Lowest power wireless chip for streaming real-time sensor data
The Parsair chip consumes 100 times less power than typical Bluetooth and enables many novel use cases previously out of reach due to cost, size, and power constraints. The low power nature of this new wireless chip, says the company, can enable densely deployed sensors to communicate at unprecedented scale.
“Until now,” says Scott Bright, CEO of Jeeva, “devices could continuously stream wireless data, rapidly draining their batteries, or could transmit data intermittently to try and stretch battery life. Parsair makes it possible to truly stream data without draining the battery, which will be game-changing for a lot of different industries and applications.”
The chip achieves this performance by enabling communication using reflections of radio signals rather than generating a radio signal of its own. A nearby wireless router transmits radio signals, which the chip reflects to communicate data.
Since reflecting energy consumes significantly less power than emitting energy, says the company, this approach can enable wireless communication with decades-long battery life. Using the company’s passive backscatter radio technology, the reflected signal is made to look exactly like a standard radio packet in one of several supported radio protocols, making it possible to easily integrate with commodity hardware and existing product ecosystems.
The ability to continuously stream data enables a range of new devices and applications, says the company, unlocking potential for low power streaming audio devices, high bandwidth accelerometer sensors, or other highly interactive devices that last years on a small coin cell battery. The Parsair chip supports data rates up to 1,000 kbps and a connected range up to 100 meters, all at much lower power than any conventional radio and with a silicon footprint of just over one square millimeter.
In addition to enabling streaming applications, the chip can be used to build wireless sensor networks to solve multiple critical business problems, including applications such as consumable product monitoring and cold-chain tracing for both perishable products and vaccines. The company says the chip is being deployed by consumer and medical product customers to enable automated replenishment, inventory management, and asset proximity tracking.
“This chip provides low-latency, item-level data from places and things that were never before possible,” says Bright. “It shows the industry that it’s possible to sidestep conventional trade-offs and get fully-featured wireless connectivity at very low power, and extremely low cost.”
The company says the chip is first being made available to a select group of customers with whom it is working closely to accelerate the development, integration, and testing of customized edge-to-cloud connectivity solutions. Several reference designs are available to help accelerate specific custom applications. The platform and wireless chip are ready for pilot-stage deployment now, says the company, and it is scaling to high-volume availability later this year.
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