Infineon Technologies AG is launching a solution in the market that can be used to open and close locks via mobile phones, the locks will have no batteries and the application is claimed to get the power it needs without contact from the mobile phone, also referred to as energy harvesting.
“By dispensing with batteries, we are providing, for the first time, a reliable, low-maintenance and secure way of opening and closing smart locks,” says Adam White, Division President of Power & Sensor Systems at Infineon.
Infineon says that it will also put the solution for contactless energy transfer to use in other applications. “Our solution for contactless use of energy saves resources due to the lack of batteries. In addition, it will enable new applications in which the use of batteries was previously too complex or too cost-intensive,” says White. One example is to measure parameters that are difficult to access, like an NFC passive tire pressure sensor for bicycles.
To activate the lock, the mobile phone must be held directly on it. Near-field communication (NFC) is used to check whether the device is also actually authorized to open the lock. This is where encryption technology comes in. At the same time, energy is transferred without contact to a capacitor that opens or closes the lock.
The core of the solution is the programmable 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller with a built-in NFC frontend. With integrated power generation and an H-bridge, the NAC1080 enables customers to launch miniaturized smart locks on the market with very few components. The NAC1080 has an additional integrated AES128 accelerator and a true random number generator to allow data encryption and decryption with extremely low power consumption.
The market for smart locks is booming. It was valued in 2020 at USD 1.4 billion and is expected to grow from 2021 to 2028, at an average annual rate of 18.2 per cent, to $5.3 billion. This growth will gain even more momentum through the use of battery-free devices.