EDN Asia articles from July 2006

EDN Asia archives from July 2006

Fabless hiccups.(edn asia comment)
July 1, 2006... Is the fabless business model becoming less functional? Some members at International Fabless Forum feel so. At the last IFF, Ronnie Vasishta, CEO of Israeli firm eASIC, said, "The current way of doing things is broken. Innovation is stalled,...

The envelope, please! EDN innovator/innovation program winners.(innovation awards)
July 1, 2006... Each year, EDN's Innovation Awards honor outstanding engineering professionals and products. Our Innovator of the Year award recognizes an electronics engineer or engineering team for innovation in product design or technical leadership. The...

Cost-optimized dc/dc controllers for modular and on-the-board power systems.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... Four TPS40K dc/dc buck controllers have been launched to simplify power design in set-top boxes, disk drives, industrial control, servers and distributed power systems. Each controller features an extremely wide input range of 4.5 to 52V with...

Small integrated video driver in tiny, chip scale package.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... This video driver from Intersil Corporation features an 8MHz low-pass filter that removes GSM noise from the video band, and also serves as an anti-aliasing filter. The ISL59111 is housed in a 1x1.5mm chip scale package and integrates an op...

Reference platform to streamline development of NAS home media servers.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... Freescale Semiconductor has introduced a turnkey reference platform designed to streamline development and speed time-to-market for home media servers with advanced network attached storage (NAS) capabilities. The Media Server-in-a-Box...

Fast, reliable and easy content monitoring and measurement.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... This family of multi-format waveform monitors enables customers to achieve the quality levels they require for video production, distribution and broadcasting. The WFM6100, WFM7000 and WFM7100 waveform monitors offer quality performance,...

Fibre channel SAN test system for director class switches.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... Agilent Technologies' SAN director tester is a high scalability fibre channel test system for SAN director class switches. Robust under all network conditions, the 1733L SAN director tester is capable of 4Gb/s traffic generation on 128 ports...

Isolated PCI data acquisition, motion boards.(National Instruments Corp. introduces data acquisition software)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... National Instruments has introduced two PCI data acquisition (DAQ) and motion control devices. The NI PCI-6230 isolated M Series DAQ board features analog and digital I/O lines with built-in digital isolation for direct connectivity to...

Smaller, cost-effective power line transceivers.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... The ST7540 from STMicroelectronics broadens the company's current offering to include space constrained and cost-sensitive home and building automation applications and remote monitoring systems. This half duplex Binary-FSK (frequency shift...

Stratix II GX FPGAs for high-speed apps.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... Featuring 12 transceivers and 90,960 equivalent logic elements (LEs), the EP2SGX90E is the first member of the Stratix II GX FPGAs. This signal integrity development kit is an ideal platform for evaluating and validating the signal integrity...

Current management with current sniffer keeps mobile phone TV running.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 1, 2006... Mobile phone customers expect stability and reliability in applications such as video streaming, Web browsing or TV. They also expect the development of new applications to include intelligent planning of power consumption in order to prevent...

DAQ chips simplify sensor interfaces.(GLOBAL DESIGNER)
July 1, 2006... You can connect a wide variety of sensors to digital systems using austria-microsystems' AS8500 and AS8501 chips to perform the analog-front-end and analog-to-digital-conversion function. The devices comprise a chopper input, a...

Headphone amp swaps modes to cut noise, save power.(Wolfson Microelectronics Ltd. introduces class D power amplifiers)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Designers working with portable audio products have a new option in the constant trade-off of performance versus battery life: Wolfson's WM8985 audio codec, The device has a headphone-output stage that is dynamically switchable from operation...

Transmitting from space: a discarded Russian Orlan space suit serves one last mission to increase awareness of the international space program.(prying eyes)
July 1, 2006... On Feb 3, 2006, the crew of Expedition 12 released the SuitSat-1 into orbit around the Earth. SuitSat-1 is a Russian Orlan space suit that had reached the end of its life, but the cosmonauts added a radio transmitter and sensors to measure...

Wireless-sensor networks find a fit in the unlicensed band; welcome to the new world of wireless connectivity, thanks to recently introduced standards, protocols, and enabling hardware for the unlicensed RF bands.(Cover story)
July 1, 2006... Low-power, short-range, low-data-rate wireless networks use the unlicensed RF band. In addition to their overriding need to operate on severely constrained energy sources, such as using one battery for their entire lifetimes or employing energy...

Simple networks will free many sensors from wires; with a suitable protocol such a ZigBee, sensors that don't have a lot to say or hear needn't consume much energy to keep in touch. Sometimes, an alkaline cell can provide all the power they need for as long as a decade.(ZigBee Alliance)
July 1, 2006... The folks at the ZigBee Alliance, the industry organization driving ZigBee WPAN (wireless-personal-area-networking) technology, mean it when they say that they've learned valuable lessons from the miscues of the proponents of another such...

Hands-on project: designing microcontrollers with low-cost reconfigurability: reconfigurable microcontrollers offer an impressive array of analog and digital features to meet your application's requirements.(design feature)
July 1, 2006... Microcontrollers are often complete SOCs (systems on chips). Connect power and ground to a programmed device, and you have a powerful processor with active and ready memory and peripherals. These features drastically reduce design time, because...

"Magnetics and electronics designs have a close connection".(Interview)
July 1, 2006... EDN Asia interviewed Karl-Heinz Wichmann, Managing Director of Vacuumschmelze Asia, about the impact of magnetic technology on electronics designs. Excerpts. How has magnetic technology impacted electronics design? A Magnetic...

CPLD automatically powers itself off.(design ideas)
July 1, 2006... Most of today's CPLDs (complex programmable-logic devices) feature reduced-power operating modes, but, when the system is not in use, a complete shutdown that conserves battery power remains the ultimate power-reduction goal of many designers....

Amplifier removes common-mode noise on RGB differential-video-transmission line.
July 1, 2006... Comprising four twisted pairs within a durable external sheath, Category 5 network cable offers a common and cost-effective choice for transmitting component-video signals. Three of the pairs can carry RGB video signals, and the fourth pair...

Use a switching-regulator controller to generate fast pulses.(Linear Technology Corp. introduces direct current inverters)
July 1, 2006... A source of pulses with fast-rising edges that approximate the step function can help you perform many useful laboratory measurements, including characterization of coaxial cables' rise times and location of cable faults using...

Energy-saving chip for consumer electronics and ac adapters.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... This 8-pin, quasi-resonant green-mode controller provides high power efficiency in full and light-load operating conditions and decreases power consumption in no-load standby mode. The UCC28600 enables standby power supplies in DLP HDTVs, LCD...

Panel-meter ADCs feature 20mA current output.(Maxim Integrated Products Inc. introduces Analog to digital converters)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The MAX1365-MAX1368 standalone panel meters feature sigma-delta ADCs which digitize fully differential analog signals in the [+ or -] 2V and [+ or -] 200mV range, and display the results with 3.5- or 4.5-digit resolution on local LED display....

Power IC for entry level phones and other portables.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... The AS3653 is a highly integrated solution suited to the fast-growing entry level GSM and CDMA phone market. It has a complete chemistry-independent battery charger that features autonomous trickle charge mode, programmable constant current...

Integrated XFP controller monitor simplifies 10G design.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... The DS1862 is an integrated XFP controller-monitor that simplifies the design of 10G XFP optical transceiver modules. It reduces component count and layout area by integrating the laser-driver control, system monitoring, and memory required for...

Smaller full-speed USB 2.0 PIC microcontrollers.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... The PIC18F4450/2450 full-speed USB microcontrollers integrate USB as one of the primary serial interfaces, as opposed to the prevalent approach that adds a serial-to-USB patch on top of a legacy design. Embedded applications that benefit from...

Boost converter ICs prolong battery life of portables.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... These boost converter ICs maximize the power available from single or dual-cell NiMH or alkaline battery packs by providing 85% dc/dc conversion efficiency and operating from battery voltages as low as 0.85V. The ICs prolong operating time and...

Low-noise CMOS amplifier operates up to 24V.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... The 1.M6211 is a 20MHz wide-band-width, low-noise operational amplifier with a single supply voltage range of 5 to 24V and a 0.5pA low input bias current for easy interface with high impedance sources. With an input voltage noise of 5.5nV/sqrt...

Digital color sensor with two-wire serial interface.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... This CMOS digital color sensor can be directly interlaced to a microcontroller without the need for additional components. The ADJD-S313-QR999 is supplied in a 20-pin QFN (quad flat no lead) package and measures 5x5x0.75mm. It operates from a...

Zero-drift amplifier with low power and small size.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... This family of zero-drift operational amplifiers feature low offset (2V), low quiescent current (17A), operation down to 1.8V and SC70 or SOT23 packages. The OPA333 is ideal for demanding applications in medical instrumentation, temperature...

Miniature bipolar package increases power efficiency.(Zetex Inc. introduces power transistors )(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The ZXTC2045E6 combines complementary NPN and PNP transistors in the SOT236 package, producing the drive requirement needed to switch high power MOSFETs and IGBTs in power supply designs. Occupying a footprint of 9[mm.sup.2] and an off-board...

36V step-down dc/dc converter in 2x3mm DFN package.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... The LT3493 is a current mode PWM step-down dc/dc converter with an internal 1.4A power switch, and packaged in a 6-pin 2x3mm DFN. Its has a wide input range of 3.6 to 36V and is capable of withstanding 40V transients. This makes it suitable for...

Universal tool for Freescale microcontrollers.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
July 1, 2006... inDART-One, the universal tool for Freescale microcontrollers, now supports RS08 devices both in programming and debugging. Its high-speed makes it ideal for production programming, while its robust structure, designed to be highly resistant to...

Power management devices with dynamic voltage scaling.(National Semiconductor Corp.)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The LP3971 PMU and LM3370 dual-channel, step-down dc/dc converters feature a digital [I.sup.2]C compatible interface that enables design engineers to customize electrical specifications such as output voltage and switching modes to end...

Single chip processor solution for 3G wireless infrastructure.(Wintegra Inc. introduces interface circuits)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The W-Series is a single chip solution that provides a function-optimized, multiprotocol processing element to meet the needs of 3GPP release 4, 5 and 6 Iub transport interfaces in micro, macro and pico basestation (BTS) products. The...

Higher bandwidth performance for next-gen home entertainment.(Aztech Systems Proprietary Ltd.)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The Aztech DSL605EHW ADSL2/2+ HomePlug Turbo 85Mbps Wireless 802.11g Residential Gateway enables seamless higher bandwidth performance necessary to drive next-generation home entertainment applications, including standard definition (SD) video...

Vocoder board for digital mobile radio.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
July 1, 2006... Digital Voice Systems. Inc. has integrated its latest AMBE+2 vocoder technology into the VC-55-DMR multichannel vocoder board. Equipped with DVSI's enhanced half-rate (3600bps) AMBE+2 vocoder and capable of processing four simultaneous...

ADC XMC module delivers performance, flexibility.(Radstone Technology Corp. introduces data acquisition software)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The ICS-8550 ADC XMC module is designed for high speed data acquisition applications such as software defined radio. SIGINT, tactical communications and radar. Available for both benign and rugged environments the module can simultaneously...

Adapter expands GigE connectivity for AdvancedTCA.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
July 1, 2006... The SlotOptimizer 364G AdvancedMC Quad Gigabit Ethernet Card is the first of a comprehensive portfolio of AdvancedMC products that deliver advanced services in telecommunications networks. This adapter is designed for converged next-generation...

Dual Xeon system host board.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
July 1, 2006... The MAX Express Dual Xeon System Host Board (SHB) supports up to two 3.6GHz Xeon processors and features the Intel E7520 chipset, an 800MHz system bus dual channel DDR2-400 memory interfaces, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual Serial ATA/150...

14-bit analog input USB module.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
July 1, 2006... The USB-1408FS is a 14-bit version of the USB-1 208FS--a 12-bit analog input, USB device. It fills the gap between the 12- and 16-bit analog input devices found in the measurement computing USB line. It provides eight single-ended or four...

Narrow band RF modules target Asian markets.(Radiocrafts AS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The new RC1210, RC1230 and RC1250 modules have only' half a square inch footprint and are high performance, low power, two-way radio solutions with an embedded protocol supporting point-to-multipoint networks. Meeting national radio...

Ceramic capacitors sample kit.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... This sample kit contains ceramic capacitors of the MLSC, advanced and high-CV series for automotive electronics designers. Made of ceramic materials X7R and C0G, they cover the capacitance range from 0.1nF to 2.2[micro]F and rated voltages of...

Card-edge connectors enable MicroTCA standard.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... These surface-mount, card edge connectors enable implementation of the MicroTCA ([micro]TCA) standard currently under development within PICMG. The backplane connectors provide a dual-row, 170-position card-edge interface on 0.75mm pitch so any...

High-frequency, low capacitance varistor.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... The AVR-M 14A2 series of array chip varistors meet market demands for smaller, thinner devices that can suppress the static electricity of a high-frequency signal circuit, by providing low capacitance values. This lead free series comes with...

Low profile, wire wound chip coil for dc/dc converters.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... The LQH2MC series is a wire wound type, ultra low profile chip coil for de, de converter circuits in small mobile equipment such as cellular phones. Current and frequency characteristics are equivalent to conventional LQH_C products (i.e. flat...

Cable connector suits panel applications.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... Targeting panel applications, including BTS (base-transmission stations), the Slim I/O cable-connector system pro rides power- and signal-I/O capability for short- and long-reach cable. The device supports applications with 3.125Gbps data...

Capacitors deliver low ESR for high-voltage apps.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... These RoHS-compliant medium- and high voltage ceramic capacitors are designed for high current applications such as military, harsh environment power supplies, high-voltage coupling and dc-blocking. For medium voltage (up to 500v) applications...

Library for chokes extended.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... More model libraries have been added for this company's range of two-line data line chokes so that all products in its current SIMDAD series (B82789) and major components of the SMD data line choke series (B82790/93/99) now have their own...

Rapid current discharge capacitors.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... SP Cap is an AMT aluminum electrolytic capacitor that uses a conductive polymer as the electrolyte material. SP Caps are primarily used as input and output capacitors for dc/dc converters due to the excellent ultra low ESR values. The SP cap...

Microwave chip resistors with 40GHz frequencies.(PASSIVES)
July 1, 2006... This microwave/RF termination resistor, rated for operation at frequencies up to 40GHz, is constructed using TaNFilm self passivating thin film resistive element, providing an ultra stable corrosion-resistant device suitable for use in harsh...

Real-time features in control design toolkit.(National Instruments Corp. introduces graphical tools)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The NI LabVIEW Control Design Toolkit is a collection of tools and mathematical functions for analyzing, designing and implementing control systems. It delivers features--including high-performance, real-time implementation and advanced Kalman...

Low-cost remote solutions for system control.(TEST & MEASUREMENT)
July 1, 2006... The Agilent L4400 Series of switching and system control instruments are small, industry-standard instruments that can be placed wherever the application requires. The unit's remote capabilities and graphical Web interface reduce seep and...

Serial data application testing program.(LeCroy Corp. introduces serial data compliance applications)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... This beta testing program focuses on serial data compliance applications. The aim of the program is to develop serial dam test solutions that will focus on making the types of measurements needed to verify compliance to serial standards, while...

Handheld spectrum analyzer measures radiation.(TEST & MEASUREMENT)
July 1, 2006... The 9102 handheld spectrum analyzer, targeting network operators, broadcast stations, regulation authorities, and engineering offices, tests actual radiation against defined limits. The 9131 EMF (electromagnetic-field)-measurement option allows...

Locking programmable oscillator generates low-noise sine wave.(Novatech Instruments Inc. introduces direct digital synthesizer)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Based on Analog Device's AD9858 1GHz DDS (direct-digital-synthesizer), the Model LPO400A locking programmable oscillator generates a noise sine wave of 200 to 400MHz and ECL-level clock outputs. The device features a user-programmable output...

Logic analyzer adapter debugs systems.(TEST & MEASUREMENT)
July 1, 2006... The PB-BGA-MPC5554-S-01 Logic Analyzer Adapter allows high-speed operation of processor systems. It has the shortest possible trace length for maximum speed, low inductance, low capacitance, and gold-plated pins for probe headers. It is...

Protocol-based WLAN test set.(Anritsu Co. (Morgan Hill, California) introduces radio frequency communication testers)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The MT8860B WLAN test set creates a standard connection to the device under test. All major 802.11b/g transmitter and receiver measurements can be made with it, making it a suitable alternative to traditional test systems consisting of power...

Receiver system self-calibrates at every scan.(TEST & MEASUREMENT)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Here is a compliant emissions receiver that implements an internal calibration system. The CER2018 Receiver, self-calibrates on demand at every frequency scan--from 20Hz to 18GHz with optional expandability to 110GHz. The receiver system...