Two space travel related stories hit my desktop this week; one that rapidly generated major international headlines and one that slid very quietly onto my email screen.

The headline-hitter was the successful launch of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket with its payload of a Tesla sports car, complete with a dummy driver at the wheel. The second was about Gallium Nitride technology that would be suitable for space applications.

Electro Pages
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SL70040SEH Low Side GaN FET Driver Powers ISL7002xSEH GaN FETs in Launch Vehicle and Satellite Power Supplies

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the space industry’s first radiation-hardened, low side Gallium Nitride (GaN) field effect transistor (FET) driver and GaN FETs that enable primary and secondary DC/DC converter power supplies in launch vehicles and satellites, as well as downhole drilling and high reliability industrial applications. These devices power ferrite switch drivers, motor control driver circuits, heater control modules, embedded command modules, 100V and 28V power conditioning, and redundancy switching systems.

Business Wire
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Best design practices utilize the advantages offered by eGaN FETs, including printed circuit board (PCB) layout and thermal management. As GaN transistor switching charges continue to decrease, system parasitics must also be reduced to achieve maximum switching speeds and minimize parasitic ringing typical of power converters.

Power Electronics
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Developers are hard at work on the machine learning necessary for safer and more-autonomous vehicles. But all the AI in the world won’t be enough if the car relies on inadequate sensors. That was clearly demonstrated in one fatal Tesla crash that occurred in part because the car’s camera didn’t correctly identify an oncoming truck. To ensure smart vehicles have a reliable model of surrounding objects — particularly the ones the cars identify as “threats” — most rely on one or more lidars, or laser-based remote sensors.

Extreme Tech
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LAS VEGAS — Once again the marathon that is CES is drawing to a close. Four days of trade show plus two days of media events. All sprawled across five miles of Las Vegas in some insane number of hotels and conference venues. As usual, I stuck it out so you don’t have to. Here are some of the images that struck me as interesting, weird, or just plain worth remembering:

Extreme Tech
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Wireless power, the ability to deliver electricity to gadgets without plugging those gadgets into a cable, is a hotbed of innovation at the moment. The dominant standard, called “Qi,” is ever under attack from other efforts.

This week saw interesting developments from Energous (WATT), which aims to transfer power via radio frequency transceivers, with limited results so far, and some controversy about its business.

There are other contenders. On Wednesday in Las Vegas, during the Consumer Electronics Show, I met with Alex Lidow, who is founder of a privately held chip company EPC of El Segundo, California.

Barron's
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This article takes a deep dive into lidar technology. It explains how the technology works and the challenges technologists face as they try to build lidar sensors that meet the demanding requirements for commercial self-driving cars.

The bottom line is that while bringing lidar costs down will take a significant amount of difficult engineering work, there don't seem to be any fundamental barriers to bringing the cost of high-quality lidar down below $1,000—and eventually below $100. That means the technology—and ultimately, self-driving vehicles that depend on lidar—should be well within reach for ordinary consumers.

Ars Techinca
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EPC2049 GaN power transistor offers power systems designers a 40 V, 5 mΩ power transistor about 8 times smaller than equivalently rated silicon MOSFETs for point of load converters, LiDAR, and low inductance motor drive.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — December 2017 — EPC announces the EPC2049 power transistor for use in applications including point of load converters, LiDAR, envelope tracking power supplies, class-D audio, and low inductance motor drives. The EPC2049 has a voltage rating of 40 V and maximum R_DS(on) of 5 mΩ with a 175 A pulsed output current.

Within the AirFuel^TM Alliance booth at CES 2018, EPC will show how gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors are at the core of large surface area wireless power. In the EPC hospitality suite, wirelessly powered systems for the home and GaN based, industry-leading LiDAR systems used in autonomous vehicles will be on display.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — December 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) will be demonstrating the power of eGaN^® technology to enhance two game-changing consumer applications – wireless power and LiDAR for self-driving cars – at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 9^th through the 12^th.

To ensure widespread adoption, wireless power systems need to move beyond small charging pads and become active power sources over large surface areas. For magnetic resonant systems, this demands fundamental changes in coil technology, system architecture, and power amplifiers. Gallium nitride based amplifiers have proven capable of delivering 60 W with greater than 90 percent efficiency into the transmit coil over a wide load range.

By: Yuanzhe Zhang and Michael A. de Rooij
Power Electronics Europe
November/December 2017
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Ultra-fast transition eGaN FETs used on the EPC9126HC can drive high current pulses up to 150 A and pulse widths as low as 5 ns, thus enhancing the quality of information a LiDAR system will detect, including the accuracy, precision, and processing speed.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — November 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) announces the availability of the EPC9126HCa 100 V, 150 A high current pulsed laser diode driver evaluation board. In a LiDAR system, used to create 3-D maps for autonomous vehicle applications, speed and accuracy of object detection is critical. As demonstrated by this board, the rapid transition capability of eGaN FETs provide power pulses to drive the laser up to ten times faster than an equivalent MOSFET, thus enhancing the overall performance of a LiDAR system.

EPC2040, an eGaN^® power transistor optimized for LiDAR applications, placed first in the Passive Components & Discrete Semiconductors category of ECN magazine’s prestigious 2017 Impact Award.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif — November  2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation’s (EPC) is proud to announce that Electronic Component News (ECN) — a leading trade publication for electronic design engineers — has awarded the EPC2040, enhancement mode gallium nitride (eGaN) transistor its ECN Impact Award for 2017 in the Passive Components and Discrete Semiconductors category.

Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion, talks to Leo Laporte about Gallium Nitride, and how it is being used to create the next generation of microchips and wirelessly power the world.

This Week in Technology
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The EPC9086 high efficiency half-bridge development board can operate up to 10 MHz featuring a 30 V EPC2111 eGaN^® half bridge in combination with the recently introduced high speed Peregrine Semiconductor PE29102 gate driver.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—October 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announces the availability of The EPC9086 development board, a high efficiency half-bridge development board that can operate up to 10 MHz.  The EPC9086 board measures 2” x 2” and contains a 30 V, 15 A EPC2111 enhancement-mode gallium nitride half bridge in combination with the recently introduced PE29102 gate driver from Peregrine Semiconductor.

MIGVAN now represents EPC’s Israel sales, marketing, and technical support to assist customers in adopting eGaN^® FETs and ICs for leading-edge power conversion systems using gallium nitride

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— October 2017 — To support its accelerating growth throughout Israel, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) is proud to announce the appointment of MIGVAN as its sales, marketing, and technical support representative.  MIGVAN Technologies & Engineering Ltd, founded in 1988, is devoted to promoting and selling advanced technology electronic components and subsystems to the Israeli electronics industry.

Superior characteristics of eGaN^® FETs and ICs, such as low output capacitance, low input capacitance, low parasitic inductances, and small size used in these demonstration kits show that GaN FETs and ICs are ideal for increasing efficiency in highly resonant, AirFuel™ Alliance compatible wireless power transfer systems.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—October 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announces the availability of two new demonstration kits -- the EPC9127, a complete wireless power kit including a 10 W, class 2 amplifier, category 3 receiver device and the EPC9128, consisting of a 16 W, class 3 amplifier and two receiver devices (categories 3 and 4). These systems, coupled with previously announced EPC9120, 33 W class 4 and the EPC9121 multi-mode kit capable of operating to either an AirFuel Class 2 standard with a category 3 device or a Qi (A6)/PMA standard with a compatible receiving device provide a full range of wireless power demonstration kits to allow for complete, wide-spread implementation.

EPC will exhibit an innovative wireless power tabletop at 2017 Wireless Power Summit highlighting the capability of GaN-based semiconductor magnetic resonance technology to provide wireless power over a large surface area to many receiving devices such as cell phones, laptop computers, and table lamps – at the same time!

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — September 2017 — The future of wireless power and its eventual ubiquitous adoption is dependent upon the ability of end users to place any electrical item on a surface and have it powered without having to “plug in.” It is this ability that EPC will demonstrate at the Wireless Power Summit 2017 being held in Denver, Colorado October 5th and 6th at the Embassy Suites Hotel Downtown.

Alex Lidow, CEO and co-founder of Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, has demonstrated the ability to transmit power from large surfaces.

Digital Journal
September 18, 2017
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EPC’s latest family of eGaN^® transistors and ICs takes a quantum leap in increasing Performance while reducing costs for new and existing applications currently served by MOSFETs 

EL SEGUNDO, Calif — September 2017 Efficient Power Conversion Corporation’s Gen 5 eGaN^® transistor and IC family has been honored with an Electronic Products China / 21iC Media’s “Top 10 Power Products – Best Application Award.” The award presentation was announced on September 15^th, 2017 in Beijing, China during 21iC Power Conference 2017.

EPC CEO & Co-Founder, Alex Lidow was a featured guest on Cheddar TV sharing how GaN technology is enabling new and disruptive technologies, such as LiDAR for self-driving cars and power conversion transistors and ICs for wide-area wireless power and medtech.

Cheddar
September 11, 2017
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