Austria-based fabless semiconductor company specializing in high-performance wireless technology, Panthronics AG adds support for the Renesas Synergy microcontroller family to its new NFC wireless charging reference design. The move will enable faster development and easier prototyping of new wireless charging systems.
Emerging as the most popular standards-based solution for portable and wearable devices such as earbuds, stylus, smart watches, and others, NFC wireless charging can be implemented with a small antenna at a low bill-of-materials cost. The charging circuit supports data communication between the charger and the charged device.
The new Panthronics reference design uses the company’s breakthrough PTX100W NFC Poller to achieve the industry’s best wireless charging performance. The reference design’s circuit includes Renesas Synergy MCU on the poller (charger) and on the Listener (device) sides to manage dynamically the charging protocol.
The move will enable developers working with a Synergy platform MCU to use the Panthronics SDK out-of-the-box, eliminating the software integration element of the development process and accelerating time-to-market.
The Panthronics reference design is a complete system solution, providing hardware and software for both the PTX100W-based poller and the listener (device). The design provides a ready-made template for wireless charging, which means that the remaining design task for the manufacturer is simply to test and validate the operation of the charger’s and device’s antennas.
Users of the reference design can take advantage of the comprehensive technical support available through the Panthronics support portal online, which provides access to engineering support provided by Renesas as well as Panthronics.
Markus Vomfelde, MCU Business Development Manager of Renesas, said: ‘A handful of the world’s biggest OEMs have proved NFC wireless charging is successful in wearable and small portable devices. The time is now right for NFC standards-based wireless charging to enter the mainstream market in consumer, medical and industrial devices. The mass-market Synergy platform MCUs are already very widely used in these markets. Now Panthronics is enabling mainstream OEMs to take advantage of this valuable technology more quickly and more easily when they base their charger designs on a Synergy MCU.’
Superior wireless charging performance
Based on the PTX100W, which implements an innovative sine-wave RF system architecture, the Panthronics reference design offers superior performance and features including:
- 1W received power at the listener, twice that of the nearest competitor, to give faster and more convenient battery charging
- High tolerance of antenna displacement, giving great design flexibility and consistent high charging performance
- Simple antenna matching circuitry to allow for optimal Transmit/Receive antenna matching with little development effort
Panthronics fully supports the new reference design with hardware schematics and Gerber files for both the poller and listener circuits, and separate SDKs for the poller and listener. The SDKs include NFC protocol software, and firmware for controlling charging operations.
The reference design has passed full system validation tests of both the hardware and software. Panthronics provides a world-class customer support service for the entire system, including 24/7 access to applications engineers, a rich set of online documentation, a Knowledge Base, and a security-protected portal for registered customers.
