The NVA6000, an Impulse Radar Sensor from Novelda has been awarded the Frost & Sullivan Europe New Product Innovation award for the year 2011.
The CMOS chip is designed on the continuous time binary valued (CTBV) platform and hence the communication bottlenecks, which most of the processors create, are absent. The NVA6000 chip differs from the current processors by not using synchronous clock-based designs and hence the power consumed is quite low and the speed of processing is stepped up.
NVA6000
Mr. V. Shankaranarayanan, Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan, lauded the high accuracy and frame rate of the NVA6000 transceiver, which is capable of transmitting high bandwidth pulses. He explained that the CTBV design and the elimination of clock in the NVA6000 saves the overall energy used by the chip by almost 50% when compared to conventional processors. The transceiver is suitable even for applications that require high-resolution ranging as it is capable of using very short microwave pulses. It is extremely sensitive and hence it can capture very weak signals amidst disturbances like noise. The chip is easy to install on mobile devices as it in the form of a single integrated chip. Shankaranarayanan noted that the chip was able to detect objects that are hidden behind obstacles; this not only makes it an apt substitute for current technologies but also throws open new application opportunities.
The Novelda radar transceiver finds a varied range of applications from medical diagnosis to automotive and industrial applications. It is also useful for security surveillance and defence area. According to Shankaranarayanan the cost- and time-saving aspect that Novelda gave to the developers was the inclusion of the development kit and software and providing technical support over the entire series of chips supplied by them.