It’s that time of year again for Electronic Products’ Annual Product of the Year Awards. Now in its 46th year, EP editors looked at over 150 products across 10 component categories to find the best analog IC, digital IC, electromechanical device, interconnect, optoelectronics, passive component, power solution, RF/microwave product, sensor, and test and measurement equipment.
These award-winning products demonstrate a significant advancement in a technology or its application, an exceptionally innovative design, a substantial achievement in price/performance, improvements in design performance, and/or the potential for new product designs/opportunities.
Also in this issue is a look at technologies that are needed to accelerate smart-city development to create a more sustainable world as well as some of the biggest challenges in achieving this goal. This requires both technology innovations and open-source platforms along with the resolve to develop and implement these technologies.
“To slow and stop climate change, the world must reduce harmful emissions to zero,” said Maurizio di Paolo Emilio, editor-in-chief of Power Electronics News and AspenCore’s resident power expert. He said this can be accomplished by revolutionizing energy systems and generating only sustainable and renewable energy.
“Electricity grids need to be sustainable and more reliable, i.e., capable of combining different renewables in the best possible way and more resiliently,” said di Paolo Emilio. In addition, “low- and zero-carbon transportation is key to any city’s strategy to become carbon-neutral.”
IDTechEx believes several technologies including 5G/6G communications, smart materials, advanced sensors, and electric and autonomous cars will enable smart cities, but there are still big challenges ahead. The market research firm thinks in particular that 5G has a big role to play in smart cities, enabling low-power and IoT applications and delivering benefits across a variety of smart-city applications, including smart utilities and metering, traffic management, smart buildings, public transit, and electric and autonomous vehicles.
Sensors will play a central role in these systems. Sensors will be a fundamental component of automated systems, with smart cities requiring a vast array of widely distributed wirelessly connected sensors, said Peter Harrop, chairman at IDTechEx.
These include gas sensors for air-quality monitoring, chemical and biological sensors to monitor water quality, cameras and LiDAR to monitor pedestrian and traffic flow, and vibration sensors to enable predictive maintenance of tunnels and bridges, he added.
Contributing writer Steve Taranovich reports on the types of sensors that will be needed as the essential component building blocks in the smart-city environment. “The main role of these devices is to sense and gather data, which will ensure that the smart city will function smoothly and safely,” he said.
Taranovich covers a range of sensors from monitoring environmental pollution and traffic flow to ensuring a healthy office-building environment. “Smart cities are reinventing the way we structure and construct buildings and organize cities for the future. Sensors make these things possible.”
This month’s issue also showcases the top 10 capacitors introduced over the past year that can withstand harsh environments. Many of these new designs are being driven by emerging applications like 5G communications and evolving automotive requirements, such as ADAS, autonomous driving, and electric vehicles. These new capacitors — across dielectrics — offer a mix of higher capacitance values, extended temperature ranges, improved ruggedness, and smaller case sizes.
The automotive industry also has a role to play in smart cities. This includes connected vehicles that will require more ADAS, safety, and secure processing for emerging data-driven services, and new processors will help drive those advancements. We look at some of the latest automotive processors developed over the last quarter that are addressing these big challenges in the evolving automotive industry.
At the same time, there is a number of wireless protocols finding their place in a smart world. We look at a few of these components, including HaLow and wireless combo SoCs.
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