Electronic Design articles from March 2009

Electronic Design archives from March 2009

One Powerful Day.
March 12, 2009... Scheduled for March 31, the One Powerful Day online conference will feature panels on hot topics like thermal management, photovoltaics, portable systems, and test for power designers led by Penton's Technical Editors and industry experts...

Design solution.
March 12, 2009... ED ONLINE 20717 GaN-Based Power Platform Promises Tenfold Improvement In FOM Researchers have developed a revolutionary GaN-based (gallium nitride) power device technology platform that promises figure of merit (FOM) performance that...

Industry view.(innovations in application specific integrated circuits)(Brief article)
March 12, 2009... ED ONLINE 20683 Ultra-Low-Power, Ultra-Low-Noise ASIC Breakthroughs Enable New MEMS Sensors Often, a technological breakthrough can lead to new products and even new applications that had been considered fantasy. Developments in...

Editor's view.(Editorial)
March 12, 2009... ED ONLINE 20689 Whatever Happened To Heathkit? Louis E. Frenzel, Communications Editor Do you remember Heathkit, the company that provided do-it-yourself electronics projects? It's still around, with plenty of trainer kits,...

Lab bench online.(Brief article)
March 12, 2009... ED ONLINE 20696 Dev Kits 2009: Round 1 Embedded/Systems/Software Editor The dev kits have been piling up in Bill's lab, so it's time to put them through their paces. Bill starts his spring cleaning with a look at Rabbit...

New products showcase.(LeCroy WaveMaster 8 Zi)(Brief article)
March 12, 2009... LeCroy's Michael Schnecker gives David Maliniak a tour of LeCroy's WaveMaster 8 Zi series of digital oscilloscopes, serial data analyzers, and disk-drive analyzers. At a bandwidth of 30 GHz, these scopes are among the world's fastest and...

Engineering TV.(Brief article)
March 12, 2009... Inside The Hercules Petawatt Laser Engineering TV visited the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan to take a look at Hercules, a high-field petawatt-class laser. The beam measures 20 billion trillion watts per...

Power companies show progress on less travelled paths.(Editorial)
March 12, 2009... Power is key to any design, so it's not surprising that I often meet with companies involved in the power industry. What does surprise me is that many of these companies are working with power in novel ways. And from what I can tell, they are...

Going green, or just using old-fashioned design practices?(LabBench)
March 12, 2009... Going green is all about cost, value, and tradeoffs. The big difference in designs from a decade ago is that more of the real costs are starting to surface. This ranges from the cost of recycling devices to how much power a system consumes....

The many faces of custom power.(PowerDesign)
March 12, 2009... Under the pressures of product performance, price, and the need to increasingly reduce their time-to-market, many OEMs don't have the luxury of spending a lot of time on the power solution. Consequently, they look to power providers that can...

32-bit architecture changes the power game for Micros.(Techview)(Product/service evaluation)
March 12, 2009... Arm and its partners are looking to give 8- and 16-bit microcontroller vendors fits with its Cortex M0 architecture. This optimized implementation of the Cortex M1 is designed to run on FPGAs. Its small size and lower power will allow it to be...

OnlinePoll; How important is power efficiency in your design projects?(Techview)
March 12, 2009... How important is power efficiency in your design projects? Reduced power consumption is our number-one goal. 11% Power efficiency is one of our key goals. 44% We trim power where we can, but not at the 33%...

Software takes guesswork out of PCB power integrity.(Techview)
March 12, 2009... It's never been more important than in the current economic climate to get products to market with development costs held as low as possible. One of the ways that systems manufacturers can achieve that goal is through power analysis. After all,...

Tiny, low-cost Wi-Fi chip suits cell phones and other portables.(Techview)
March 12, 2009... CSR's UniFi UF6000 is one of the smallest and cheapest Wi-Fi chips you can buy. Occupying only 16 square mm, the chip can be embedded into handsets and other devices where wireless connectivity is needed. 3G wireless broadband technologies give...

Keep current with new battery technologies: whether you're talking micropower reflow-solderable thin-film batteries or lighter, safer batteries for traction motors, groundbreaking advances continue to energize the field of chemically generated electrical power.(Cover Feature)
March 12, 2009... A stunning array of battery types provides portable power for a sea of applications--from traction motors in interurban buses to flea-power transmitters in wireless mesh networks that harvest microscopic amounts of energy from small...

Optimized power supplies beget superior data-center efficiency: data centers are conspicuous consumers of power. Power-supply design that maximizes efficiency can deliver big payoffs.(Technology Report)
March 12, 2009... Large data centers devour huge amounts of electrical power (see "Energy-Hungry IT Centers See Hope In Digital Power" at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 14406). At the heart of efforts to reduce wasted energy, power-supply makers offer a...

Rechargeable-battery power management demands multiple ICs: a full complement of power-management ICs for rechargeable battery-based systems can include a battery charger, a battery monitor, a Li-ion battery protector, and a power-supply controller.(Engineering Essentials)
March 12, 2009... Virtually all battery-based power-management designs depend on the associated battery, so design starts by picking the specific battery type. The battery may be the non-rechargeable primary type or the rechargeable secondary type. (For more,...

Try wireless controls and e-paper in your next green design.(EmbeddedinED)
March 12, 2009... The standard way to wire a house is to figure out where to put the switches and then wire them to the outlets or lights. This requires extra wire to connect the switches to the plugs or devices and locks in the position of the switches. ...

Low-power SERDES FPGAs save power.(News)
March 12, 2009... Lattice Semiconductor's LatticeECP3 FPGAs target the midrange sweet spot needing high-speed serializers/deserializers (SERDES). The 65-nm FPGAs deliver 3.2-Gbit/s SERDES with XAUI jitter compliance. The SERDES are grouped in blocks of four, but...

Rugged PC/104 system targets military APPS.(News)
March 12, 2009... Adlink Technology is looking to put more PC/104 boards into very rugged environments with its MilSystem 800. This STD-MIL-38999 version of the already rugged RuffSystem 800 is a conduction-cooled enclosure that's dustproof and splashproof with...

Mini-ITX goes 12 V.(News)
March 12, 2009... The ITOX NP101-D16C Mini-ITX motherboard only requires a 12-V power source, making it ideal for automotive and industrial applications. It runs a 45-nm, 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 processor in conjunction with Intel's 945GSE Express chipset and...

Microcontroller targets high-speed communication.(News)
March 12, 2009... Freescale's 45-nm SOI-based MPC8569E multicore microcontroller incorporates intelligent peripherals to target high-speed communications applications such as gateways and wireless infrastructure. The chip's primary core is the 1.3-GHz e500-based...

RTOS handles AMP and SMP.(News)
March 12, 2009... Wind River's VxWorks 6.7 real-time operating system (RTOS) addresses asymmetrical multiprocessing (AMP) in addition to symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP). A core reservation system allows AMP-style hardware allocation on conventional SMP...

Digital PWM controllers augment system reliability: intelligent digital controllers can simplify power-supply design as well as enhance overall reliability through monitoring and statistical interpretation of key performance metrics.(DesignSolution)(pulse-width modulation )
March 12, 2009... Multiple methods are available to monitor the health of a power supply, ultimately leading to improved reliability of the power subsystem and, subsequently, the total system. These improvements can come from adjusting system operating...

"Unstable" power supply simulates solar-panel behavior.(IdeasForDesign)
March 12, 2009... This power supply may seem a bit strange, since it's not stable in voltage or in current. However, it simulates the behavior of a solar panel and can be very useful if you're working with a solar-powered device on a rainy day. ...

Low-power logic gate protects fluid sensor from leakage current.(IdeasForDesign)
March 12, 2009... Fluid-level sensing is very common in industrial applications and now is being used in domestic applications to sense water levels in overhead tanks. The greatest challenge for designers is to make these sensors operate with ultra-low power...

Series resistors, body capacitance scan 16 buttons with two MCU pins.(IdeasForDesign)
March 12, 2009... In an application using a pin-limited microcontroller (MCU), I needed to scan an array of 16 buttons. The technique I used involved a series string of resistors of identical value connected between two bidirectional pins of the MCU. For...

Use variable DC voltage to control 70-MHz output phase shifter.(IdeasForDesign)(Brief article)
March 12, 2009... In many situations, designers must control the phase of an output signal in order to make certain circuits work properly. At low frequencies, an op amp can be used to vary the phase. But as the frequency gets into the RF range, output phase...

What's all this rock-hopping stuff, anyhow?(PeasePorridge)(hiking)(Column)
March 12, 2009... I went on a hike last weekend. Some of the trail was uphill, some was downhill, and I hiked along fine (if slowly). That's not a surprise. But when I had to hop across a tiny stream, I had problems. When I had to hop across a second stream,...

One powerful day.
March 26, 2009... Scheduled for March 31, the One Powerful Day online conference will feature panels on hot topics like thermal management, photovoltaics, portable systems, and test for power designers led by Penton's Technical Editors and industry experts...

APEC 2009.
March 26, 2009... Don Tuite, Analog/Power Editor Murata Okami DC-DC Converter Henry Lee, marketing manager at Murata Power Solutions, discusses the new Okami DC-DC converter with Don Tuite. To see this video and other interviews from the show floor at...

Technology report.
March 26, 2009... ED Online 20703 Roger Allan, Contributing Editor Energy Harvesting Looks To Solve Critical TPMS Issues Ever since Porsche introduced the first direct-type tire-pressure monitoring system (TPMS) in 1997, manufacturers have been...

Design solution.(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... ED Online 20736 Qui Luu and Richard Schreier, Analog Devices Understanding Continuous-Time, Discrete-Time Sigma-Delta ADCs And Nyquist ADCs A variant of the sigma-delta architecture known as the continuous-time sigma delta has...

Editor's view.(Editorial)
March 26, 2009... ED Online 20788 Ron Schneiderman, Contributing Editor Need A Job? Try Consumer Medical Electronics Are you looking for a new technical challenge--or a new job? Consider the healthcare sector. It's growing fast in terms of...

New products showcase.
March 26, 2009... Agilent N4903B Serial J-Bert EDA and Test Editor David Maliniak speaks with Michael Reser of Agilent Technologies, who demonstrates the N4903B serial J-Bert. This device performs complete jitter-tolerance testing for forward-clocking and...

Engineering TV.(On the Web @electronicdesign.com)(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... HDAnywhere Networked Entertainment Analog Devices' HDAnywhere technology, based on ADI's Wavescale compression, produces a wireless HDMI output that's ready to be connected to any HD display. It enables connections to wall-mounted...

It looks like HD video is moving into smaller quarters.(High definition )(Editorial)
March 26, 2009... High definition is all the rage on big-screen TVs. But now, smaller devices will be empowered with this crisp video content. Recent announcements should give designers a lift for creating small devices with big ideas for HD playback and...

Stripping down Java.(LabBench)
March 26, 2009... As expected, my article on "Embedded C Bashing" (Feb. 26, p. 15; www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 20636) generated some discussion. So, I thought I better call in some experts to provide advice when it comes to safety and performance. ...

Innovating through tough times.(TestingTheLimits)
March 26, 2009... What do Hewlett-Packard, Fed Ex, and CNN have in common? Believe it or not, these companies were founded during difficult economic times (1939, 1973, and 1980, respectively). What about product innovations like Nylon and the iPod? You guessed...

Fujitsu takes digital approach to capacitive touch sensing.(Techview)(Product/service evaluation)
March 26, 2009... Capacitive touch systems typically operate using analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to indirectly measure changes via voltage. Fujitsu's FMA1127 touch sensor controller uses a more digital approach to detecting fingers, measuring the...

OnlinePoll.(Techview)(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... Trade shows like the upcoming Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose are vital to many companies' product rollouts. How important are trade shows in your career? They're essential. I go to at least one or two a year. 23% They're...

Ultra-narrow-band telemetry radios optimized for meter reading.(Techview)
March 26, 2009... Companies have been working for years to create an affordable and practical wireless automatic meter reading (AMR) system. The data radio is less of a problem, but collecting all that data from hundreds of thousands to millions of homes and...

Rapid-prototyping platform pulls together hardware, software, and IP.(Techview)
March 26, 2009... With verification still eating up most of the costs in the design cycle for complex systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), it behooves designers to seek methodologies that can help them reduce the time and cost of verification. Meanwhile, tightening budgets...

Driver amplifiers for analog-to-digital converters: frequently asked questions.(design FAQs)(Interview)
March 26, 2009... What amplifiers are used to drive analog-to-digital converters (ADCs)? Possibilities include single-ended and differential inputs and outputs, plus voltage feedback (VFB) or current feedback (CFB) in the control loop. Specialized...

CMOS and CCD image sensor breakthroughs promise a "bright" future: improved design and fabrication methods teamed up with high-speed processors are spawning low-cost, high-performance CMOS and CCD imagers across a wide range of applications.(Cover Feature)
March 26, 2009... The latest generation of CMOS and charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors features wider spectral bandwidths, higher sensitivity levels, lower noise operation, and smaller form factors. Better fabrication processes help lower costs. And,...

Smaller, power-packed hi-def designs rule this year's ESC: the upcoming Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose will showcase a plethora of new products intent on expediting the delivery of lower-cost and higher-performance solutions.(Technology Report)(Conference news)
March 26, 2009... It's tough to be optimistic these days. But based on some of the new products appearing at next week's Embedded Systems Conference, it should be a good year for developers. The latest tools, chips, and platforms will roll out at the San Jose...

High-brightness white LEDs light the way to greener illumination: LED use in office buildings and city streets is growing rapidly and opening up design opportunities for engineers who understand its ins and outs.(Engineering Essentials)
March 26, 2009... LED illumination for building interiors and outdoor public spaces continues to gain serious traction, opening up new opportunities for electronic designers. For example, National Semiconductor's LM3445 and NXP's SSL2101 monolithic controllers...

LED lighting and light pollution.(Engineering Essentials)
March 26, 2009... LEDs are used in many different types of outdoor applications, from colorful decorative architectural lighting to high-power white-light applications like street lighting. Though using more light to create colorful decorative fixtures cranks up...

Improve integrated SRAM reliability with Hamming error-correction code: several techniques can be used to efficiently implement a Hamming coder for single-bit error correction and double-bit error detection.(DesignSolution)
March 26, 2009... Many error-correcting codes (ECCs) are proposed in the industry's literature for correcting bit errors present in the received data. We will discuss Hamming codes that are used to correct single-bit errors and detect all double-bit errors that...

Precise current-transmitter/source-sink calibrator has wide compliance range.(IdeasForDesign)
March 26, 2009... Many industrial and control applications use analog current loops as the physical link for measurements and actuator control. Although several ranges are used, the most popular is still the 4- to 20-mA standard. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Oscillator delivers four multi-phased, equal-amplitude sine waves.(IdeasForDesign)
March 26, 2009... One application I recently dealt with needed multiple phases of sine waves, all of equal amplitude. I considered 45[degrees], 60[degrees], and 90[degrees] differences, but decided 60[degrees] was the best solution. I scoured the Internet for a...

Alarm sounds when refrigerator door remains open too long.(IdeasForDesign)
March 26, 2009... Not properly closing a refrigerator door will no doubt invite huge electricity bills. This gadget is an alert device that beeps if you leave the refrigerator door open for more than 20 seconds. When the door opens, the lamp illuminates and the...

Technology shrinks PCB Motors while boosting accuracy.(ElectronicDesignProducts)(printed-circuit board)
March 26, 2009... The march for miniaturization never stops as evidenced by portable products the size of a credit card that outperform some laptop and even desktop computers. Probably one of the most challenging markets in this quest for tinier gadgets is...

Save costs with peak-related power supplies.(ElectronicDesignProducts)
March 26, 2009... Traditionally, the selection of power supplies is based upon the expected maximum total system power, calculated as volts x amps = watts. But for some applications, a power supply with a peak current or peak power rating may provide a...

10-GHz epoxy-mount socket supports 0.5-mm QFNs.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... The SG-MLF-7028 socket from Ironwood Electronics accommodates 64-pin, 0.5-mm pitch quad flat no-lead (QFN) packages on any printed-circuit board (PCB). It requires no soldering and no mounting hardware or screws and operates at bandwidths up to...

Circular connectors reduce form factor, maximize pin count.(INTERCONNECTS)
March 26, 2009... Hypertronics' next-generation circular connectors reduce size by nearly 30% and employ Hypertac hyperboloid contacts in a smaller 0.3-mm pin size, creating a significantly smaller form factor while maintaining five signal contacts rated at 1 A...

Copper flex interposer enlists PCBEAM technology.(INTERCONNECTS)
March 26, 2009... In partnership with Neoconix, Molex Inc. unveils a flexible-copper, high-density high-speed interposer in a tool-less configuration. The FlexBeam tool-less copper flex interposer provides densities of 1 mm or less in a variety of pin-matrix...

ZipLine connectors enter coplanar arena.(INTERCONNECTS)
March 26, 2009... Expanding the application range of high-density ZipLine connectors is the addition of a right-angle signal header module. Mating with an existing right-angle signal receptacle module, the header module provides 216 individual contacts and...

Low-profile copper cable outfits SFP+ assemblies.(INTERCONNECTS)
March 26, 2009... W.L. Gore & Associates' very low-profile SFP+ direct attach copper cable assembly is fiber-like in size and more flexible than optical fiber, according to the company. The copper cable addresses the requirements of dense, higher-port-count...

RJ-45 jacks lower insertion loss, suppress noise.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... Enabling an insertion-loss figure of -1 dB, the latest RJ-45 jacks from Epcos Inc. integrate magnetic modules for isolating common- and differential-mode interference. The jacks are available in single-, dual-, and quad-port versions and meet...

Membrane keypads simplify interface design.(SWITCHES, KEYPADS & RELAYS)(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... Promising to ease interface apps, the FM series membrane-switch keypads replace multiple mechanical switches, soldered wires, and cable assemblies with a compact, single mechanism. They are available in both illuminated and non-illuminated...

Battery-disconnect switch guards vehicle electrical systems.(SWITCHES, KEYPADS & RELAYS)(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... Poised for deployment in virtually all vehicle electrical systems including heavy truck, off-road, construction, emergency vehicles, material handling, refuse collection, mining, agricultural, and marine, the 75920 master-battery disconnect...

Illuminated rocker switches offer many options.(SWITCHES, KEYPADS & RELAYS)
March 26, 2009... The UL/CUL recognized RC series rocker switches offer switch function choices of OFF-ON or OFF-(ON) in single- or double-pole configurations and housing colors of black, white, red, and grey with eight actuator color choices including four...

Ferrite beads keep a tight budget.(CABINETS, ENCLOSURES & BACKPLANES)
March 26, 2009... Described as low-cost components, the BLM18KG series power ferrite beads from Murata Electronics North America offer high-current capacities, high noise suppression, and low dc resistance. They suit a wide range of applications including...

EMI filters offer range of options.(CABINETS, ENCLOSURES & BACKPLANES)(Brief article)
March 26, 2009... The R series electromagnetic interference (EMI) filters provide a wide range of electrical noise attenuation curves in metal cases with convenient connection options and are available in both single-phase and three-phase versions. Current...

Mailbox.(PeasePorridge)(Letter to the editor)
March 26, 2009... DEAR MR. PEASE, The "Financial Floobydust" section of your latest piece is, I think, anything but floobydust (Jan. 15, p. 72; ED Online 20410). I believe you have touched upon a fundamental weakness at the core of so much financial and...