EnOcean Launches Dolphin Platform For Energy-Autonomous Sensors & Wireless Sensor Networks
EnOcean™ launched its Dolphin system architecture at Electronica 2008, which the company claims sets entirely new standards in wireless sensor networks. Dolphin enables energy-autonomous actuators, bidirectional communication of sensors and innovative routing concepts, creating the foundation for a wide variety of new products and applications.
EnOcean Dolphin allows on-demand matching and continuous optimization of central system features such as energy budget, peripheral functionalities and wireless communication. The length of wireless telegrams, for example, is minimized dynamically to the data content for transmission, and in programming only those software function blocks actually needed by the user are saved to memory.
EnOcean technology is already being used to wirelessly link hundreds of thousands of energy-autonomous sensors in buildings worldwide. The Dolphin architecture was developed to enable non-proprietary systems to match the increasing demands of very different applications, and grow in their functionality together with the demands of such applications. Dolphin system architecture, through its modularity, is well suited for future demands such as encryption or meshNet routing.
EnOcean modules based on the new Dolphin system architecture enable bidirectional communication of energy-autonomous sensors. The bidirectional plug-&-play TCM 300 transceiver module for EnOcean wireless systems halves the standby power requirement compared to its predecessor (2.5 to 3.3V, receiving approximately 30mA and transmitting approximately 15mA) cutting the costs for the power supply and reducing power consumption by around 50%.
In conjunction with the new modules, EnOcean is launching an operating system with an application programming interface (API) that allows application-specific programs to be written in high-level C language. In addition to the protocol stack for EnOcean wireless, the API offers many powerful functions, for controlling energy management for example, use of digital or analog I/Os, access to flash memory and the continuously powered RAM0, and control of timer functions.
