Integrated listener for NFC wireless charging to cut footprint

The PTX30W will work in tandem with an NFC poller such as the Panthronics PTX130W in a charging cradle: it harvests power wirelessly without the need for a microcontroller in the listener device.

Replacing four discrete components in today’s designs with a single chip and occupying less than half the board footprint, the new PTX30W will provide valuable space savings and increased design flexibility in products such as fitness trackers, smart watches, earbuds, hearing aids, smart glasses, smart rings, styluses and medical sensors.

The PTX30W runs an NFC Forum-derived wireless charging protocol which supports power negotiation. This means that the PTX30W will simplify product development, as it can operate in stand-alone wireless charging mode with no need for an external microcontroller to run NFC wireless charging operations.

The single-chip PTX30W integrates an efficient rectifier, NFC tag, battery charger and power management as well as protocol handling. The NFC tag supports bidirectional data communication in NFC Type A mode. This enables the transfer of data between the charging cradle and the device under charge, such as the battery’s state of charge or fault indicators, as well as enabling firmware upgrades of both devices.

When paired with the Panthronics PTX130W, the NFC poller with the industry’s highest power output, the PTX30W can harvest as much as 1W of power for very fast charging of lithium-ion batteries.

Mark Dickson, Chief Marketing Officer of Panthronics, said: "NFC wireless charging is an ideal solution for compact consumer devices because it operates via a small antenna and supports wireless communication as well as power transfer. Now with the development of the integrated PTX30W, Panthronics is offering device manufacturers a roadmap to even more space savings as well as a simpler system design for faster time-to-market."

The PTX30W is sampling now to alpha customers only. Customer samples will be generally available on the full release of the product later in 2022. Panthronics are going to present PTX30W prototype demonstration kit at the Embedded World on June 21st – 23rd in Nuremberg, Germany at their booth 1-139.