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A 6 Gb/s 9.8 pJ/b rotatable non-contact connector applicable to industrial robot arms is developed. The proposed non-contact connector enables a high-speed and highly reliable wireless data connection between three-dimensional (3-D) cameras and an edge computer in an autonomously controlled robot. A rotatable transmission line coupler (RTLC) is proposed to accommodate the rotational operation of the robot arm. Since the proposed doughnut-shaped RTLC has a constant overlapped area at any rotation angle, the RTLC has a constant coupling gain at all rotation angles. To remove inter-symbol interference (ISI) occurring at a specific rotation angle, a pulse-equalizing receiver is also developed. An interface bridge IC is proposed to transfer a wide range of interface signals from a slow-control signal such as the control area network (CAN) to a high-speed video interface signal. A signal protocol conversion technique applying on-off keying (OOK) modulation is also developed in order to transfer slow legacy interfaces used in the robot arms that include a dc component. Experiments with a test chip fabricated in a 40 nm CMOS process confirmed that bit error rate (BER) was lower than 10 $^{-12}$ at any rotation angle in a communication distance of 3 mm. The proposed system improves energy efficiency by a factor of 3.7, area efficiency by a factor of 1.8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A non-contact interface for modular smartphones that can provide a data connection at a maximum MIPI rate of 6 Gb/s has been developed. A two-fold transmission line coupler, which is a small-size coupler that has a wide bandwidth, is proposed for modular smartphones, where the layout area is strictly limited. The coupler size is 6 mm2 for a 5 mm communication distance, which is 1/24 smaller than the conventional coupler. Since many wireless communication components, such as LTE, WiFi, and GPS transceivers, are assembled in a small module, the interference between the non-contact interface and the wireless transceivers should be suppressed. To improve noise immunity and reduce unwanted radiation from the coupler, an electromagnetic-compatibility robust pulse transceiver is proposed. A synchronous receiver using an edge counting clock recovery circuit improves noise immunity, and a bi-phase pulse transmitter reduces noise radiation in the GPS band. There is no EMS by LTE or WiFi signals on the data connection at BER < 10^-12 when the coupler is separated by a distance of 2 mm and no EMI on GPS signals at a separation of 10 mm. Compared with the state-of-the-art result, the highest energy efficiency (6 pJ/b) and space efficiency (1.2 \textmm^2/1 \textmm distance) is achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]