New Industry Products

High-Power PoE Controller from PowerDsine

May 01, 2006 by Jeff Shepard

PowerDsine has announced a high-power controller, PD83000, which will support more Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) based devices by using 4-pairs of Ethernet cable as opposed to two. This will allow switch and router vendors to provide higher levels of managed power to a range of Ethernet devices, such as video screen phones, WiMax transmitters, pan-tilt-zoom cameras and thin-clients.

New power hungry Ethernet end devices require more than the current IEEE 802.3af standard 15.4 Watts and, because of this, switch vendors needed a chip that can be used with new and existing switches that will be able to deliver more watts to power end-evices. The new chipset can provide switch vendors with a minimum of 30.8 Watts of power and could potentially reach 56W. Also, when deployed with PowerDsine's 4 or 12-port chip, (PD64004A and PD64012G respectively) the new chipset can provide a maximum of 48 high-power ports.

"The market of PoE is always changing. many next-generation devices that are being created, need for more power to operate. The new PD83000 chip-set will allow a wider variety of applications to benefit from the advantages of Power-over-Ethernet," said Amit Gilboa, Product Marketing Manager of PowerDsine. "The IEEE 802.3af standard is mainly targeted today at low power-consuming applications such as VoIPphones, WLAN access points and IP cameras. The PD83000 allows applications that need more power, such as WiMAX transmitters, Pan-Tilt-Zoom cameras, Video-phones and Thin-clients, to receive the necessary power."

"We believe that as Power over Ethernet adoption expands, growing from Enterprise applications to SOHO and small and medium business markets and further into Gateways and Routers in the Residential market, there will be a greater need for powering more Ethernet based applications that require higher power than what the standard currently allows today," said Madhu Rayabhari, VP Marketing of PowerDsine. "The PD83000 will allow switch vendors to offer immediate solutions to high-power needs, above what can be supplied with a standard IEEE802.3af solution."

The PD83000 implements a unique synchronization algorithm for the power-sharing circuitry implemented in the end-device thereby optimizing the associated costs. The PD83000 also combines data and status information from the 2 physical ports (data & spare) onto a single logical port, for ease-of-use by the Switch/Router vendor. The system is fully backwards compatible with IEEE 802.3af enabled end-device when used on a single pair and supports all of PowerDsine's advanced feature set such as Dynamic Power Management, Emergency Power Management, Port Matrix, Port Priority and LED stream among others.

High-power is achieved by injecting power on the data-pair and on the spare-pair of the Ethernet cable simultaneously. Using IEEE802.3af defined parameters a minimum of 30.8W is currently possible. Scaling the voltage and current to higher values allows for higher power availability. Such scaling can permit designers to achieve power levels of up to 56W. Combining power from both the data and spare pairs is performed at the end PoE end-device.

The PD83000 will be ready for shipment and production in May 2006.