Wireless Charging Reference Designs Announced

Having electronics devices recharge their own batteries is the sort of Sci Fi dream that few would be opposed to, so Freescale decided to contribute to making it reality.

The step currently being taken by the industry is the one where wireless charging is implemented. That is, having batteries somehow recover their energy by interacting with Wi-Fi or other electromagnetic waves. It's not exactly the same as independent energy recovery, but close enough. At any rate, Freeescale has introduced reference designs for the wireless charging of tablets, smartphones and multi-cell battery packs. The tablet platform should work for portable healthcare devices too. It consists of a transmitter mat and a receiver embedded inside the back cover of the tablet.

Freescale’s Smart Application Blueprint for Rapid Engineering (SABRE) platform works in tandem with the i.MX53 applications processor in enabling the receiver to interface with the input power of the tablet's power management sub-system. The company claims that, once an intelligent software-based charging system is added to the mix, charging efficiencies “match conventional technologies.” “Wireless charging frequently tops the lists of ‘hot’ features for future smart phones,” said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Industrial & Multi-Market MCU business.

“Our three new reference designs offer wireless charging solutions for a range of battery-powered devices. Once wireless charging is broadly deployed in the public infrastructure, charging could become an afterthought for users.”  The second wireless charging reference design is meant to serve smartphones and uses a combination between a Qi-based transmitter and an embedded coil array. The third design is intended for multi-cell battery packs. By means of a transmitter mat and a receiver embedded into the battery packs, it can charge four Li-Ion battery packs at once, for a total of 120W of power. Interested product developers can go here for more.

Posted in: Hardware, Mobile Phone, News, Tablet