nanoNET RF chip challenges bluetooth, home RF, WLAN 802.11B - Nanotron Technologies transceiver chip - Product Announcement

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Sept 30, 2002

Nanotron Technologies, a German based technology research company has introduced a new system for wireless communication by launching its nanoNET TRX RF chip. The network operates in the international and license free ISM band (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) at 2.4 GHz. It was especially developed for the requirements of battery-powered mobile applications and is extremely robust against disturbances. nanoNET is based on MDMA (Multi Dimensional Multiple Access) technology developed by Nanotron technology.

Nanotron Technologies will showcase the transceiver chip nanoNET TRX for the first time to the public during the Electronica 2002 exposition in Munich, Germany in early November. The new chip is manufactured using silicon germanium (SiGe) process technology and will be available in volume in 2003. Its outstanding properties are extreme low power consumption during stand-by and unrivalled low energy-consumption per successfully transmitted bit. nanoNET TRX is perfectly suited for data rates up to 2 MBit/s and low power consuming applications. The portable protocol stack (PPS) is provided by Nanotron and it supports various microcontroller platforms and network topologies.

The requirements of the microcontroller is drastically reduced due to the high grade of integration of function into the embedded MAC controller. nanoNET TRX reduces the system cost and the development time due to the above mentioned properties. nanoNET TRX is designed especially for battery-driven applications and for applications which need a high range and high data rates. It is almost completely independent from the place and adjustment of the antenna. Applications include industrial control and telemetry, active RF identification systems, cordless phones or wireless data transmission.

Recently, the company scored its first major win when Danish-based Danfoss group said it would be the first to use nanoNET TRX for wireless cooling and climate control applications.

"We decided to use nanoNET because this product seems to guarantee reliable and power-saving data transmission even under the most difficult conditions," commented Jorgen C. Stannow, vice president of R&D at Danfoss. "Wireless transmission will soon be indispensable for the control and monitoring of technical systems. The MDMA-based nanoNET will play an important role in the future. The advantages of this technology are so convincing that Danfoss became not only a customer, but an also investor in Nanotron."

Danfoss is Denmark's largest corporation with a revenue of 1.9 Billion euro in 2001 and employs about 16,600 employees. This multinational corporation is a worldwide leader in R&D and manufacturing of mechanical and electronic components for a wide range of industrial applications, as well as climate control and heating engineering.

nanoNET is based on the MDMA transmission system. MDMA uses `Chirp-Impulses' for the transmission of information. Chirp-impulses are robust against disturbances and can be generated and processed relatively simply. The MDMA technology is a worldwide patent and used for all kind of wireless data communication systems, such as wireless LAN, wireless local loop or wireless identification systems (RFID). Future implementations of MDMA will improve applications with higher data rates (for example Wireless LAN and Wireless DSL). Corresponding applications are already under development at Nanotron.

The company was founded 1991 in Berlin by Manfred Koslar and currently employs about 30 employees. Since the 1990s, the company is engaged in fundamental research in the area of communication engineering. Further objectives are the design of RF chips and the related protocol software as well as conceptual design of wireless communication systems.