Electronics News October 2011 special edition

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THE FUTURE

CONTENTS P04

A statement from Senator Kim Carr

P05

element14

P06

Kontron

P07

Rohde & Schwarz

P08-09

The Winners

P10 -11

Discussing the Future

P12 1st speech: Bio electronics diagnostic methods

P13

EDITOR’S NOTE

The Future is here On a cool August morning, a select gathering of professionals gathered in our Sydney office to debate and discuss opportunities and hurdles facing the electronics industry in Australia. It was the first such event conducted by Electronics News and one thing quickly became evident – we lack forums to share and voice opinions.

The post-event feedback was extremely positive with participants seeking details on the next session. The Electronics News “Future” roundtable will thus develop over the following months as we invite more decision makers and thought leaders to contribute their and help shape our industry.

Dwarfed by mining, manufacturing and food, electronics is a small but extremely critical component of Australia’s industrial landscape. And most importantly, we need a voice and a platform to convey to government and the wider community, the excitement, innovation and untapped potential of this industry.

Last month’s “Future” round table was a small first step in this direction. In 2012, we plan to play our part in spreading the message with additional themed round tables. Check our site (www.electronicsnews.com.au) in the next couple of months or email me for more information.

Our first round table that morning wasn’t all hard work though. Over the course of a champagne breakfast, we felicitated the winners of the 7th Annual Future Awards, who then stayed on and participated in the round table.

This year’s winners certainly did the electronics community proud. The winning projects covered the whole spectrum, from a super quick DC to DC battery charger for roadside assistance vehicles to an advanced hyperbaric chamber control system. We wish them technological and commercial success.

Electronics News acknowledges the sponsors Rohde & Schwarz, element14 and Kontron who supported the Future Awards and the round table event.

2nd speech: Flexible electronics

P14

3rd speech: Lessons for start-ups

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THE FUTURE

Leading the way

PICTURE: GRAHAM CROUCH/DFAT

Senator the Hon Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, issued a statement congratulating the winners of the 7th Electronics News Future Awards.

T

o see the phenomenal potential of Australian electronics, you have to look overseas. That is one of the great privileges of my office.

In the past few months alone, I have met children in New Delhi whose lives were remade

by Cochlear implants. I have seen the intense interest amongst OECD delegates in the technologies that support the NBN. I have showcased breakthrough semiconductors that could boost our bid for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), one of the most ambitious global astronomy projects of our time.

The Australian electronics industry is aiming for excellence, and the world is paying attention. It is time this country did the same.

The challenges for manufacturers in Australia today are well-known.

From my perspective, that’s no excuse to set our sights on mediocrity. Too many commentators seem ashamed to back ambition – in clean technology, in the digital economy, and in every high-tech sector reliant on highcalibre electronics.

They are denying a fact nailed home by every firm profiled in this publication. We can win the innovation race – and we should expect nothing less.

Winners pick themselves. The latest national Innovation Systems Report confirms it.

Firms which choose to innovate are twice as likely to report increases in productivity, and up to four times as likely to boost their employment. They are also 41 per cent more likely to report higher profits.

Innovation is the key to a globally competitive

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Electronics News Future Awards

“We can win the innovation race — and we should expect nothing less”

electronics sector, and that sector can be the catalyst for a new Australia.

This is our chance to re-tool our industries, to up-grade our infrastructure, to build a stronger nation on a new type of manufacturing.

Our partnership with the electronics community must underpin that work, crossing the full spectrum of the innovation chain.

This year alone, the Government will invest more than $9 billion on science, research and innovation. I am particularly proud of the efforts we have made to build the national research infrastructure backbone. This year, we launched the first of three supercomputers in the $80 million Pawsey Project, at Murdoch University.

That machine alone ranks in the global top one hundred. When combined with the power of the two supercomputers we have yet to launch, it will show the world we are ready to support the massive processing demands of the Square Kilometre Array – which will generate more than 5 million million million bytes of information every day.

The Government is also working closely with industry to unlock access to the knowledge, capital and infrastructure for innovation.

After two years of consultation and planning, the Parliament has now passed Australia’s first R&D Tax Credit for enterprising firms. The Credit is a more generous and flexible mechanism than the existing Concession, and will open the door to many start-ups and smaller firms in the electronics sector. If they want to invest in genuine R&D, then this Government will back their ambition.

The Credit will complement the support we open up through targeted grants and capability development programs.

Through Commercialisation Australia, for example, we have invested $1.4 million in Nitero’s ultra-low power 60GHz chipset. The technology is based on more than five years of research and development by National ICT Australia, and this grant will help get it to market.

Enterprise Connect is another vital support for the electronics industry. Through its Technology Partnerships Equipment Register, firms can access highly specialised equipment and technology from other businesses that have spare capacity. It is a cost-effective solution to an otherwise intractable problem – and that is the spirit of the innovation agenda.

This is how we will transform this nation, firm by firm, region by region, for the twenty-first century. I thank you for leading the way.

THE FUTURE

Breakthrough: the element 14 knode How a new online platform is helping engineers find expertise and help. element14 writes

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lectronic system design is a team sport.

Every electronic system combines the work of many technology providers. The electronic components alone – from semiconductors, to passives, to connectors – come from many separate suppliers. Then there are the companies that supply tools for the development process as well as suppliers that provide software operating systems and drivers. And we can’t leave out the manufacturers, distributors, service providers and the standards bodies that contribute to the creation of the system. With so much going into each system, electronic design engineers are often left to single-handedly start the design process by pulling these design elements together.

The electronics distributor element14 has recently built an online platform that brings together all the resources necessary to research, design, develop and build an electronic system. This single source of engineering knowledge and electronic design solutions is called the element14 knode.

In a typical design process, the electronic design engineer begins by researching the technology. This includes gathering information about design protocols and standards, learning about existing architectures, and discussing possible new approaches with experts in the field. The starting point for this search is usually a general purpose search engine like Google.

Unfortunately, while a Google search will return thousands of items on a technical term like “Zigbee”, just sifting through the results to find relevant technical data is likely to add days to the engineer’s workload.

To be sure of finding all the information, engineering research also requires digging through dozens of vendor web sites to find the latest product information, each with its own structure and data format. The element14 knode provides an engineering-focused search engine that simplifies electronic engineering design research by consolidating relevant technical information into a single learning centre and combining it with technology forums to connect engineers with similar design interests and access to subject matter experts.

A SINGLE SOURCE OF ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE AND DESIGN SOLUTIONS The next step in the design phase may include testing potential technologies for their performance and suitability to the application.

For hardware analysis, an engineer can use a development platform as an “instant prototype” of a portion of the design.

Many manufacturers offer these development kits on their individual websites but the knode collects and presents all development kits according to application type, accelerating the design process.

Similarly, system software can be prototyped using off-the-shelf software that target specific applications. Engineers download trials for realtime operating systems, and software stacks to evaluate different implementation options.

By finding compatible application software and hardware solutions together in one location, engineers can devote more time to adding differentiating features to their systems rather than debugging interfaces between vendor products.

The system development process also benefits from the consolidation of design tool information and expertise into a single location.

When engineers look for design tools, the process requires lengthy and time consuming evaluation cycles. The designer is often forced to develop benchmarks for testing different types of tools, and then interpret the results.

Many types of tools are required in the development process. For hardware, the user may need PCB tools for schematic design and

layout, FPGA synthesis tools, or analogue simulation and analysis tools. On the software side there are also many different IDEs, compilers and debuggers, all with unique features and benefits depending on the choice of microprocessors in the system.

A library of pre-created benchmarks and demos can accelerate the development tool decision process. Access to a community of engineers whose combined experiences with using the tools can also aid in the decision making process so that the acquisition process does not impede design development.

Designers with web-based design knowledge require an optimised research process so that they can find the right technologies efficiently and have more time for design innovation.

Through the guidance and experience of a global distribution perspective, the element14 knode contributes to the engineering design process by providing an intersection of technology research, design solutions, online community and e-commerce. There is now one place where engineers can find products from many companies that contribute to the design of electronic systems. www.element14.com

www.electonicsnews.com.au

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THE FUTURE

Small form factors go BIG on capabilities Understanding the new COM Express pin-out specifications can help designers take advantage of next-generation processing performance and graphics functionalities. Christine Van De Graaf, Embedded Products Product Manager at Kontron writes

A

s processor technology continues to advance, changes need to be made to industry standards to utilise the most recent capabilities.

The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) recently released revision 2.0 of the COM Express Computer-onModule standard to address next-generation embedded system requirements that have come about due to the additional graphics and display capabilities afforded by the latest processor architectures.

But taking advantage of this enhanced functionality and applying it to small form factor development requires that designers have a thorough understanding of pinout type definitions and the important considerations for implementing them.

From legacy to legacy-free As specified in the new standard, pin-out Type 1 starts with one 220-pin A-B connector and supports up to eight USB 2.0 ports, up to four SATA or SAS ports, and up to six PCI Express Gen1/Gen2 lanes.

Type 2 builds on the functionality by adding a second connector and upgrades support for 32-bit PCI interface plus IDE ports to support legacy PATA devices and CompactFlash memory cards. There also are more PCI Express lanes available that support PCI Express Graphics (PEG).

Comparing pin-out Type 3 to Type 2, only the IDE pins are used in favor of extra Gigabit Ethernet capability.

Consequently, it has no legacy interfaces, but now supports up to three Gigabit Ethernet channels.

6

Electronics News Future Awards

In pin-out type 4, pins reserved for PCI are reallocated, creating space for ten additional PCI Express lanes. These can be used as PCIe lanes 0-15 or as second PEG port lanes 16-31. Finally, pin-out Type 5 combines the changes from Types 3 and 4.

Taking graphics to another level The Type 6 pin-out of the COM Express standard was developed specifically to utilise the expanded graphics capabilities of new processor families.

With Type 6, legacy PCI pins are now used to support the digital display interface and for additional PCI Express lanes.

Pins previously assigned to the IDE interface are now reserved for future technologies, such as SuperSpeed USB, or USB 3.0.

Pin-out type 6 supports advanced graphics options by offering three new digital display interface ports, including and HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort. The first port also supports serial digital video output.

Going compact with Type 10 Type 10 addresses the requirements of newer and extremely compact processors.

When migrating from Type 1 to Type 10, it is recommended not to wire SATA 2 and 3 over the module connector so the modules remain compatible and ready for USB 3.0.

With Rev 2.0, Type 10 and Type 6 now support serial ports. Manufacturers like Kontron ensure compatibility with existing carrier boards by a having protective circuit on the module. Developers do not have to completely modify their existing carrier board layout to use the new capabilities.

Type 10 uses the previous second LVDS channel, TV out and VGA to support SDVO or DisplayPort or HDMI/DVI ports.

Kontron customers using its ultra compact modules such as the nanoETXexpress-SP will not find the changes too much of a hassle, since Kontron has already catered to them.

Universal changes The connector in the present form is now approved for PCI Express Gen2 signals.

There is no alteration to the connector or its pins, but the developer must adhere to new rules for PCIe Gen2 when routing the module and carrier board.

In addition to the previous firmware hub, there is a new BIOS firmware interface for internal and external boot, catering to nextgeneration processors.

Present is a serial peripheral interface (SPI), the future interface for firmware flash on the module and carrier board. The specification has reserved pins to use for this purpose.

New modules must support SPI, but may still additionally support flash firmware externally through conventional LPC provided the chipset continues to support it.

Compact form factor is official A significant advantage for designers is the addition of a smaller compact form factor.

The COM Express Rev. 2.0 defines its dimensions as 95mm by 95mm, but the physical requirements, connector placement and pin-out are the same as those of the basic form factor. www.kontron.com.au

THE FUTURE

R&S RTO: minimal blind time How the Rohde & Schwarz RTO scopes’ hardware design and processing performance makes measurement and analysis more efficient for that extra R&D edge

H

igh acquisition rates and short blind times are just two of the exceptional features of the R&S RTO digital oscilloscopes from Rohde & Schwarz. Their speed and performance mean they are capable of finding even the most sporadic faults and of delivering statistically conclusive results quickly and reliably even when complex waveform analyses are applied.

Users of analogue oscilloscopes are accustomed to seeing almost all the signal details on the screen. The glow of the screen’s phosphor provides a natural persistence that helps to quickly detect signal faults.

By contrast, it takes digital oscilloscopes a long time to display a signal’s sample points due to the large quantities of data they capture and process.

The processing time they require renders them temporarily blind and unable to continue measuring the signal, which means that they can miss potentially important signal changes that point to a fault in the device under test.

During the active acquisition time the oscilloscope acquires the defined number of waveform samples and writes them to the acquisition memory. The length of the acquisition time dependsw on the number of samples and the selected sample rate.

The blind time – the period during which the data is processed and displayed – consists of a fixed time (determined by the system architecture) and a variable time. The variable time depends on the number of sample points and the amount of computation involved for the selected processes.

The ratio of the active acquisition time to the blind time is an important characteristic of a

digital oscilloscope. It can be defined either as the blind time ratio or the waveform acquisition rate.

Many of the scopes’ analysis functions are implemented directly in hardware in the ASIC processing block.

Oscilloscopes with an active acquisition time of 100 ns will typically have a blind time of 10 ms. This means they have an overall acquisition cycle of 10.0001 ms, with 99.999 % blind time, and an acquisition rate of 100 waveforms/sec.

These include waveform interpolation, waveform arithmetic, math functions, and various measurement and analysis functions such as cursors, histograms and masks.

Because blind times like this are too long for many applications, Rohde & Schwarz has built its R&S RTO oscilloscopes around an architecture designed to minimize blind time.

If these functions are implemented in software, blind time is significantly longer, and a scope will take a long time to capture and process the number of waveforms needed to deliver statistically meaningful results.

Oscilloscopes which are capable of higher acquisition rates, such as the R&S RTO from Rohde & Schwarz, can detect rare signal events (which are often the really critical faults) and quickly perform waveform analyses such as histograms or mask tests that return statistically reliable results.

With the R&S RTO oscilloscopes, such limitations are a thing of the past. Their analysis functions are implemented in hardware, and their ability to execute processes in parallel ensures high acquisition rates, even when sophisticated analysis functions are activated.

The reason: Unlike other oscilloscopes on the market today, the R&S RTO scopes have most of their measurement and analysis functionality in a highly integrated ASIC. They are capable of running multiple parallel processes, which radically reduces blind time.

All digital oscilloscopes are temporarily blind. However, the Rohde & Schwarz RTO oscilloscopes’ acquisition and processing functionality is implemented in hardware to minimise blind time.

The ASIC provides a wide range of processing functionalities used in acquiring data and analysing waveform samples stored in memory.

The ASIC’s function block for data acquisition has to pass the data coming from the A/D converter to the acquisition memory in realtime. The acquisition block contains new capabilities, including flexible filter settings and simple math functions such as ADD, SUB and INV, and can simultaneously execute up to three decimation functions (Sample, PeakDetect, HiRes, RMS).

Summary

This design offers crucial advantages when it comes to detecting faults, and enables the scopes to deliver statistically reliable measurement results quickly, even when performing complex analysis tasks.

These advantages, in combination with the innovative digital trigger system, high measurement accuracy, low-noise frontends, single-core A/D converter with a sample rate of 10 GHz, and an intuitive user interface make the R&S RTO oscilloscopes the tool of choice for R&D labs. www.rohde-schwarz.com.au

www.electonicsnews.com.au

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THE FUTURE

Future Awards: The winners The winners of the 2011 Electronics News Future Awards.

RAY KEEFE FROM SUCCESSFUL ENDEAVOURS SHOWS OFF HIS LATEST WIN.

CPE SYSTEMS WITH THEIR TROPHY

PAUL CARTER FROM CAPTIVACTION RECEIVES HIS TROPHY FROM RICHARD POPPLE OF ROHDE & SCHWARZ

CATEGORY

CATEGORY

Wellness Winner:

Hyperbaric Controller from CPE Systems The project was a control and monitoring system contracted by Hyperbaric Health to integrate and replace the existing and outdated controller.

This new technology developed by CPE Systems provides hyperbaric technicians with a number of advanced features that current hyperbaric chamber control systems do not offer.

These include integrated control and sensor monitoring, automated logging, treatment selection, operator activity monitoring, and remote control capability.

Special attention was placed on the software to ensure it is easy to use, allowing operators to better utilise the automated features of the controller in their jobs. At the same time, the interface provides access to advanced and customised control of the system.

In awarding the win, the judges said they particularly liked the Hyperbaric Controller’s improved feature set, expandability and focus on using technology to boost patient outcomes.

Winner:

CaptivEYE Timelapse from Captivaction

Electronics News Future Awards

Industrial Electronics Winner:

ABB CQ900R from Successful Endeavours

The technology is a full-featured timelapse capturing and remote viewing webcam system for archival, monitoring and marketing.

The CQ900R was commissioned by ABB’s High Voltage Division in Lilydale, Melbourne to replace the C200A capacitor bank controller.

Automated pan, tilt and zoom systems allow a single camera to take multiple images in quick succession to result in wide panoramic scenes covering up to 360 degrees of the area. It can also be zoomed in to an area of interest.

The power systems controller manages power factor correcting capacitor banks to maintain power quality in the power distribution network, with the ultimate goal of improving power distribution profits and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Many of the systems are located in remote areas, yet offer seamless camera control, and captured footage is immediately stored on central servers, away from the actual camera site, providing fast access to the latest captures as well as data security.

The CQ900R and its variants were designed

by Successful Endeavours to cater to the three main segments of demand within the international market.

To do this, Captivaction hooks up these systems with a solar power generation panel, batteries, as well as 3G communications or satellite internet access. A side effect is that the installations are relocatable.

The units are suited for emerging markets which require reliable but basic features in the controller, developed world markets which require advanced features, and customers who need an advanced controller which support full SCADA and SmartGrid capabilities.

The judges liked the interactivity and potential applications of the system, and the focus on making it truly standalone both in communications strategies and power supply.

The judges particularly liked the modularity of the system, and the integration of both PCB and software design to yield a flexible product suited for international markets.

SPONSORED BY:

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CATEGORY

Communications

THE FUTURE

REDARC TEAM RECEIVES THEIR TROPHY FROM ELEMENT14’S PETER DAVIS

TENG ZHANG FROM JOUNCE LABS AND ALLAN TOMLINSON FROM KONTRON

KARINA TAYLOR FROM CPE SYSTEMS AND BRAD MCINNES FROM ENDURANCE CONSULTING

CATEGORY

CATEGORY

Automotive

CATEGORY

Student

Best in Design

Winner:

Winner:

Winner:

Hull Stress Monitoring System from CPE Systems (with Endurance Consulting)

olyMEMS from Carson Au at Jounce Labs

In-Vehicle Fast Charger from Redarc Technologies

Jounce Labs is a collaboration by two current UNSW students, Carson Au and Teng Zhang.

The company’s flagship product, the olyMEMS, is a training and performance assessment tool targeting Olympic weightlifters.

The product is a super quick DC to DC battery charger for roadside assistance vehicles which takes a completely flat battery to a useable state within 15 minutes.

The system was contracted by Rolls Royce Australia Services, and came from a collaboration between CPE Systems and Endurance Consulting. The aim was a system destined for two LPA class ships.

The solution monitors the condition and dynamic forces which stress ships’ hulls, and informs the ship’s crew as to the current and projected forces on the hull, so they can continue to safely operate the ships as they age.

Apart from sending real-time alarms to the crew as the hull stress approaches or exceeds the damage threshold, the system must also keep a comprehensive data log so that developing trends can be determined, and decisions made to prolong the service life of the ships.

The judges were impressed by the very short delivery timeframe, and the focus on intuitive software to ensure useability by the crew.

The olyMEMS is an open source hardware project which improves on current training and performance assessment tools. Traditional methods use a high-speed camera with postprocessing to extract useful data.

The system developed by the students employs a MEMS inertial measurement unit attached directly to the barbell to measure parameters such as peak vertical acceleration and velocity, as well as logging the characteristic curve of the acceleration. This data is then sent wirelessly to a base station, which displays the relevant information in real time on an LCD. The judges liked the open nature of the olyMEMS system and the use of electronics technology to provide an improved alternative to conventional ways of monitoring weightlifting performance.

SPONSORED BY:

The charger is designed to be mounted in roadside assistance vehicles, and is robust and durable under extreme temperature and environmental conditions.

It is designed to be simple to use with built-in safety features protecting against short circuit and faulty cells.

The In-Vehicle Fast Charger integrates Redarc’s Multi-chemistry battery charging technology to deliver very high current to a flat battery, without having to run any additional vehicles.

The judges said the entry successfully combines proprietary technology with universally compatible features to solve an ageold problem.

The safety features and rugged enclosure were clearly designed with the target users in mind.

SPONSORED BY:

www.electonicsnews.com.au

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THE FUTURE

Discussing the future The roundtable discussion which followed the 7th Electronics News Future Awards saw participants engaging in an open discussion about a number of topics affecting the local electronics industry.

T

he roundtable discussion kicked off on the topic of entrepreneurships and startups, before moving on to medical electronics, the future of the industry, communications and energy use, and sustainability regulation.

Electronics News editor Kevin Gomez moderated the discussion.

Entrepreneurships and start-ups According to Ray Keefe, the founder of Successful Endeavours, academic and publicly funded research organisations are not seen by small and medium enterprises (SME) as sources of practical help.

This perceived detachment from practical research is compounded by the difficulties surrounding funding. Funding programs tend to require a fairly large initial investment on the part of the SME, and can take a year or longer, which represent a long time in the lifetime of start-ups.

Prof Jonathan Tapson from the University of Western Sydney identified a gap in getting technologies from universities and researchers to companies. This is mostly because university researchers tend to lose interest as their technologies become mature.

“The point where it stops being interesting to academics is about 2 or 3 years short of where it starts being interesting to a businessman, or to a commercial funder,” he said.

Michael Paay, Project and Technology Manager of Redarc Electronics agreed there was a continuity problem with research and funding due to the two-year gap between research projects and commercialisation. While NICTA had been founded to fill this gap, both Chris Farmer, Project Manager of Test Systems at CPE Systems and

10 Electronics News Future Awards

Richard Popple, National Sales Manager of Rohde & Schwarz, said the execution was flawed and not practical for many companies.

Engagement One possible solution to resolving the gap between academic and industrial sphere is having start-up companies work with universities to sponsor students through their degree in order to cultivate the skills they need. This was discussed by Allan Tomlinson, Managing Director of Kontron, and Popple.

“A lot of academics are academics because they don’t want to be in the industry,” he said.

Popple agreed, pointed out that research-heavy start-ups and investors do not tend to mix.

“It’s very rare to see a start-up company that has any engagement with venture capital. In fact, generally speaking, they’re terrified of even the concept of a capitalist,” he said.

This collaborative approach has been taken by companies like Mimix Broadband (now M/ACOM) and Broadcom.

Overall, participants of the roundtable agreed that while many start-ups or spin-offs from universities tend to have the science down pat, they may lack business acumen. Many academics are sequestered in universities working on products, and paying no heed to the market.

However, Popple warned some start-ups have failed to commercialise their ideas despite collaborating with universities.

“Creating a company and making it work is totally different from designing electronics,” said Tomlinson.

Cultural divide

Market awareness and market access, Tomlinson suggests, is very important to the success of any given product, and this variable can trump overall product technology.

The academic engagement model is also plagued with a cultural divide. According to Prof Tapson, many academics do not want to be involved in the commercial and industrial arenas.

A possible solution would be to have business-

THE FUTURE CSIRO’s perspective Addressing concerns over perceptions of research organisations being slow-moving with technology and commercialisation, Dr Gerard Wilson from the CSIRO said his organisation inherits the bureaucracy of government bodies.

The red-tape within the organisation means there are huge transaction costs, which apply whether the CSIRO is dealing with a multi-million dollar prospect, or a $5,000 project for a local SME. The CSIRO is obligated to tax payers to ensure it gets the most impact from its investments.

“Should we be dealing problems of national importance where you need to have critical mass and diversity of skills across the whole range, or would you fragment that all down and just work with SMEs?” Dr Wilson asked.

CSIRO also has to contend with political wrangling, and the general indifference of the average Australian toward research.

“Australians are more interested in putting 20 bucks on a horse in the Melbourne Cup than they are to invest in R&D,” Dr Wilson said.

That said, the organisation has an SME engagement team led by Michael Egan, and is forming growing clusters of local start-ups.

Medical electronics Professor Tapson said from an outsider’s perspective Australia punches way above its weight in the field of medical electronics.

“We got a lot of people with medical devices experience and start-up experience,” he said.

“I think it’s a healthy industry, but I just question whether it’s sensible to have quite such a massive focus on the one area.”

minded people introduced at early stages of research projects, letting them develop and refine a business plan right from the get-go.

Support and improving awareness Like many manufacturers in Australia, the electronics sector has not “talked up” its achievements, and the Australian government does not properly support the industry. Instead, the mining industry has largely succeeded in dominating the headlines and political agenda.

Yet, manufacturing and electronics, even without this support, has retained its role as a significant part of the economy.

Given proper nurturing, it is possible the industry will flourish. This would be advantageous not just to the Australian economy, but also larger commercial players.

Peter Davis, Regional Director of element14, acknowledges it is important for larger companies like his to support entrepreneurs, since having more successful businesses around will naturally lead to benefits up the vine.

Dr Alistair McEwan from the University of Sydney said the local industry should look into areas which are not strictly medical, such as health electronics or bio-electronics. These areas have shorter approval processes and time to market.

Home health and fitness, in particular, pose a great opportunity due to the ageing population and rising health costs. Bio-electronics can be integrated into other applications, like cars, to provide useful information about the user.

Future Peter Davis said that even though the short to medium term future would be tough for element14, he was an optimist. He saw opportunities as electronics continue to make their way into more applications.

Richard Popple, speaking for Rohde & Schwarz, said the company’s major market is in defence, and so is less exposed to the vagaries of the consumer market. Like Davis, he sees opportunities in ubiquitous electronics.

Allan Tomlinson says Kontron sees potential in the military market as that sector looks to upgrade on technologies. There are also opportunities in automation and the utilities.

However, the big threat to Australian companies and start-ups, with their focus on intellectual property, he says, are rich conglomerates taking good ideas and locking them away and copycat markets just stealing ideas outright.

Communications and power use There was general consensus that as electronics become embedded in more applications, wireless communications will become ubiquitous Similarly, an increased focus on environmental impacts is driving pressure to reduce power consumption in electronics.

Unfortunately, as Richard Popple pointed out, communications technologies tend to move at a very fast pace, and Australia does not have the level of technology and investment required to play a significant role in developing global standards of communications.

In the power use space, especially, government legislations have a large role to play in how technologies will be implemented, and Australia tends to legislate according to other existing standards from around the world.

Additionally, the core developments in reducing energy use of electronics lie with the processor chips and communications chipsets, the arena for multinational chip manufacturers and standards development councils.

As such, Australia’s role must lie in the implementation and value adding of these technologies as they emerge from the global community. Opportunities for innovation still abound in designing products and applications around these core technologies, in order to maximise or extend their capabilities.

The defence sector was identified as a lowhanging fruit in the power consumption and storage market. The development of micro-grid infrastructure will also pose opportunities.

Sustainability and Regulation Due to the nature of semiconductors, the electronics industry still has some progress to make in improving the sustainability of its products. The development of organic and flexible electronics poses an opportunity in boosting the recyclability of electronic products.

The majority of sustainability improvements will be on the back of legislations, with Europe being the most likely to be the first to legislate, and standards then spreading by osmosis. There will be a cascading effect, as products in Australia which are exported to Europe or regions with standards will need to be compliant with those standards.

To improve Australia’s competitiveness in the export market, especially given that many market standards are hurdles exporters need to jump over, Prof Tapson recommended setting up a one-stop shop where Australian manufacturers can be walked through the process of getting certifications into foreign environments.

www.electonicsnews.com.au 11

THE FUTURE

Bio electronic diagnostic methods The first speaker at the 7th Electronics News Future Awards was Dr Alistair McEwan from the University of Sydney.

“With the combination of electronics and biology...we can do a lot more with the new devices”

D

r Alistair McEwan is a graduate from the University of Sydney, and has a PhD in integrated circuit design.

Dr McEwan’s research focuses on medical instrumentation, biomedical engineering and integrated circuit design.

His work in bioelectronics was recognised with a $100,000 Microsoft fellowship in July this year to accelerate the development of electrical devices used to diagnose and monitor stroke and cardiovascular disease.

His presentation at the 7th Future Awards was titled “Bio electronic Diagnostic Methods”. It centred around the use of electrical impedance tomography for fast imaging of lungs, hearts and brains to improve diagnosis and treatment.

“With the combination of electronics and biology, I think we can do a lot more with the new devices we have,” Dr McEwan said.

Faster diagnosis, longer term monitoring Where current medical imaging via CT scans tend to yield better spatial resolution and detail, it takes a long time and is not suited for longterm monitoring for patients.

With electrical impedance tomography, electrodes are attached to the skin, driving current and receiving voltage, yielding imaging at 10 frames per second to give better information on the insides of the human body.

The technology has been used to image lungs, but Dr McEwan says his main interest is in its applications to cardiovascular disease.

Helping the heart Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world and kills one Australian every ten minutes. It also causes economic loss due to terminated income from people who can no longer work due to heart-related problems.

“Both heart attack and stroke need devices that can be right there on the scene at the time. They also need devices that can be used for long-term bedside monitoring,” Dr McEwan told attendees.

12 Electronics News Future Awards

He is also working in collaborations on devices that help doctors come to a better understanding of how cardiovascular and stroke-related diseases come about.

Electrical impedance tomography can play a direct role in saving lives. For example, the automatic external defibrillators (AED) found in many facilities cannot currently measure the ECG while doing chest compressions.

“That lack of functionality means that about half of the resuscitations are unsuccessful when they might be successful otherwise,” said Dr McEwan. “We are looking at measuring the impedance on those electrodes so we can restore the ECG during chest compressions.”

The technology is also applicable for stroke patients. Dr McEwan worked with Philips on imaging the head and brain using this method.

To differentiate between the two types of stroke (bleed or clot), it is currently necessary to run a CT scan. Since the scan requires a dedicated facility, diagnosis and subsequent targeted treatment can take some time.

By using electrical impedance tomography, the differentiation can be made in a clinic or ambulance, allowing the administration of the right drugs for treatment relatively early in the process.

The process Impedance tomography involves measuring electrical impedance over a frequency range from 10Hz to around 1MHz DC. Spectroscopy is used to look at the difference between the signals at different frequencies.

Different tissues yield different signals, because the cell membranes act as capacitors at low impedance and high frequencies.

The main instrumentation problem Dr McEwan has to contend with is the contact impedance.

A Calvin-type four-terminal, four-electrode connection is used to combat this.

“The contact impedance is on the body… constantly changes. When you put an electrode on the skin, it starts to sweat, the contact impedance drops. If you use gel and it starts to dry out, the contact impudence goes up. When they move, it changes,” Dr McEwan explained.

Another difficulty is when the image needs to be reconstructed. Unlike CT or X-ray scans, the currents flow where the least resistance is, as opposed to being in direct lines.

The electrical impedance tomography approach therefore uses an algorithm which approximates the impedance distribution and to update the resulting image.

While EIT does not have the spatial resolution of MRI and CT scans, the speed advantage allows monitoring of progressing diseases.

THE FUTURE

Flexible electronics The second speaker at the 7th Electronics News Future Awards was Dr Gerard Wilson from CSIRO.

D

r Gerard Wilson is CSIRO’s theme leader in the field of Flexible Electronics Materials Science and Engineering, as part of the Future Manufacturing Flagship.

His expertise is in polymer and advanced composite material science.

His presentation at the 7th Future Awards was titled “Flexible Electronics: A manufacturing proposition for Australia”.

Of magic and technology The electronics industry has been subject to a number of revolutions over the years. The vacuum tube put a wireless in everybody’s kitchen, and the solid state transistor was the next step forward.

For Dr Wilson and his colleagues in the CSIRO, the next revolution will be around flexibility and the conformable aspects of electronics. His research group is working on flexible sensors, photovoltaics, OLED lights and OLED displays. “‘Flexible’ and ‘future’ are synonymous,” Dr Wilson said. “By flexible, we mean conformal, bendable, twistable, but we also mean pervasive, ubiquitous and widely used.”

According to Dr Wilson, the moving images in newspapers, as seen in the Harry Potter movies, is no longer something in the realm of magic, but is made possible by technology.

for flexible electronics.

By 2020, organic photovoltaics are expected to be used for building facades and rooftops, both grid connected and standalone.

Flexible displays will yield rollable displays and televisions, and electronic wallpaper.

OLED lighting will transition from prototypical and decorative lighting into general lighting applications, and there will be integrated, miniaturised diagnostic/lab-on-chips.

“We are trying to build capability in Australia, so that we are not just a passive observer watching all this happening around us,” said Dr Wilson. “We want Australian companies to participate in this coming revolution.”

Practical materials

“Our real goal is to help transform existing Australian industries – like parts of the printing industry – and help bootstrap the flexible electronics industry here.”

To do that, CSIRO is working with companies, such as Securency, which supplies substrates used for printing banknotes on. That firm has a substrate printing press which runs at around 200m a minute.

“If you were printing a 10 percent efficient solar cell, and you print it at that speed, in about five months, you would have printed enough solar cells that would generate the equivalent power of a nuclear power station,” Dr Wilson said.

“When these solar cells go pear-shaped, you roll them up like a pool cover and roll out a new one. You don’t need to have an 80km exclusion area around them because you have got radioactivity.”

Photovoltaics and OLEDs

Half the battle with flexible electronics has to do with the organic materials being used.

With the increased awareness of environmental outcomes, photovoltaics are becoming more common. However, the practicality of generating power from the sun must be offset by aesthetic and architectural preferences.

CSIRO has developed a cycle in its research, going from materials discovery and scale-up through materials characterisation, device fabrication, testing and prototype development.

A bright future

And while Dr Wilson’s team is aware of the need to improve efficiency in solar cells, they are also mindful of factors critical to commercialisation, like scalability and costs, leading to some very clever advances.

Dr Wilson’s focus is on developing better blue emitters, which is being done in collaboration with a Japanese company.

According to Dr Wilson, flexible photovoltaic modules will enable building-integrated photovoltaics that conform with the architectural form of structures and complement the appearance of buildings.

But of course, flexible electronics is about much more than solar cells.

The Organic Electronics Association in Europe, of which CSIRO is a member, has a roadmap

“Some of our champion materials are based on vat dyes, which you can buy en masse for a couple of dollars,” explained Dr Wilson. “But we do some clever chemistry to it, and turn it from a dye to a semiconductor material.”

Besides materials which turn light into electricity, CSIRO is also looking into turning electricity into light, with OLEDs.

“We are now looking at the dopants and the layers on either side of them that carry the charge into the active layers,” he said. “ Our active material has close to 99 percent efficiency. So nearly every electron that goes into the material comes back out as a photon.”

www.electonicsnews.com.au 13

THE FUTURE

Lessons for start-ups The third speaker at the 7th Electronics News Future Awards was Professor Jonathan Tapson from the University of Western Sydney.

P

rof Jonathan Tapson has degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering, and a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He joined the University of Western Sydney in 2011.

While the company initially targeted jewellers, the global financial crisis put that model in jeopardy, and Prof Tapson’s partners re-engineered the machines for the mining industry.

According to Prof Tapson, a lot of problems in the world can be attributed to the fact that certain things still cannot be measured, thus his interest in sensors. He is particularly interested in bio-inspired sensors.

The company broke even during the financial turmoil.

According to Prof Tapson, it’s important for start-ups, who are intrinsically flexible, to be agile when business conditions change.

Besides his main research area in electronic sensors and systems, he has been keenly involved in start-up entrepreneurship, especially the process of getting technology out of universities and science councils to the stage when it is profitable, employing people, and is a business.

Start-ups should also be aware of their market.

Small economies have shallow markets, and catering to a niche in shallow markets may not be able to support a business.

The key may be to expand the market through export.

The road to success

“I am always concerned when startups say the rules are different in their industry,” Prof Tapson said.

Prof Tapson’s first start-up was in 1999, with Motornostix. The key technology measured the health of machinery, and used the Internet to report back to engineers.

“Startups are businesses. The kind of stuff that applies in a fish-and-chip shop applies remarkably well in a lot of high-tech startups.”

Due to entrenched thinking and the relative unfamiliarity on the part of customers at that time in regards to the Internet, Motornostix was only partially successful.

According to Prof Tapson, timing is very important to technology-related start-ups, and being first is not always the answer.

“The surfer who takes off ahead of the wave misses it as badly as the one who takes off too late. You have to hit the wave at the right moment,” Prof Tapson explained.

Another key lesson was to understand the funding space, and what investors want when they put money into the company.

Lastly, Prof Tapson learnt the importance of picking a strategy and sticking with it.

“It takes a year or two years to understand whether you are in the right sector, selling the right product,” he said.

Changing strategies every six months was a loss-making exercise.

Alternative methods Prof. Tapson’s second start-up was a not-forprofit called Cell-Life. This was a illiteratefriendly mobile phone-based system which delivered medication and advice to HIV-

14 Electronics News Future Awards

Insights from the outside Prof Tapson, having worked in Australia for the past two years, offered his outsider’s view of the local electronics industry.

positive people in Africa.

The system is now looking after a quarter of the people in southern Africa who are on antiretroviral medicine, or about 500,000 people.

The not-for-profit model allowed Prof Tapson to channel the enthusiasm of volunteers and semi-volunteers into a successful business.

He could also leverage non-traditional funding.

“Because these stakeholders care about the problem, they tend to fund more generously and on better terms than venture capital,” he said.

Because it was a non-profit, and needed to contend with the lack of infrastructure in regions of Africa, Cell-Life built its technology on open-source, which he said works well, and is not to be underestimated.

The third start-up, called Hot-Platinum, provides a cost-effective way of processing platinum, a notoriously difficult material.

While he expressed amazement at the high density of bio-medical devices start-ups here, he warned of the long time to market for such applications, due to accreditation, certification and trial processes.

Additionally, medical devices and implants are not quickly scalable. “(Unlike software,) you can’t put it on the Internet and say ‘Download this and stick it in your head’. It’s not a reasonable distribution model,” Prof Tapson said.

He sees opportunities in the agricultural market, where he says start-ups can take the same knowledge and synergies and apply it to the animal market, where there are not so many hoops to jump through.

Contrary to popular views, Prof Tapson also praised the qualifications and engineering talent here, as well as good government support, and significant amounts of funding available.

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