5.10 R&A Electronics Daily News

AMD: PlayStation and Xbox team working on next-gen chips

It's been a couple of years since the PlayStation 5 was launched, and to date, users are not able to still get their hands on the console. The chip shortage has led to a massive stock issue, and we are still witnessing stock getting depleted in a matter of seconds whenever new supplies come in. Reports have suggested that the stock situation isn't getting better anytime soon, so it will still be a while before the PlayStation 5 is readily available. Amidst that, it seems like the PlayStation 6 is already in development.

In a new job listing on LinkedIn, it is stated that AMD is looking for a System-on-Chip Verification Engineer who will be a part of the team which developed the chip for Xbox and PlayStation.While fans might be wondering that it is a tad early to create a new console without improving the stock situation, it should be noted that this isn't that surprising. If we look at the previous consoles, they have been in development for roughly two years since the latest console launch. Not to forget, the chip is the most pivotal part of the console, so designing it would take some time, as one would expect some technological breakthroughs. This doesn't mean the PlayStation 6 is coming anytime soon since we are still quite far from the launch of the next console.

India partners with Japan for affordable EV charging standard

India aims to set up around 70,000 EV charging stations at petrol pumps across the country in the next few years. (File Photo)India has joined hands with Japan to develop an electric vehicle charging standard for emerging markets. Under the partnership, the two countries aim to establish easy-to-build EV charging stations based on Japanese protocols that are claimed to slash installation costs by two-thirds, reports Nikkei Asia.?

The CHAdeMO Association, responsible for Japan's charging standard, will work with India's standards drafting committee. The report claims that the committee plans to submit a draft proposal to the Bureau of Indian Standards this year, aiming for official adoption as early as 2023.

The drafting committee includes automakers such as Mahindra Electric and Maruti Suzuki.?

CHAdeMO's roster of roughly 500 member companies includes global auto manufacturing giants such as Nissan and Toyota. It hopes to encourage broader use of electric vehicles in India and emerging Southeast Asian countries, which are now short on the necessary EV charging infrastructure. The report claims that the proposed specifications would allow for a maximum output of 22 kilowatts, half the typical figure for charging stations in Japan. The lower power output means longer setting times, generally twice as long as standard Japanese EV chargers for the same battery.?

The cost of installing a charging point, now in the $15,000 to $23,000 range, could be cut significantly to less than $10,000. However, since electric vehicle demands in emerging markets are expected to focus on compact vehicles with relatively low battery capacity initially, this could be an acceptable trade-off.?

This partnership would enhance India's EV charging ecosystem development, which is expected to become a significant market for electric vehicles by the end of this decade. India aims to have electric cars account for 30 percent of its total new car sales by 2030.

Mercedes-Benzbegins sales of DRIVE PILOT Level 3 conditionally automated driving in Germany

Mercedes-Benz'DRIVE PILOT system for conditionally automated driving (SAE Level 3)can be ordered in Germany from May 17 as an optional extra for the S-Class for €5,000and for the EQS for €7,430 (Driver Assistance Package Plus: €2,430and DRIVE PILOT: €5,000) excl. VAT. This makes Mercedes-Benz the first car manufacturer with internationally valid certification for conditional automated driving to offer such a system as an option ex-works for vehicles from series production. DRIVE PILOT enables customers to hand the driving task over to the system under certain conditions in heavy traffic or congestion situations on relevant motorway sections in Germany up to 60 km/h (37mph).

This makes Mercedes-Benz the first car manufacturer with internationally valid certification for conditional automated driving to offer such a system as an option ex-works for vehicles from series production. After activating DRIVE PILOT, the system controls the speed and distance and guides the car within its lane. The route profile, events occurring on the route, and traffic signs are all analyzed and considered. DRIVE PILOT also reacts to unexpected traffic situations and handles them independently, e.g., through evasive maneuvers within the lane or braking maneuvers.?

Mercedes-Benz's system for conditionally automated driving (SAE-Level 3) builds on the vehicle sensing technology of the Driving Assistance Package and includes additional sensors that the manufacturer considers indispensable for safe operation. These mainly include radar and LiDARand cameras, but ultrasound and moisture sensors also provide valuable data.

In parallel to the successful launch of DRIVE PILOT in Germany, Mercedes-Benz aims to obtain regulatory series approval for California and Nevada by the end of the year, provided the legal situation permits the system's operation.

Mercedes-Benz is the first manufacturer to put a Level 3 system with valid international certification into series production. As a first step, we are offering this world-leading technology in Germany in the S-Class and the EQS. At the same time, we also want to receive certification in the US by the end of the year. Responsible handling of future technologies such as conditional automated driving is the key to acceptance among customers and society. With DRIVE PILOT, we have developed an innovative technology that enables safe operation and gives valuable asset time back to the customer, thanks to redundancies with many sensors.

Conditionallyautomated vehicle operation, according to SAE-Level 3, requires a system design that must enable any malfunctions—both simple and more serious—to be managed safely. The redundant architecture includes the brake system, the steering, the power supply, and parts of the sensor technology such as those for environmental awareness and driving dynamics calculation.?

The battery, steering motor, wheel speed sensors, and the various algorithms used by the system to calculate the data also have a redundant design. In addition, parts of the sensor technology are also functionally redundant, as they complement each other with their different physical concepts (e.g., optical, ultrasonic, radio waves), thereby enabling safe transfer.

In the unlikely event of a malfunction, the vehicle remains maneuverable due to its redundant system design, allowing DRIVE PILOT to perform a safe handover to the driver. If the driver does not comply with the takeover request within the maximum allotted time of ten seconds, for example, due to a medical emergency, DRIVE PILOT promptly initiates an emergency stop that is safe both for the vehicle and the following traffic.

For this purpose, the Intelligent Drive Controller continuously calculates the optimum trajectory for coming to a safe stop. Meanwhile, the maneuverability of DRIVE PILOT is designed to keep the vehicle within its lane and avoid collisions with other road users and objects on the road.

The exact location of a Mercedes equipped with DRIVE PILOT is determined using a high-precision positioning system that is much more powerful than conventional GPS systems. In addition to the anonymized data collected by LiDAR, camera, radar, and ultrasound sensors, a digital HD map provides a three-dimensional image of the road and the surroundings with information on road geometry, route characteristics, traffic signs, and special traffic events (e.g.accidents or road works).

This high-precision map differs from maps for navigation devices by, among other things, its higher accuracy in the centimeter rather than meter range and its complex junction and route model. The map data is stored in backend data centers and updated constantly. Each vehicle also holds an image of this map information on board, continually compares it with the backend data, and updates the local dataset. This enables stable and accurate positioning by representing the surroundings independent of factors such as shadows or dirty sensors.

Mercedes-Benz ensures that the new technology is being put on the road legally compliant. Engineers, lawyers, compliance managers, data protection officers, and ethics experts have all worked together in the development process.?

Additional control mechanisms provide one basis for automated driving. For example: For safety-relevant functions such as pedestrian detection, the Mercedes-Benz engineers deliberately do not use algorithms, for instance, through self-learning approaches. The focus is more on what is known as "supervised learning"—i.e., Mercedes-Benz defines and controls what the artificial intelligence is allowed to learn.

In the case of pedestrian detection, AI helps the system identify objects and situations on and next to the road quickly and safely. Before the AI software is used on the streets, extensive validation testing is carried out to ensure that the AI works as desired in actual traffic conditions. The car manufacturer's ethical requirement is that the detection process is non-discriminatory. This means that the vehicle's sensors permanently monitor the road and the roadside always to detect people correctly, regardless of their clothing, body size, posture, or other characteristics.

With the opening up of the Road Traffic Act (SVG) for Level 3 systems in 2017, Germany was the first country to create a legal basis for the intended use of these systems. The technical approval regulation with which such a system can be certified did not come into force until 2021. Since then, it can be implemented in Europe. Mercedes-Benz is the first automotive company to meet the demand in legal requirements of UN Regulation No. 157 for a Level 3 system. In detail, this results in requirements for the vehicle and duties for the driver: In conditional automated driving mode, the car must master the driving task safely and comply with all traffic regulations. The driver still has duties in public road traffic, particularly to comply with other traffic regulations. To this end, the driver must remain ready to take over and resume control when requested by DRIVE PILOT or due to apparent circumstances.

Samsung Unveils 6G Spectrum White Paper and 6G Research Findings

Samsung Electronics Co. has released a white paper that lays out the company's vision for securing global frequency bands for 6G, the next-generation communications technology. The report, titled "6GSpectrum: Expanding the Frontier," discusses ways to obtain the spectrum needed to achieve the company's 6G vision introduced in a white paper released earlier in July 2020.?

"We have started on our journey long ago to understand, develop and standardize the 6G communications technology," said Choi Sung-Hyun, executive vice president and head of the Advanced CommunicationsResearch Center at Samsung Research, on May 8. "We are committed to taking the lead and sharing our findings to spread our vision to bring the next hyper-connected experience to every corner of life."?

6G would require a spectrum with ultra-wideband contiguous bandwidth ranging from hundreds of MHz to tens of GHz to enable new services such as high-fidelity mobile holograms and truly immersive extended reality (XR) characterized by ultra-high-speed communications and a large amount of data. There is also a growing demand for more excellent coverage. In response to these requirements, Samsungproposes considering all available bands for 6G, from low-band under1 GHz to mid-band in the 1-24 GHz range and high-band in the 24-300GHz range.

It also highlights the importance of securing new bands for commercial deployments of 6G, as 5G networks will still be operational when the6G deployment starts. The mid-band within the 7-24 GHz range is a candidate that can support faster data speed and good coverage. The sub-terahertz (sub-THz) band in the 92–300 GHz range is being considered for support of ultra-high-speed data rate. The white paper also mentions the refarming of existing bands used for 3G, 4G, and 5Gnetworks to 6G operation as another way to obtain all the spectrum necessary for 6G. In addition, it notes that research on forward-looking regulations and technologies on spectrum utilization is essential to provide efficient and flexible support for 6G and other services with the limited spectrum.

Along with the release of the 6G spectrum white paper, Samsung also highlights its research findings on some of the 6G candidate technologies– specifically about sub-THz band communications, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), cross-division duplex (XDD), full-duplex, artificial intelligence (AI)-based nonlinearity compensation (AI-NC), and AI-based energy saving (AI-ES).Sub-THzis considered a spectrum candidate for 6G communications, which is expected to support the data rate up to 1 Terabit per second (Tbps),50 times faster than 20 Gbps of 5G networks. Samsung successfully demonstrated a 6 Gbps data rate at a 15 meters distance in June 2021, 12 Gbps at a 30 meters distance indoors, and 2.3 Gbps at a120 meters space outdoors.?

RIS can improve the beam sharpness and steer or reflect the wireless signal to the desired direction using a metamaterial surface. It can reduce the penetration loss and blockage of high-frequency signals, e.g., mmWave. Samsung demonstrated that their RIS lens technology could enhance the signal strength four times and the beam steering range by 1.5 times.?

XDD Can improve the propagation distance of the uplink signal up to two times in the TDD system by enabling continuous uplink transmission in a small portion of the system bandwidth. Hence, XDD can dramatically enhance the coverage of the TDD system often used in high-frequency bands. Samsung demonstrated its core technology,self-interference cancellation, at the base station.?

With a full-duplex, the data transmission and reception can simultaneously use the same frequency to increase the data speed up to two times. Samsung carried out a successful trial of the full-duplex in the mmWave band with a base station and a terminal100 meters apart, demonstrating the self-interference cancellation of over 114 dB and 1.9 times improvement in the data rate.

AI-NC utilizes AI at the receiver to compensate for the signal distortion caused by the nonlinearity of a transmitter's power amplifier and hence, can significantly improve the coverage and quality of high-rate data signals. Samsung demonstrated a 1.9 times improvement of the range for high-speed uplink data and a 1.5 times improvement of the transmission speed for a given coverage.

AI-EScapitalizes on AI to minimize energy consumption at the base station by adjusting the parameters controlling the power on/off of selected cells depending on the traffic load without affecting network performance. In an accurate data-based replicated simulation of base stations, Samsung applied AI-ES to demonstrate more than 10% energy-saving.

Samsung plans to share more details and its 6G research findings at its first Samsung 6G Forum (samsung6gforum.com) scheduled on May 13.?

Microsoft and Volkswagen collaborate to improve HoloLens AR

This week Microsoft announced it fixed a technical issue in the HoloLens augmented reality (AR) headset with Volkswagen's help to provide supported assisted driving features. ARTheHoloLens 2 projects to bring functional Augmented Reality to the automobile driver.?

Volkswagenrealised in 2018 that data gathered by HoloLens's camera sensors and an inertial measurement unit conflicted with each other while the headset used in a car, detecting movements but providing a static environment. Microsoft explained the project's success on their Transform website." The new "moving platform" mode for HoloLens 2 overcomes a significant limitation of mixed reality headsets and creates the potential for the technology to be used in new ways," writes Deborah Bach. "Training drivers to handle challenging road conditions, for example, or creating new user experiences for autonomous vehicles. And while mobility is Volkswagen's focus, the capability could in future be shared across other industries."??

"We think mixed reality information is the most intuitive information we could provide to enhance our customers' user experience," says Dr. Andro Kleen, head of the data science team at Volkswagen GroupInnovation. "Because what you see there and need to process is very close to what humans normally see and process. It's not so abstract."

Helping people "get from A to B."?

Volkswagen introduced an augmented reality head-up display in its ID as an early adopter of augmented reality technology. Volkswagen was thinking about the potential of augmented reality even earlier, Kleen says. In 2015, for instance, Volkswagen embarked on a research project using self-piloted vehicles and augmented reality to teach driving on a racing circuit. Tested at Volkswagen's track facility in Ehra-Lessen, Germany, the Race Trainer system used an ahead-up display that superimposed lines of arrows on the track for drivers to follow and provided steering and braking cues to guide them through a gradated set of lessons.

"We think of this as moving toward a mobility system where different products and mobility solutions will be connected," Kleen says. "The basic assumption is that this technology will become lighter and smaller, and we think that as that happens, more people will get their hands on it and integrate it into their daily lives — and thus into their way of moving from A to B."