PORTLAND, Ore -- Wireless inductive battery rechargersalready cut the cable to many devices such as electric toothbrushes, butbecause there were no standards in place until recently, they still require aproprietary recharge station.
Now that the Wireless Power Consortium has more than 100members for its Qi standard, analysts predict the time is ripe for a globalwireless charging market, which is expected to exceed 100 million unitsannually by 2015, according to IMS Research (Austin, Texas).
Japan's Docomo has already been test marketing Qi-compatiblerecharge stations in public places to support its deployment of power hungryLTE smartphones, and even automobile makers are getting on-board, with Dodgepromising a Qi-compatible smartphone recharger built into its console. Theseand dozens of other commercial Qi-compatible rollouts promised over the nextthree years.
For original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who want toquickly enter Qi-compatible wireless recharging station market, FreescaleSemiconductor has crafted three reference designs enabling any tablet,smartphone, or other mobile devices to be wirelessly recharged.
"We have reference designs for smartphones that cansupply up to five watts, for tablets that supply up to 30 watts and for powertools, kitchen appliances, medical devices, and even laptops that can supplyover 100 watts in wireless recharge power," said Ron Lowman, industrialand multi-market marketing manager at Freescale.
Freescale recently began a partnership with FultonInnovation (Ada, Mich), which has more than 186 granted patents and 496 pendingin the wireless recharge area. By including the latest innovations in itsreference designs, OEMs can achieve efficiencies of more than 80%, supportmultiple coils so that devices do not have to be perfectly placed, and takeadvantage of safety features that keep foreign objects from heating up, all ofwhich are built into Freescale's reference designs.
More information about Freescale's three wireless chargingreference designs is available on the company's Web site.
Wireless rechargers cut the last cord to tablets byrecharging merely by lying then on a specially wired surface. Source: FreescaleSemiconductorThis story was originally posted to EETimes.
