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Infeneon’s SECORA brings contactless payment to a smart watch and smart ring, which offers fast, convenient, and secure payment technology. With up to 4 billion devices with NFC connectivity by the year 2030, and up to 700 million wearables. The demand for contactless payment is growing rapidly. Infineon Technologies AG introduces SECORA Connect X, a ready-to-integrate solution that enables customers to transform smart wearables into fully functional payment devices. A combination of Infineon’s new SECORA Wallet with SECORA Token Requestor linked to Mastercard (MDES) and Visa (VTS), enabling the digitization of cards and the creation of a custom-brand wallet app. This new SECORA one-stop shop for wearable payment accelerates time-to-market through seamless integration and certification, while offering flexible design, card tokenization, and secured payment functionality for any active wearable.

“SECORA one-stop-shop turns wearables into payment devices certified by Visa and Mastercard with worldwide acceptance at all contactless POS terminals, without the need for a phone or digital wallet,” says Tolgahan Yildiz, Head of the Trusted Mobile Connectivity and Transactions Product Line at Infineon. “Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can now launch their own branded payment services across a wide range of smart wearables, leveraging our powerful and secure products.”

Comprehensive Solutions for Secure Payment in Smart Wearables

SECORA Connect X is a highly efficient and secure payment solution for active smart wearables, including smart rings, sports watches, and fitness trackers. The solution features a Secure Element that enables contactless payment with Mastercard, Visa, and many other NFC applications, with payment credentials securely stored on the chip, not in the cloud. As the smallest NFC payment card emulation device on the market, SECORA Connect X provides extremely low power consumption for longer battery life and lower costs thanks to fewer external electronic components. Its compact design fits into any wearable design, regardless of size, shape, or material. Java Card and GlobalPlatform standards support seamless integration through comprehensive development tools, while pre-certified applets and 1 MB of memory allow developers to create custom NFC- and Bluetooth-enabled applications.

In addition, SECORA Wallet and SECORA Token Requestor enable any Secure Element-based smart wearable to support EMVCo payment functionality via card digitization. As a Token Requestor, Infineon can connect directly with payment services such as Mastercard or Visa to request and manage payment tokens, removing Primary Account Numbers (PANs) from the payment chain for added security.

The payment tokenization process stores credit and debit cards directly on the Secure Element, adding an extra layer of security without relying on the cloud. The tokenize wearable is accepted globally at all contactless-enabled POS terminals, without the need for a phone or third-party wallet services. The integrated white-label software development kit (SDK) allows full branding flexibility and frictionless integration into existing OEM apps. SECORA Wallet supports both iOS and Android devices, enabling wide accessibility for end users.

Complementary Solution for IoT

SECORA Connect X and SECORA Connect E are efficient in connecting IoT devices such as AR/VR headsets, laptops/tablets, gaming consoles, and PC accessories. Infineon delivers a full-service offering, from end-to-end design to deployment, and contributes its expertise to a wide range of technical and payment industry bodies, including EMVCo, FiRa, GlobalPlatform, ISO, Java Card Forum, NFC Forum, and Calypso Network Association. As a result, OEMs adopting SECORA solutions benefit from industry-leading security, compliance, and innovation.

Availability

The market launch is planned for Money2020 in Amsterdam from June 2–4, 2026. Demonstrations will take place at the Infineon booth (booth 1C183, entrance F), and Infineon’s experts will be available to provide further information. More information is available at https://www.infineon.com/applications/security-solutions/payment-solutions/one-stop-shop-wearable-payments.

 

The post Infineon’s SECORA Connect X and SECORA Wallet Bring Secure Contactless Payment to Smart Wearables appeared first on ELE Times.

Imagine a component that combines the heavy-duty muscle of a power relay with the surgical precision of a digital signal. That is the essence of a pulse width modulation (PWM) relay. While traditional switches are often strictly binary, the integration of pulse width modulation allows engineers to go beyond simple “on-off” control, enabling significant power savings and reduced heat signatures.

The “PWM relay” myth

While high-speed switching is often associated with the solid-state relay (SSR), the real magic happens when applying these pulses to a standard electromechanical relay (EMR). By modulating the “hold current” of an EMR coil, you can prevent overheating and drastically extend the life of your hardware. Whether you are managing automotive solenoids or optimizing industrial control panels, understanding the synergy between PWM and EMR is the key to transforming a basic mechanical switch into a sophisticated, energy-efficient power management tool.

However, if you head to an electronics distributor, looking for a “PWM relay,” you will likely hit a dead end. You cannot easily buy a dedicated PWM-enabled or PWM-driven EMR off the shelf because PWM is not a physical feature of the relay itself; it’s a control strategy applied by the external circuit.

To achieve this, you typically need a devoted relay driver or a microcontroller to manage the signal. By sending a high-frequency pulse to a standard, inexpensive EMR, you effectively turn a “dumb” mechanical switch into a “smart” energy-saver. While an SSR is natively capable of high-speed switching for load modulation, using PWM with a traditional EMR is specifically about optimizing the coil’s efficiency, allowing you to reap the benefits of mechanical isolation without the drawback of a roasting-hot solenoid.

The “holding current” tweak

Nowadays electromechanical relays are widely used across automation systems because they enable a low-power signal to control a high-power circuit. Yet, the conventional method of relay operation is relatively energy-intensive, often producing excess heat and demanding a sizeable power supply. In practice, energizing a relay requires more power than simply holding it in the active state.

This opens the door to efficiency gains: by applying pulse width modulation to the coil’s holding current, we can reduce the duty cycle and thereby lower the average current. The result is decreased power consumption, less heat generation, and improved thermal management—particularly valuable in applications that employ banks of relays.

As a quick design example, begin by switching the relay driver MOSFET fully on to apply voltage to the coil for at least 100 ms. During this initial energizing phase, set the duty cycle to 100% to ensure the MOSFET is fully on, and the relay pulls in reliably.

Once the relay is engaged, transition to PWM control with a reduced duty cycle—say 50%—to sustain the relay state while cutting power consumption. This approach maintains functionality while significantly lowering average current draw, reducing heat, and improving overall efficiency.

Figure 1 Basic schematic illustrates PWM control for lowering relay coil holding voltage. Source: Author

As an aside, while current is the physical mechanism at play, “holding voltage” is a very common industry term because engineers often think in terms of the voltage applied to the circuit.

Practical switching: EMRs and PWM

On the workbench, additional considerations arise when using PWM to drive EMRs.

In conventional relay designs, the nominal coil voltage must be continuously applied to keep the relay energized, which reduces overall energy efficiency. By contrast, PWM-driven relays can operate with reduced effective coil voltage, significantly lowering power consumption, an advantage in energy-conscious applications.

PWM drivers regulate the effective voltage by adjusting the duty cycle of a DC signal at a fixed frequency. A quick note: Duty cycle is usually given as a percentage, while duty ratio is the same concept expressed as a fraction. Relay coils, being inductive, respond to duty-cycle transitions with current fluctuations. The resulting ripple depends on coil inductance, suppression circuitry, PWM frequency, voltage level, and duty cycle.

Best practice is to begin with a 100% duty cycle until the relay pulls in and stabilizes. The required time varies with relay type and excess voltage but typically falls between 100–500 milliseconds. Afterward, the duty cycle can be reduced to maintain holding current.

Higher PWM frequencies reduce ripple, allowing lower effective coil voltages while keeping other parameters constant. Frequencies in the 20–100 kHz range are generally recommended. Since effective coil voltage equals the product of supply voltage and duty cycle, tight regulation is essential. Even small supply variations demand rapid duty-cycle adjustment—within a few milliseconds—to prevent the effective voltage from dropping below the relay’s minimum requirement.

For reliable performance, coil current must always exceed the holding current plus a margin for shock and vibration. If current falls below this threshold, the armature may release, causing repeated pull-in cycles. Such instability can lead to humming noise, unintended contact opening under load, or even contact welding.

Notably, an increasing range of EMRs now support PWM-regulated holding currents to improve thermal management and efficiency. By modulating the duty cycle once the armature is seated, these relays minimize steady-state power dissipation. The Omron G2RL-1A-E-PW1 exemplifies this trend, featuring a coil architecture optimized for PWM and reduced-voltage holding.

Figure 2 The G2RL-1A-E-PW1 relay utilizes PWM control to minimize coil power consumption and heat. Source: Omron

What is more, dedicated PWM current controllers like DRV110 and DRV120 are specifically engineered to optimize relay and solenoid operation through precise waveform regulation. These ICs rapidly ramp the current to a peak level to ensure the plunger or contactor fully seats.

Once actuation is confirmed, they transition to a significantly lower hold current, which maintains the magnetic field while drastically reducing power dissipation. By managing this peak-to-hold transition automatically, these controllers prevent thermal overhead and extend the operating life of the inductive load.

Figure 3 A prewired DRV120 module empowers makers and experimenters to slash relay power consumption by automatically transitioning from pull-in to hold current. Source: tindie

Clever pulses never stop

Where does this leave us? Whether through basic RC mechanisms, dedicated integrated solutions, or the efficiency gains of PWM applied to electromechanical relays, engineers have a wide range of proven strategies to reduce relay energy consumption.

This is more significant nowadays in the era of EVs and e-mobility, where every watt saved translates into extended range and smarter system design. Yet beyond the established lies the experiment, where unproven methods await bold exploration.

Energy efficiency is not just about saving power; it’s about sparking possibilities, and the next breakthrough may come from your own trial and error. If you have worked with PWM-driven electromechanical relays or discovered alternative approaches, share your insights in the comments and help expand the collective knowledge base for engineers everywhere.

T. K. Hareendran is a self-taught electronics enthusiast with a strong passion for innovative circuit design and hands-on technology. He develops both experimental and practical electronic projects, documenting and sharing his work to support fellow tinkerers and learners. Beyond the workbench, he dedicates time to technical writing and hardware evaluations to contribute meaningfully to the maker community.

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• Relay and solenoid driver circuit doubles supply voltage to conserve sustaining power

The post The pulse of power: Mastering the PWM relay appeared first on EDN.

Qorvo, a leading global provider of connectivity and power solutions, today announces a new family of RF switches that simplifies multi-band radio architectures. Spanning 50 MHz to 10 GHz, the family reduces component count, improves signal integrity, and enables more efficient RF system design across 5G infrastructure, industrial, drone, and test applications.

As 5G radios expand to support wider bandwidths and more frequency bands, including emerging spectrum such as FR3, designers face increasing challenges maintaining isolation and signal integrity without adding size, loss, and complexity. Many current designs rely on cascaded switch architectures or multiple narrowband devices, increasing insertion loss, degrading linearity and signal integrity, and adding board space and design effort.

“Designers no longer have to rely on cascaded switch architectures to achieve high isolation. We’re delivering that performance in a single device across a very wide bandwidth,” said Debbie Gibson, general manager of Qorvo’s infrastructure business. This approach reduces insertion loss, maintains signal linearity, and simplifies design, improving receiver performance in applications such as digital pre-distortion (DPD) feedback.

Qorvo’s new QPC6144 is a SP4T wideband switch that delivers greater than 65 dB isolation in a single device. Complementing this capability, the QPC6122 (SP2T) and QPC6188 (SP4T) provide wideband absorptive switching across 50 MHz to 10 GHz, enabling a single platform approach to RF routing. These devices reduce component count and simplify design while maintaining low insertion loss and strong linearity across wide bandwidths for calibration paths, general signal routing, and multi-band operation.

The new family of devices forms a dual switching platform that supports both high-isolation and general-purpose routing. By consolidating switching functions into fewer components, engineers can reduce BOM complexity, simplify layouts, and accelerate development across multiple applications.

Product	Key Role	Solves	Typical Use
QPC6144	High-isolation switching	Eliminates cascaded switches with >65 dB isolation in a single device	DPD feedback, calibration paths, high-isolation paths in 5G radios, and advanced drone communications
QPC6122	Compact wideband switching	Reduces component count while maintaining low insertion loss and signal linearity across wide bandwidths	Calibration paths, space-constrained RF routing in compact RF modules, and drones
QPC6188	Flexible wideband routing	Simplifies multi-path RF routing while maintaining low loss and signal linearity across multiple bands	Switching networks in infrastructure, industrial, drone, and test system applications

Samples are available through Qorvo. Visit the Qorvo IMS hub for more information.

About Qorvo

Qorvo supplies innovative semiconductor solutions that make a better world possible.  It combines product and technology leadership, systems level expertise, and global manufacturing scale to quickly solve customers’ most complex technical challenges.  Qorvo serves diverse high-growth segments of large global markets, including automotive, consumer, defense & aerospace, industrial & enterprise, and infrastructure. and mobile.  Visit www.qorvo.com to learn how a diverse and innovative team.

The post Qorvo drops Cascaded Switches with New Wideband 5G High-Isolation Family appeared first on ELE Times.

For coverage of all the key business and technology developments in compound semiconductors and advanced silicon materials and devices over the last month...

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I added RGB backlighting to my RAM stick to get +20 fps. submitted by /u/mmSTEA [link] [comments]

This is a heart-shaped LED keychain I made. submitted by /u/Federal_Door_9998 [link] [comments]

My attempt at making a really minimal switching LED driver (as lean as possible without "abusing" components), for a flashlight or something. I had a lot of fun optimizing it without abusing strange nonlinear effects in components - I would guess the minimum parts you'd need are a choke, (obviously) an LED, sense resistor, flyback diode and 2 transistors (minimum required to create hysteresis). If you were going to use it with 12 volts of Vdd, the component values would be about 470 uH, 10 ohm shunt, 1k pull up resistor, 10k pot, and a feedback resistor in the tens of kohm, this should yield an LED current of a couple hundred milliamps. Let me know if you can remove any more components, or if you find it useful somewhere! submitted by /u/DmitryE [link] [comments]

This is a laser I’ve made for milled blank double sided boards with mounting holes for alignment. Previously it’s worked for single sided pcb & now I’ve ben working on making a easy system for double sided & still working on a different homing system for easier flipping of the board. The etching fluid I use hydrogen peroxide with hcl. Main board ESP32, gcode sender I use is laser GRBL , where I just insert a screenshot of my traces and resize based on the dimensions of the blank. It’s generally very easy the most challenging part is still aligning, each board takes about 1hr from blank to etched with no drilling & 80% of time is on waiting. Project files: https://grabcad.com/library/pcb-laser-v2-1 I’d appreciate a like if anyone uses GrabCAD, it helps my career :) , any feedback or ideas here are also very appreciated! Still working on V3 with its own firmware for aligning and faster motion, I will likely be done with that in a few months if anyone is interested! I’ll make a update. If anyone decides to make this machine buy a cover for fumes and light protection! submitted by /u/Mediocre-Advisor-728 [link] [comments]

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Відкриття меморіальної дошки Марії Бігун (Леут) KPI4U-1 пт, 05/29/2026 - 23:02

Captured using Fujifilm XH2 and Laowa 65mm F2.8. Quite the beauty. submitted by /u/Nightrach [link] [comments]

Infineon Technologies AG of Munich, Germany, which provides power systems and IoT, has joined NVIDIA’s MGX AI Factory ecosystem to help transform power delivery for next-generation AI data centers. Infineon’s power management solutions will support NVIDIA’s MGX architecture and 800VDC power architecture, an open, modular reference architecture designed for AI factories in the agentic AI era. 800VDC MGX-compatible power racks help existing AI infrastructure to scale AI compute performance and power density, creating an upgrade path for future AI infrastructure...

Infineon Technologies AG of Munich, Germany is introducing a new 1300V silicon carbide (SiC) module within the HybridPACK Drive family that is capable of continuous operation at temperatures up to 205°C. Existing designs typically allow up to 175°C. This increase enables automotive OEMs and tier-1 suppliers to deliver higher peak and continuous output power from existing inverter designs or, in new designs, reduce system complexity and overall cost...

For full-year 2025, epiwafer and substrate maker IQE plc of Cardiff, Wales, UK has reported revenue of £97.3m, down 17.6% on 2024’s £118m...

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Asymmetric network technologies such as ASA are becoming more important for transporting the increasing volume of sensor data in vehicles. At the same time, interoperability is harder to secure in a growing multi-vendor ecosystem. Rohde & Schwarz addresses this with a new ASA Motion Link compliance solution for the R&S RTP oscilloscope that focuses on standards-compliant testing, enables efficient device debugging, and ensures compatibility and seamless automotive communication.

The Automotive SerDes Alliance (ASA) was formed in 2019 with the ambition of providing an open standard for a multi-vendor ecosystem for high-speed asymmetric SerDes (Serializer/Deserializer) technology. It is perfectly optimal to carry data from high-resolution cameras, LiDAR, or radar sensors to the ECU or provide continuous data streams from the ECU to ultra-wide, high-definition displays, all the while ensuring that high-speed data transfers do not interfere with other sensitive vehicle electronics. With bandwidth capabilities scaling up to 16 Gbps per lane, it provides the scalable “nervous system” required for level 3 autonomous driving and beyond.

Rohde & Schwarz has been a long-standing member of the Alliance, contributing to the various technical committees to help further the open standard. The new R&S SPLUS-K105 option available on the R&S ScopeSuite+ software offers comprehensive electrical compliance testing for the latest ASA Motion Link standard. The software fully controls and automates the R&S RTP high-performance oscilloscope, allowing test engineers to seek guidance effortlessly through each test case via the step-by-step wizard and the web-based GUI. All relevant test cases for each speed grade (SG1 to SG5) are getting support from the software. In addition, users can also control the R&SZNB3000 and other supported VNAs for performing accurate return loss measurements.

The combination of oscilloscope, VNA, and compliance software provides capabilities for signal integrity analysis. The time domain impedance analysis in repeatable measurements is essential for verifying PHYs, ECUs, cables, and connectors, fostering reliable Automotive communication.

Further information can be found at https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/solutions/automotive-testing/in-vehicle-networks-and-ecu-testing/in-vehicle-networks-and-ecu-testing_231834.html.

The post Rohde & Schwarz strengthens Its In-Vehicle Networks Test Portfolio with the Launch of a New ASA-ML Compliance Solution appeared first on ELE Times.

To how many significant digits does Pi (and its peers) remain relevant?

Some while ago, I downloaded a file of Pi calculated to one-hundred-thousand digits. A bit later, I downloaded a different file of Pi calculated to one million digits. I thought those were impressive, but just recently I read of a computer calculation of the value of Pi made to an insanely larger number of digits. I can’t find that article again but from memory, the calculation was run to two trillion digits.

The goal wasn’t to seek the value of Pi itself to that level of precision. It was a test of the computer, to see if it could run long enough to do that calculation without some kind of malfunction coming up. It was a test of the computer’s ability to run through very long computational processes without error. In that article, reference was made to NASA depending on the value of Pi to merely fifteen digits. This seeming disparity merited a look-see.

I looked up the definition of a parsec and found its numerical value in light years to a lot of significant digits, fourteen to be truthful. I then set up the geometry on which that number was based (Figure 1).

Figure 1 This graphic provides a visual definition of a parsec.

As the earth moves around the sun, a far-off object is observed for its apparent position in the sky. Because of parallax, there is an angular shift of that apparent position at earth’s two orbital extremes. Knowing the radius of earth’s solar orbit, half of that angular shift is taken as an angle which I call theta for which the distance to that object from the center of the sun may be calculated. The implicit assumptions are that the earth’s orbit is circular and that the sun is at the center of that circle which we know is not exactly so, but we do that anyway.

When the value of theta is one arc second or one degree divided by 3600, the distance D is defined as one parsec. Table 1 derives (with some admitted finagling which I will describe shortly) the distance of one parsec in terms of light years.

Table 1 The calculation detailed here derives parsecs in terms of light years.

The finagling part here is twofold. First, I used a value of Pi to fifteen significant digits, thus mimicking NASA. Secondly, I set the radius of earth’s solar orbit to precisely that value which yields the published value of one parsec that I found online.

That orbital radius looks just about right, but just how precise these numbers really are eludes me. For example, do we really know the earth’s orbital radius to that many significant digits? Earth’s orbit is not really circular. It is slightly elliptic. What precise refinements were made to establish the published value of D to so many significant digits? I have no idea.

Colloquially however, the value of one parsec is usually taken as 3.26 light years, which is good enough for general reading and good enough to satisfy my own curiosity. I’m perfectly happy with that fifteen digit value of Pi.

John Dunn is an electronics consultant and a graduate of The Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (BSEE) and of New York University (MSEE).

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