The SparkLink Alliance Industry Summit 2022 of "New Technology · New Industry" was held in Shenzhen on Nov. 4. During the meeting, a number of leading innovative members of the alliance demonstrated the latest prototype systems, which include SparkLink Fast Interference Sensing and Avoid (FISA), SparkLink 360-degree surround view for commercial vehicles, SparkLink wireless motor high-precision synchronized control, SparkLink active noise reduction, SparkLink immersive atmosphere lighting, SparkLink 7.1 channels surround sound field, and SparkLink 4K HD wireless projection. The prototype systems were spotlighted during the meeting with excellent application experience, which highlight the distinguished performances of the SparkLink as next generation wireless short-range communication technology.
SparkLink Fast Interference Sensing and Avoid technology
Anti-interference capability is one of core requirement of wireless systems, which directly determines reliability and transmission quality of the system. FISA is a "black technology" of SparkLink. The prototype demo collision avoidance ability and high robustness of the SparkLink system under severe interference using high-definition projection. The SparkLink defines flexible channel measurement mechanism to timely detect channel interference in millisecond scale with high accuracy. In the case of channel conflict or burst interference, the system quickly switches to an optimal alternative channel in milliseconds based on the measurements. Also, the SparkLink supports flexible carrier scheduling to avoid hazard effect in which part of interfered carriers results in block of all channel bandwidth. Excellent performance of the physical layer lays a solid foundation to ensure continuity and uninterrupted experience of the upper layer applications. The SparkLink FISA technology, which allows efficient usage of frequency resources and guarantee of stability of upper layer services, is a leading technology in anti-interference solutions.
SparkLink 360-degree Surround View System for Commercial Vehicles
The drivers of large freight trucks, trailers, fire-engines and other special vehicles have large visual blind zone, which is a significant potential risk for road safety. The surround view system can effectively reduce the safety risk by providing driver real-time environmental information around the vehicle. Advantages of wireless surround view system are greatly reduced complexity of system wiring, general solution to all vehicle models, and flexible deployment. it is particularly useful for cases of frequent separation and attachement of trailer, which make wired surround view system headache. The SparkLink Surround View System, which is jointly developed by Eagle Tech. and Huawei, supports accurate synchronized acquisition of 4+ channel HD video data and its parallel transmission. The wireless transmission delay is as low as 10ms, and the end-to-end delay of image mosaicking is less than 200ms. Compared with the existing wireless technologies, there is 80~100ms advantage in the latency of video transmission. The SparkLink-based ultra-low latency HD video transmission and upper layer images stitch algorithm make video information timely, less stutter and blurred screen. All these provide driver real-time road information around the vehicle.
SparkLink Wireless High-precision Synchronized Control System
Closed-loop motion control in smart manufacturing is an important scenario of SparkLink in the industry field network. There are stringent requirements for synchronization accuracy, deterministic delay and reliability of data transmission in the field of industrial control. Some other challenges to the wireless communication include large number of devices and complexity in cooperative operation among devices. China Mobile, AI-Link and Huawei demonstrates control of gear by servomotors for synchronized motion. The purpose is to show ultra-high precision synchronization capability of the SparkLink. The operation instruction of the gear is negotiated between two motors with SparkLink module, and the two ends cooperate with ultra-high precision of less than 1 microsecond. The SparkLink adapts channel environment through mechanisms, such as Polar coding and redundant transmission, in real time and ensures robust transmission of the industrial control data. Quantitatively, measurement shows that the end-to-end delay is as low as 100 microseconds, the synchronization accuracy is 100 nanoseconds, and the reliability is more than 6 “9”. The SparkLink can effectively reduce complexity of communication in smart manufacturing, save ware cost and hand labor cost, reduce operation risks, and achieve flexible deployment.
SparkLink Active Noise Reduction System
SparkLink Active Noise Reduction System (SANRS) is designed for smart cockpit to provide drivers a quiet and comfortable driving experience. The principle of active noise reduction is that through accurate acquisition of noise, an antiphase noise signal is generated real-time and accurately to counteract the most noise below 1kHz, such as road noise, wind noise and engine noise, which is sensitive to driver. The active noise reduction system requires communication to be of very short delay and synchronization. Due to the fixed propagation speed of sound over air, the system must transmit collected noise signal to designated controller within a very short time, generate and play antiphase noise. The synchronization of the whole system is particularly critical. For example, a slight deviation in playing the antiphase noise signal may cause noise superposition and worsen the cockpit sound field environment. The wireless active noise reduction based on SparkLink, SANRS, is the first time in the industry to achieve distributed spatial active noise reduction based on wireless communications. The SANRS is of excellent transmission capability to support audio signal transmission. The end-to-end transmission delay is only about 100 microseconds. Multiple devices cooperate with each other with an accuracy of less than 1 microsecond. All these make high quality of noise cancelation from 8 dB to 10 dB, which is comparable to wired scheme. Besides, another advantage of the SANRS is free of complex cable deployment in the vehicle. This allows more noise sampling points and provides flexible deployment to adapt of different categories and size of vehicles.
SparkLink Immersive Ambient Lighting System
Ambient light is usually diffused equally throughout an environment to set the atmosphere a tone. Combining with video and audio, the synthesized rhythm creates ultimate user experience. It has been widely used in vehicles, homes and other scenes. The high-texture effect of ambient lighting the cooperation of multiple lights. Especially, the immersive atmosphere needs to high synchronization among lighting, video and audios, so that they can echo each other to form a unified sense. The traditional ambient light systems using Control Area Network (CAN) or Local Interconnect Network (LIN) bus are complex in wiring, and is limited by transmission rate and number of connections. It is difficult to support the needs of a large number of beads, high-order colors and complex high-frequency rhythm. The SparkLink Immersive Ambient Lighting System (SIALS) is jointly presented by PATEO CONNECT+ Tech. and Changshu Automobile Decoration. The SparkLink technology supports distributed transmission control of audio and video stream with sub-milliseconds one-way latency, access of hundreds of devices, and synchronized devices cooperate with microsecond precision. Put all these together, the experience of "sound to vision" and "vision to sound" can be achieved. Compared with the traditional CAN/LIN-based system, the SIALS can carry high-definition lossless audio transmission and allow flexible deployment of hundreds of devices on demand, support more terminals, more data, more accuracy in synchronization among devices, and reduce difficulty and complexity in wiring during production and installation.
SparkLink 7.1 Channel Surround Sound Field
Surround sound field is important to enhance users' audio-visual experience, which has been widely used in high market value scenes, e.g. car cockpit and home theater. The surround sound field in cinemas or home cinemas requires multiple channels of sound to keep synchronous time and play in time. Combining with video, audience feel spatial distribution of sound sources at different depths, which brings immersive experience to the audience. Better surround sound effect is achieved with increment in sound channel. The SparkLink 7.1 channel surround sound field, jointly presented by Zhenjiang Shengyan and Huawei, transmit 7.1 channel HD lossless audio signals wirelessly. The HD lossless audio signals from player are sent to eight speakers via SparkLink with ultra-low latency at milliseconds level. Eight speakers cooperate with synchronization accuracy of less than 1 microsecond. Technical advantages of the SparkLink bring better user experience with immersive perception of audio and video and synchronized interaction of audio and video, in addition to low power consumption and no cable deployment.
SparkLink 4K HD Wireless Projection
Wireless projection is widely used in car cockpit, office meeting, home audio and video, camping, large-scale events, and sport events. The SparkLink-based wireless projection system features ultra-high definition, low delay and high reliability. The SparkLink 4K HD wireless projection system jointly developed by Lenovo, Sylincom and Shanghai Jiaotong University supports 4K resolution and 60 frames fresh rate of HD video data transmission. Compared with other technologies, the delay is reduced by more than 80~100ms. and the 4K HD video transmission far exceeds the mainstream off the shelf products. Thanks to the link-level advanced channel codec, fast retransmission mechanism, and system-level FISA technology, users can experience stutter-free HD wireless projection. In the future, with increase in system bandwidth, higher specifications of video transmission will be supported, and end-to-end delay will be optimized.
The SparkLink prototype systems and applications will be further developed, which are expected to be the first wave of commercialization of SparkLink technology.
