TouchNetix, a manufacturer of system and component technology for high-performance touchscreens, announced the introduction of the first in its aXiom series of touchscreen controller ICs, marking a breakthrough in the performance and capabilities of capacitive touchscreens for the industrial and automotive markets.
The aXiom AX310 is the industry’s first touchscreen controller to be designed specifically for industrial and automotive applications. A superior alternative to the modified consumer-grade touchscreen controllers supplied to the industrial and automotive markets today, the AX310 enables OEMs for the first time to:
- Design responsive touchscreens that have a thick, varying-thickness or contoured overlay while maintaining uniform sensitivity across the whole screen’s surface
- Implement sophisticated hover, proximity, touch and concurrent force-sensing functions with a single capacitive touchscreen controller which also integrates haptics control. With this combination, OEMs can realise 3D touch effects.
- Support touchscreen designs in arbitrary and non-standard display formats, including ultra-wide aspect ratios and non-rectangular form factors
- Achieve reliable touch-sensing performance in the presence of multiple high-power noise sources
- Easily meet CISPR25 Level 3 specifications for radiated emissions without implementing expensive noise counter-measures
- Dramatically reduce the risk of early touchscreen failure due to materials degradation in hot and humid environments
The aXiom controllers have been designed from the ground up for operation in harsh and noisy industrial and automotive environments and over a wide temperature range. Its all-new, highly digital architecture gives it performance advantages that are impossible for modified consumer-grade touchscreen controllers to match.
The aXiom products owe their outstanding performance to a combination of a novel analogue front end which uses a narrowband, low-voltage sinusoidal drive waveform, an innovative seamless frequency-changing capability to avoid noisy frequency ranges, and a high-performance proprietary digital signal processor (DSP) engine. The most striking feature of this new architecture is its high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 80dB, compared to the typical 50-55dB of competing products in the market.
This high SNR is enabled with TouchNetix’ aXiom controller while driving the sensor at a low DC-neutral 2.5Vpk-pk, whereas other controllers often use a drive voltage of +30V or higher to achieve even a modest SNR. The aXiom IC’s low drive voltage produces very low levels of radiated emissions. The DC neutral bias also dramatically reduces the stresses experienced by the touchscreen materials.
For information on pricing and to request samples or a datasheet, contact TouchNetix directly at http://www.touchnetix.com/contact.
