliminate some external components by using the integrated USB switches within our device. If you use our receiver along with our transmitter, we enable two different, two additional levels of foreign object detection, FOD3 and FOD4. It gives you additional levels of protection for cases where you have a valid receiver on your transmitter, but there's still a piece of stray metal or a parasitic metal that either is there to begin with when you put your device on your transmitter, or in the case where you're already transferring power, but that device gets inserted between the transmitter and the receiver. As with the transmitter, we also have options for security, encryption and two-way communication.

 

Again, looking at IDT's solution against leading competitor’s second-generation solution, we offer an embedded micro control. This allows us to offer a lot of the value of features that I mentioned. Again, on the receiver side, we support multiple modes, and with our solution, you can dynamically switch between the modes. So if you program your transmitter and your receiver to recognize the Qi standard as well as  two additional proprietary modes, when a device supporting these different modes is applied onto our transmitter, we can recognize what type of protocol is involved, and we can then transfer in that particular protocol. So if you put a Qi device on our transmitter, it will recognize the Qi standard and transmit power using that protocol, as well as other proprietary protocols that are designed into the transmitter. I mentioned about the additional levels of foreign object detection, high-efficiency buck converter, and looking at the second to the last item in the table, we also support integrated current loading functions. So instead of having an external resistor to depend upon your current being limited that way, we offer that function internal to our chip.

 

To wrap things up, we offer a huge amount of innovation in this new and exciting area. On the transmitter side, once again, we offer the industry's first true single-chip transmitter, with the ability to support not only the Qi standard, but other proprietary protocols to be able to deliver higher power, 50 percent more power, 7.5 watts, as well as significantly reducing board space, the number of components, and total solution BoM costs. On the receiver side once again, we deliver the option for higher power, up to 7.5 watts, the ability to support multiple modes using a single receiver, as well as the ultrahigh efficiency which gives you 73 to 75 percent efficiency using our Qi devices together.

 

Again, you get additional synergies by using our transmitter and receiver together, including the option for a back channel communication, two-way authentication, and 64-bit encryption. So this is just an overview of our devices. We're very excited to be bringing these to the market. 

 

If you have any questions, or want to see more about our solutions, please visit us at IDT.com, or our URL wirelesspowerbyIDT.com. Thank you.