Research & Development - September/October 2015

On the consumer side, counterfeit ICs sold as authentic diminish market share, introduce product safety and quality shortcomings and damage suppliers’ reputations. The Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that counterfeiting of ICs costs the U.S.-based semiconductor industry more than $7.5 billion per year. In response, Sandia National Laboratories’ IC ID uses physical unclonable functions to allow cryptographic authentication of ICs without requiring the storage of any secret values. IC ID can be used to detect counterfeited or modified ICs, and it can be integrated into smart cards, credit cards and other authentication tokens to improve their security.

◗ Sandia National Laboratories, www.sandia.gov

GPS Update

Southwest Research Institute’s RANGER: Localization System Using a Ground-Facing Camera is a novel approach to localization for automated driving, generating precision position and orientation measurements using a ground-facing camera. RANGER provides measurement functionality similar to the highest-accuracy GPS systems available on the market (accuracy of 1 to 2 cm), but can operate where GPS has poor performance or fails completely. RANGER was designed for and demonstrated on a wide range of ground vehicles, from compact cars to commercial trucks, and has been deployed in essentially all on-road driving scenarios, including stop-and-go traffic to high-speed highway operations.

◗ Southwest Research Institute, www.swri.org

Bridge Inspection

Tech4Imaging LLC’s 4Inspection product scans tendons in bridges and inspects for water or air pockets. It also inspects for corrosion of steel inside tendons. It’s powered by rechargeable batteries and controlled by a wireless controller. Real-time images of the inside of the tendon are generated for determination of air and water pockets. The images are transmitted back to a viewing computer via Wi-Fi link. An operator then marks locations where air or water pockets have been identified for repair.

◗ Tech4Imaging LLC, www.tech4imaging.com

Advancing Fiber Optics

TE Connectivity’s TE 25G Active Optics featuring Coolbit Optical Engines help advance the capabilities of fiber optics to accommodate the demands for 25 Gb/sec and beyond. This engine, which converts data from electrical signals to optical signals, is the driving technology behind TE’s 100G, 300G and 400G active optics products and satis-fies high-density and high-bandwidth requirements, while running at about two-thirds the power of conventional solutions. The four active optic products that feature Coolbit optical engines are the 100G QSFP28 transceiver, the 100G QSFP28 active optical cable assembly, the 300G mid-board optical (MBO) module and the 400G CDFP active optical cable assembly.

◗ TE Connectivity, www.te.com

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