Syntronic’s Innovation Competition: Our top 5 projects

To promote creativity and innovation, Syntronic organizes an annual in-house Innovation Competition in China. The third edition of the competition is now in its final – and most interesting – phase. The jury has now selected its top five projects.

A wide range of areas covered

The interest in the third and most recent edition of the competition has been strong. More than 200 team members signed up for it.

The competing projects covered a wide range of areas, including the Internet of Things (IoT), power supply, 5G radio frequency, software platform development, thermal testing, industrial solutions, smart transportation, robotics, and digitalization.

After careful consideration, 5 projects have been shortlisted for the finals.

Top 5 projects

Project 1: Power Amplifier Customized Module

Intelligent robot technology is in the stage of rapid development and its application fields are becoming more and more extensive.

Syntronic’s power supply engineers found in their daily work that the feedback energy generated during the motor's forward and reverse rotation, start-stop, and deceleration caused the power supply voltage to rise, which would cause circuit overvoltage protection action, causing the system to oscillate, unable to work normally or even damage equipment.

Faced with this problem, the motor energy-feeding discharge module came into being. This module can prevent the feedback energy from flowing back into the power supply to protect the normal operation of the system.

Project 2: Multiport Calibration Unit

The network analyzer is a comprehensive microwave measuring instrument that can scan and measure within a wide frequency band to determine network parameters. It is widely used in many fields such as electronic equipment, aerospace, and satellite communications.

Regarding the network analyzer, often referred to as "the king of microwave/millimeter wave test instruments", Syntronic engineers found that there are two problems when using a 2-port or 4-port network analyzer to test multi-port products: (1) multi-port switching problem; (2) Multi-port calibration problem. Usually, the multi-port switching problem can be solved by using a multi-channel switch matrix, but there is no good solution to the multi-port calibration problem at present.

To solve the calibration problem, this scheme proposes to design a multi-port calibration unit, which cooperates with a multi-channel switch matrix to perform multi-port automatic calibration. Based on the principle of 2-port calibration, Syntronic RF engineers proposed three solutions: (1) OPEN, SHORT, LOAD calibration unit; (2) THRU calibration unit (for products with less than 16/32 ports); (3) THRU calibration algorithm (for products with ports >32). Different schemes will be used for different products to maximize test efficiency.

Project 3: 5G mmWave phased antenna array module based on SIW

With the advent of the 5G era, higher requirements are put forward for the performance of communication systems such as high speed, low delay, and high reliability. The millimeter wave frequency band has the advantages of large bandwidth, good directivity, high transmission efficiency, and strong reliability. It provides the possibility for 5G to expand services such as VR/AR, autonomous driving, tele-medicine, and services in dense urban areas.

This project is dedicated to the design of a phased array antenna module for 5G millimeter-wave frequency bands, using the advantages of SIW (Substrate Integrated Waveguide) technology in high-frequency bands with low loss, high power capacity, and miniaturization to design millimeter-wave RF devices such as splitters and filters to minimize link-up loss. In addition, a large-scale phased antenna array and beamforming chips will provide the system with higher EIRP and scanning beams. The SIW RF module and the broadband antenna array increase the density of the phased array antenna module, make the product more miniaturized, and reduce the R&D cost at the same time.

Project 4: RF BOX life cycle management platform system

Syntronic RF engineers developed a RF BOX life cycle management platform system, which aims to solve problems such as software configuration troubles and test station occupancy, quickly build a test environment, reduce test difficulty and maintenance costs, and improve mass production . At the same time, the system can greatly reduce labor costs and has a wide range of applications.

The RF BOX life cycle management platform system adopts a distributed application development model to realize service/database resource sharing and uses net reflection service to dynamically realize programmable design, including five modules: driver library, programming library, database, fault library, and execution application library. The main advantage of this system is that it does not limit products and measurement methods. It only needs to clarify the test requirements and develop corresponding device drivers to build a test system flexibly and quickly to meet various test needs in the manufacturing process.

Project 5: Thermal Test System

For every electronic product, heat dissipation is an unavoidable problem, especially for radio frequency products. The quality of heat dissipation performance directly affects its service life, energy efficiency, stability and other performance indicators.

In order to simplify the process and improve efficiency, we propose a new thermal test system, which collects temperature from the test point through special tooling, and at the same time transmits the voltage and current collection data to the PC through the BUS, and sets the software to automatically collect, record and analyze. The entire system releases manpower during the testing process, reduces repetitive operations, and transmits data through the cloud to realize remote collaborative work.