The Qualinx patented a type of DRF technology (discrete-time/digital RF), which allows to drastically reduce power consumption as well as significantly shorten the design time and improve the portability of RF IP. All designers claim to have a low energy solution, but the Qualinx solution is based on two unique innovations in the world that reduce the GNSS power consumption with a factor of almost 10.
1.) Qualinx has digitized the GNSS receiver by means of its patented DRF technology. At this moment, all receivers are relying on analog solutions. Qualinx has replaced most of the analog building blocks in the SoC with discrete-time/digital counterparts.
2.) QLX300 uses a novel Baseband, enabling parallel digital signal processing instead of current sequential processing. This novel technique reduces the power consumption of the Baseband and further improves the overall power consumption.
Qualinx uses Digital/Discrete-time RF (DRF) techniques and building blocks to avoid using complicated analog techniques, especially at deep nano-scale CMOS nodes. As a result, wireless receivers developed by Qualinx can fully operate at very low supply voltages (e.g. 0.4V) with incredibly low power consumption in contrast to industry standard (e.g. 3.6V).
Other advantages of DRF technology are the shorter design time since IP is scalable and portable from CMOS process node to another. It should be emphasized, DRF technology is a technology that can be used for all kinds of radio standards, like GSM, LTE, LG, Bluetooth, Wifi- Narrow-Band IoT, etc. Due to the fast time-to-market and excellent competitive advantage Qualinx selected the GNSS market as a first entry.
For Europe, the IoT represents the next step toward the digitization of the society and economy, where objects and people are interconnected through communication networks and report about their status and/or the surrounding environment. In fact, the European Commission estimates the market value of the IoT in the EU to exceed €1 trillion in 2020. The IoT merges physical and virtual worlds, creating smart environments. The European Commission actively cooperates with industry, organizations and academic institutions in order to unleash the potential of the IoT technology across EU Member States and beyond. The adoption of QLX300 can help Europe run its IoT sensors on a 10th of the power currently needed.
