Sony Corporation has announced plans to develop a ‘Single Wire Interface Technology,’ a hybrid transmission technology that allows the transmission of both data and power through a single cable.

Leveraging the new technology, it will be possible to streamline the internal wiring of a mobile device through a single cable or copper wire, according to Sony. Until now, all of the video, audio and control signals as well as the power transmission were routed through a number of cables within the movable mechanisms of mobile devices, such as hinges or rotating parts. With the implementation of the new technology, Sony will be able to improve design flexibility, reliability and durability for mobile devices with movable mechanisms.

With widespread adoption and advent of newer technologies, the mobile devices have been getting ever more sophisticated, equipped with advanced functionality and high resolution displays, which in turn needs more wiring connections for enabling the flow of increasing volume of data within the devices. Also, the connectors in devices are getting larger to offer more advanced features that makes it difficult to bend the connecting cables.

The new ‘Single Wire Interface Technology’ developed by Sony Corporation has been successful in leveraging time division duplex and multiplex to enable bi-directional transmission of various signals, such as video, audio and control signals. It has also incorporated a mechanism that retains individual synchronization, so that bi-directional transmission of different signals, such as display and camera signals can take place.

Further, the technology helps in supplying the DC power on the same signal cable, while the advanced encoding technology developed by Sony with DC balance makes sure that both DC power supply and high speed data can be transmitted within a limited frequency bandwidth.

The hardware recently developed by Sony includes a digital portion that performs multi-level encoding and an analog portion for transmitting and receiving signals. A yet another portion integrates signals with DC power or separates signals from DC power, while with the help of a multi-level encoding that has no DC component, high speed transmission with limited frequency bandwidth and DC power supply is possible on a single common cable. The company has demonstrated that the new technology offers high transmission speeds ranging to the levels of 940Mbps.

Sony has partnered with ROHM (News - Alert) Co., Ltd., a provider of peripheral technologies for joint development and technical validation for the analog portion of the test chip so that the technology can be practically implemented in near future. The company is going to grant a license for the IP of the digital portion of the technology to ROHM, so that a single chip including both the analog and digital portions can be developed.

In August 2009, ROHM Semiconductor launched a new series of CMOS LDO regulators featuring its proprietary Automatic Power Saving or ‘APS’ function that dynamically switches performance characteristics based on operating conditions.