As with any technology, embedded systems have taken a downturn in terms of materials and hardware due to the ongoing pandemic. Manufacturers are having difficulties keeping up with the influx of demand, with companies such as Intel and Nvidia looking to mitigate that issue by building new plant facilities around the world. That said, there has been a trickle of new embedded platforms to hit the market over the last year, with new offerings on the horizon. In this roundup, we will take a look at some of the latest embedded tech that has hit the consumer market.
New Security Suite Designed to Secure Connected Devices
iWave Systems has introduced a new security suite designed for NXP i.MX processors to secure connected devices. The iWave Security Suite can be implemented across a wide range of NXP processors, including the i.MX 6 series, i.MX 8, i.MX 8X and i.MX 8M, which are designed to support IoT and automotive applications, including gateways, multiple display applications, industrial systems, telematics, and V2X Solutions. The suite secures connected devices, providing encryption, storage, data transmission, and certificate management. It also features a myriad of system tools, including secure boot, Wi-Fi secure API, event logging, OS hardening, access control, software firewall, and secure firmware update, among a host of others.
Panel Meters Developed for Industrial and Laboratory Voltage and Current Applications
Murata recently introduced a new DMR35 series of panel meters designed for industrial and laboratory voltage and current applications, and features a +48 V common-mode input range and is powered from a 9-32 VDC external source. The series also features a bar-graph display of up to 3.5 digits and a traditional numeric panel meter. The panel meters are a mechanical drop-fit replacement for various analog panel meters and provide IP66 environmental protection at the front mounting surface when used with an included gasket. The DMR35 series features a bar-graph readout coupled with the digital absolute value to provide a fast response, along with an analog-like movement to monitor rapidly changing measurements. They also offer an expansive DC voltage measurement range from 0 to 50 VDC or ±5 V & ±50 VDC. The meters can be configured for current measurements from 50 uA to 25 A with internal shunt resistors and 5 A to 500 A for external requirements.
New Series of Common-Mode Chokes Designed for Automotive CAN Applications
TDK has announced the development of its new ACT1210D series of common-mode chokes designed for automotive CAN-FD applications. CAN and CAN-FD allow for a fivefold data transmission speed of 5 Mbps, which can be utilized for vehicle data transmission, including body, safety, powertrain, multimedia/infotainment, and telecommunication systems. The ACT1210D series common-mode chokes also provide a compact footprint (3.2 x 2.5 x 2.5 mm) with noise suppression capabilities, along with signal mode transfer characteristics (Ssd21) to increase communication quality.
Bluetooth Utilized for System Control and IoT Devices
Renesas has launched its RX23W module outfitted with Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy for system control and wireless communication on IoT endpoint devices and comes equipped with an antenna, oscillator and custom-matched circuit. The module is also Radio Law certified for many countries, including the US and Japan, is Bluetooth SIG certified, and comes in a 6.1 mm x 9.5 mm, 83-pin LGA package. What’s more, the RX23W features long-range communications and 2 Mbps data throughput, has a reception sensitivity level of −105 dBm (@ 125 kbps) and is equipped with Renesas’ RXv2 CPU. It also incorporates the company’s Trusted Secure IP (TSIP) security function, which protects against threats to IoT devices such as eavesdropping, tampering, and viruses.
New Microcontrollers get Security Certified for IoT Platforms
Renesas has also announced both PSA Certified Level 2 and Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms (SESIP) certifications for its RA series of 32-bit Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers. The company’s RA6M4 MCUs with the Flexible Software Package (FSP) has been PSA Level 2 certified, expanding on the PSA Certified Level 1 offered by RA4 and RA6 series MCUs. The RA6M3, RA6M4, and RA4M2 MCU series achieved SESIP1 certification with Physical and Logical Attacker certification. PSA Certified Level 2 provides evidence of protection against scalable software attacks using vulnerability analysis and penetration testing of the PSA-RoT to establish if nine security requirements of the PSA-RoT Protection Profile have been met. SESIP is an optimized version of Common Criteria methodology (ISO 15408-3) for evaluating IoT components and connected devices, which defines a catalog of Security Functional Requirements (SFRs) engineers and designers can use to build secure devices.
