Orca’s RF satellite chip includes a power management unit (PMU) based on Dolphin Design’s full suite of power management IPs tailored for ultra-low power applications such as Satellite IoT endpoint SoC and other power-sensitive SoC devices for direct-to-satellite and other industrial applications.

The race for satellite IoT connectivity for everything from shipping container and pallet tracking to livestock tracking and smart agriculture is starting to heat up, but it requires meeting challenges around performance, power consumption, price, and size.

Orca’s RF SoC integrates all required system functions, including RF transceiver, digital modem, CPUs, and power management, for satellite IoT connectivity in a small package that can operate with a couple of AA batteries for up to 10 years.

A key part of the ORC3990 RF SoC is the power management unit (PMU) subsystem provided by Dolphin Design. This includes all the analog blocks, such as a low-frequency crystal oscillator, a switching regulator, two linear regulators, an over-voltage protection module and, a combined power-on and power-off reset.

“We are very pleased to embed Dolphin Design’s IPs inside our SoC product family, including ORC3990, the world’s first fully integrated solution for direct-to-satellite IoT connectivity,” said John McDonough, CEO of Orca Systems. “Our company partners closely with Dolphin Design for the well-known ultra-low-power IPs needed for the satellite industry and our SoC. Their expertise in power management empowers our SoC with the best-in-class low-power performance and This is just the beginning of a great adventure together.”

“At Dolphin Design, our core expertise lies in power management and ultra-low power technologies,” said Hakim Jaafar VP of Marketing and Application. “We aim to provide the best solution to any energy-caring and challenging markets such as consumer and industrial IoT. The close and strong collaboration with ORCA was a mutual benefit for both companies leading to the success of Orca systems’ SoC products”.

Orca has patented digital radio and digital power amplifier (DPA) technology it calls Live Wireless RF digital radio that provides ultra-low power consumption to extend the battery life of IoT devices. Silicon-proven Orca Live Wireless RF digital transceivers are available to select customers as IP cores, known good die (KGD), and packaged integrated circuits.

SAN DIEGO, Calif., Mar. 8, 2023 – Satellite 2023 – Orca Systems, a fabless semiconductor company delivering groundbreaking digital RF technology, has introduced a highly integrated ASIC platform that significantly improves system performance and reduces power consumption for power-sensitive space, terrestrial, industrial and edge computing applications. Orca’s new ORC5000 ASIC platform has been applied to develop Orca’s first ASIC product, the ORC5990, designed for use in low-Earth orbit (LEO) IoT satellite payload and terrestrial IoT gateway designs. The company’s custom ASIC design, modem expertise and integration capabilities offer 10x performance enhancements over conventional FPGA-based system design with only a fraction of the power consumption. 

Orca Systems’ technology assets in the RF, analog, DSP and power management domains serve as building blocks and key elements of the ORC5000 ASIC platform. Orca’s innovative systems architecture and semiconductor design expertise have enabled the company to build custom ASIC and RF SoC solutions that precisely meet customer performance/power/area needs. This high level of specialization, spanning initial system architecture to final production, makes Orca Systems’ ORC5000 platform the clear choice when compared to conventional implementations using FPGA and other discrete components. Orca ASICs are extremely energy efficient by design, making them an optimal solution to meet the stringent energy budgets of power-sensitive applications. 

“Conventional implementations using discrete components or FPGAs are not optimized to meet the application-specific needs of today’s low-power system designs, resulting in higher power consumption and costly overhead and features,” said John McDonough, CEO of Orca Systems. “Orca Systems has the custom ASIC and RF SoC design expertise to address our customers’ performance, power and board area requirements and deliver solutions that significantly reduce total cost of ownership. Our design capabilities also include development and integration of complex RF, analog and digital IP from our partners and customers.”

The ORC5000 ASIC platform based on the GF 22FDX® platform has significant advantages for use in LEO satellite payloads due to its low power consumption and low susceptibility to latch-up and single event effects (SEE). The new platform also uses GF’s eMRAM technology in the application CPU subsystem, which enables low power and reduced soft-error rate and improves reliability for satellite communications.

About the ORC5000 ASIC Platform

The ORC5000 ASIC’s highly integrated design achieves significant improvements in power consumption for a wide range of applications. The ASIC platform is designed for highly complex, multi-channel modem and signal processor integration. It supports an internal PHY for access to large external LPDDR4x memory for samples or other large data set storage tasks. The LPDDR4x PHY with low-voltage operation enables low power consumption, which is critical for power-sensitive designs.  

The ASIC platform’s flexible serial peripheral interface (SPI) enables gigabit data throughput with an external microcontroller or external flash memory. The platform also supports mixed-signal integration including an analog PLL for generating high-speed clocks for the DDR PHY, high-speed digital circuits and other peripherals. Depending on the custom design requirements, power management circuits (e.g. DC-DC convertors and LDOs), memories (e.g. NVM and SRAM) and peripheral interfaces such as UART and USB can be integrated into the ORC5000 ASIC platform. 

The low-power ORC5000 ASIC platform supports an ambient industrial temperature range of -40 °C to +85 °C and enables exceptional system cost savings, efficient power system design, and reduced peripherical component count and PCB area. 

For more information, visit www.orcasystems.com. 

About Orca Systems

Orca Systems is a champion of always live wireless connectivity, delivering a groundbreaking low-power digital RF transceiver portfolio for the exploding IoT semiconductor market. Patented Orca Live Wireless RF™ digital radio and digital power amplifier (DPA) technology provide ultra-low power consumption to extend the battery life of IoT devices. Silicon-proven Orca Live Wireless RF™ digital transceivers are available to select customers as IP cores, known good die (KGD), and packaged integrated circuits. IP cores are optimized for integration into SoC devices for the lowest cost, smallest silicon area, and lowest power IoT SoC products. Orca Systems is headquartered in San Diego, California, with an exceptional research and development center and state-of-the-art lab facility in Bangalore, India.

Companies that have IoT applications tend to rely on cellular wireless networks for connectivity, but there are vast regions on Earth where there is inadequate cellular coverage or none at all, notably at sea, but also in some terrains that really are not all that remote.

“Our device communicates directly with satellites in space,” Orca chief operating officer Brian Sprague said during a Zoom call with EE Times, adding, “the current one is communicating with a LEO satellite.”

“This is the first chip that we have developed, it’s going into production at the end of this year,” Sprague says. The SoC consists of a proprietary modem, a network processor, and an application processor, with RAM and ROM onboard.

“So there’s literally no memory external to this device for these processors, which also makes it very secure,” Sprague notes. The IoT tracker design is finalized for this device. Customers can also plug external analog and digital sensors into the SoC.

Orca Systems developed the chip for Totum, which plans to launch a constellation of 24 Cubesat nanosatellites by the end of 2022. Totum intends to use the tiny LEO satellite swarm to track and monitor IoT assets globally from space.

Orca Systems, Totum, and space partner Loft Orbital first demonstrated a direct-to-satellite IoT connection last fall. The system can track IoT assets — from following shipping containers, monitoring oil and gas flow meters, to tracking livestock and herds — indoors and outdoors.

“It won’t tell you to within 10 feet [indoors], but it will tell you it is in the building,” Sprague says.

Totum expects to sell the sensor-to-satellite SoC for $10 or less at high volumes. Orca’s Sprague says that two AA batteries will give the SoC ten years worth of battery life.

IoT in Orbit

Orca and Totum are just the latest companies to pin their hopes on satellites that track everything from cattle to ships, from space. This is because cellular can’t be used to track ocean-going vessels, and a surprising amount of farms — and even factories — can’t get access to a strong and reliable cellular signal.

Now low earth orbiting mini-satellites are starting to provide a new way to track a myriad of assets and goods. Companies like Swarm (which was bought by SpaceX last summer), as well as established players like ORBCOMM are looking to enable IoT tracking from the stars.

2022 will be a key year for companies like Swarm and Totum as they launch their IoT-focused satellite constellations into the great beyond.

SAN DIEGO, Calif., February 17, 2022 – Orca Systems, a fabless semiconductor company delivering groundbreaking digital RF technology, today announced its first wireless system-on-chip (SoC) solution for the satellite Internet of Things (IoT), the ORC3990. The company, which focuses on cost-effective, low-power wireless solutions for IoT applications, designed and developed the fully integrated ORC3990 SoC to meet the demands of satellite IoT connectivity. Orca Systems’ new SoC solution provides enabling RF technology for Totum, an innovator in IoT connectivity, enabling direct-to-satellite, indoor operation over Totum’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) network.

Founded in 2004 as a digital RF intellectual property (IP) and semiconductor design engineering services provider, Orca Systems transitioned to a fabless semiconductor business model in 2018. This pivotal transition was enabled by Orca Systems’ development, refinement and integration of an extensive set of IP technologies critical to RF and digital communications applications. Orca Systems’ technology assets in the RF, analog, digital transceiver and power management domains served as SoC building blocks and key elements of the ORC3990 design. These core competencies, combined with Orca Systems’ innovative systems architecture and semiconductor design/integration expertise, has enabled the company to support partners like Totum with highly integrated digital RF solutions offering the highest performance, lowest total system cost and lowest power consumption.

“By rapidly delivering successful first silicon to meet our project deadlines, Orca Systems enabled Totum to quickly demonstrate communication from the ground with our SoC-based endpoint to our satellite network in record time,” said Ted Myers, CEO of Totum, “The ORC3990 SoC, with its high level of integration and low power requirements, enables the lowest cost bidirectional endpoints in the industry with a 10-year battery life. This is game-changing technology for satellite IoT connectivity.”

A Totum satellite technology based terrestrial endpoint for a LEO network using the ORC3990 SoC requires a minimal bill of materials (BOM). External components are reduced to a temperature-compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO), passive filters and switches, a PCB antenna and a battery. For simple, compact “tracker-on-a-chip” applications supporting global connectivity and positioning, a sub-$10 endpoint solution is possible based on the ORC3990 SoC – a cost point expected to drive high-volume demand.

“Orca’s unique architecture lends itself to integrating everything required in an IoT-focused SoC application,” said John McDonough, CEO of Orca Systems. “Manufacturing the ORC3990 SoC with GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX 22nm FD-SOI technology assured a cost-effective, low-power SoC solution that will be highly competitive in today’s market. Our innovative approach to IC design leverages extensive reuse of our SoC architecture, circuitry and methodologies, enabling us to achieve first-time-right silicon in one year of design for our partner Totum.”

ORC3990 Details – World’s First Fully Integrated SoC Solution for Direct-to-Satellite IoT Connectivity

The ORC3990 SoC integrates all required system functions into a single, cost-effective device in a very small 68-QFN package. An essential building block of the SoC design includes Orca Systems’ flexible, third-generation Live Wireless™ RF and digital radio subsystem, which has been customized to support the requirements of Totum’s LEO satellite network. Additional function blocks integrated within the ORC3390 SoC include a low noise amplifier (LNA), a digital power amplifier (PA), the Totum satellite modem, power management unit (PMU) subsystem including all analog blocks, dual Arm Cortex-M0+ CPUs for separate network and application processing, all necessary memory (volatile and non-volatile) for the on-chip CPUs, required security functions, and key analog and digital peripherals.

On-chip sensors provide temperature of an ORC3990-based IoT endpoint. The device supports a suite of digital and analog interfaces allowing it to seamlessly connect to sensors that detect temperature, humidity, shock, vibration and flow.

Orca Systems is the exclusive provider and manufacturer of the ORC3990 SoC to Totum and its partners. To help accelerate development and time to market, Orca Systems and Totum provide comprehensive collateral including data sheets, application notes, evaluation/demonstration boards and software SDK.  For more information, visit www.orcasystems.com.

About Orca Systems

Orca Systems is a champion of always live wireless connectivity, delivering a groundbreaking low-power digital RF transceiver portfolio for the exploding IoT semiconductor market. Patented Orca Live Wireless RF™ digital radio and digital power amplifier (DPA) technology provides ultra-low power consumption to extend the battery life of IoT devices. Silicon-proven Orca Live Wireless RF™ digital transceivers are available to select customers as IP cores, known good die (KGD) and packaged integrated circuits. IP cores are optimized for integration into SoC devices for the lowest cost, smallest silicon area and lowest power IoT SoC products. Orca Systems is headquartered in San Diego, California, with an exceptional research and development center and state-of the art lab facility in Bangalore, India.