Texas Instruments Inc. introduced the first in a family of multi-chemistry, multi-cell battery management gas gauge circuits with TI’s proprietary Impedance Track capacity measurement technology. The bq34z100 power management chip is asserted to be the first gas gauge in the industry to support a wide range of lithium-ion and lithium iron phosphate chemistries in 2- […]
Applications
Suddenlink tunes up free Wi-Fi hotspots for power outage areas
Suddenlink Communications is helping to keep its customers connected in its service areas that were impacted by last week’s Mid-Atlantic storms by providing free Wi-Fi hotspots. The temporary Wi-Fi hotspots are available in Suddenlink’s service areas in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky at 12 office and store locations. “Due to the power outages in the […]
Groups want delay extended on Verizon’s AWS deal
Public Knowledge and the Rural Telecommunications Group (RTG) want the FCC to delay its review of Verizon’s AWS acquisition for the third time. The groups, both opponents to the transaction, said in a letter to the FCC yesterday that an additional two-week delay was necessary to account for staff shortages related to the Fourth of […]
Report: Net wireless adds plunge in Q1
The major wireless providers fell flat in the first quarter on slowing smartphone adoption, according to a report released Thursday from Fitch Ratings. A 36 percent annual falloff of wireless net additions led to a 32 percent plunge in revenue-generating unit (RGU) additions during the first quarter of 2012, according to the report. RGUs include […]
Sandvine lands $2M order with U.S. telco operator
Network policy control vendor Sandvine announced this morning that it won a $2 million order from a top 10 telecom provider in the United States. The unnamed service provider purchased Sandvine’s Policy Traffic Switch (PTS), Fairshare Traffic Management and Usage Management products to increase the quality of experience for subscribers across its DSL network. Sandvine’s […]
Samsung tips record-high profit for Q2
Smartphones powered Samsung Electronics to record quarterly earnings, but its shares fell Friday as lower-than-expected overall sales underlined the threat from Europe’s economic malaise. The world’s largest maker of memory chips, mobile phones and flat-screen panels estimated its second-quarter operating profit at between 6.5 trillion won and 6.9 trillion won ($5.7 billion and $6.1 billion), […]
Mini iPad could mark departure for Apple
Shares of Apple soared 2 percent Thursday on a report from The Wall Street Journal that said Apple’s Asian suppliers are ramping production for the September launch of a smaller, less-expensive “iPad Mini.” The price range on the third-generation iPad, which begins at $499 for a 32 GB Wi-Fi-only model, has arguably kept Apple from […]
Calling all truckers … not!
Researchers in India are developing a new technology that will prevent truck drivers and other road users from using their cell phones while driving. The technology based on RFIDs could also be integrated with police traffic monitoring. Abdul Shabeer of the Anna University of Technology in Tamilnadu, India, and colleagues point out that globally around […]
Sharing data links in networks of cars
Wi-Fi is coming to our cars. Ford Motor Co. has been equipping cars with Wi-Fi transmitters since 2010; according to an Agence France-Presse story last year, the company expects that by 2015, 80 percent of the cars it sells in North America will have Wi-Fi built in. The same article cites a host of other […]
Most accurate robotic legs mimic human walking gait
A group of US researchers has produced a robotic set of legs which they believe is the first to fully model walking in a biologically accurate manner. The neural architecture, musculoskeletal architecture and sensory feedback pathways in humans have been simplified and built into the robot, giving it a remarkably human-like walking gait that can […]