EDN articles from August 2006

EDN archives from August 2006

Sallen-Key lowpass-filter stopband limitations.
August 3, 2006... by Bonnie Baker When you design an analog, lowpass, antialiasing filter, you would expect its gain amplitude to continuously decrease beyond the filter's cutoff frequency. For the most part, this assumption is a safe one, but it's not...

Fabrics get smart.
August 3, 2006... by Joseph Ogando, Senior Editor, Design News Electroactive textiles serve as switches, sensors, and more. If your idea of smart fabrics is a pair of khaki pants that sheds food stains, think again. The smartest fabrics are becoming...

Low-dropout regulator, SMPS cascade suppress ripple, maintain efficiency.
August 3, 2006... Scot Lester, Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville A step-down SMPS (switched-mode power supply) efficiently converts unregulated power to a regulated output voltage. However, unwanted...

Novel circuit isolates temperature sensor from its host.
August 3, 2006... Alfredo H Saab and Tamer Mogannam, Maxim Integrated Products Inc, Sunnyvale, CA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Temperature sensors must sometimes operate at locations whose return potentials differ considerably from that...

Find resistor values for arbitrary programmable-amplifier gains.
August 3, 2006... Sid Levingston, DML Engineering Inc, Aloha, OR Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville When available fixed-gain values match design requirements, a PGA (programmable-gain-amplifier) IC offers a drop-in choice, but what does a...

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray lack wow at debut.
August 3, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief I've followed the HD-DVD-versus-Blu-Ray skirmish for supremacy in next-generation DVDs for years. I think Sony ( www.sony.com ) cares little about the best technology or what's best for consumers and only...

Wireless USB in a dongle.
August 3, 2006... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor The promise of wireless USB seems unbeatable--eliminate all those little, somehow inflexible cables that make a rat's nest of everyone's desktops, and turn where to put the printer into a...

The 33rd Annual Microprocessor Directory: Nontrivial pursuit.
August 3, 2006... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor See how the expanded directory can help you in your pursuit of the perfect processor for your project. Welcome to the 33rd annual EDN Microprocessor/Microcontroller Directory. Successful processor...

Accurate clocks optimize network service.
August 3, 2006... by Jim Olsen and Kishan Shenoi, Symmetricom Inc Atomic clocks extend signal holdover to maintain accurate network timing and ensure consistent service quality during a GPS outage. Wire-line- and wireless-communication systems depend on...

USB counter/timer boasts 15 16-bit counters.
August 3, 2006... by Warren Webb Targeting a variety of measurement applications, including event counting, frequency measurements, position measurement, pulse counting, pulse-width modulation, and pulse generation, Acces I/O Products recently announced...

Quad-core DSP packs performance and features.
August 3, 2006... by Robert Cravotta The MSC8144 from Freescale packs four StarCore SC3400 DSP cores along with 10.5 Mbytes of internal memory, dual gigabit-Ethernet interfaces that support SGMII (serial-gigabit media-independent interface) and RGMII...

Radical FPGA takes on packet processing.
August 3, 2006... by Ron Wilson Start-up Cswitch Corp this month introduced a novel configurable-logic chip targeting packet-processing applications in networking, wireless base stations, and telecom-infrastructure applications. The device comprises a...

Digital-power controllers offer digital and analog architecture.
August 3, 2006... by Margery Conner Since EDN last covered digital-power controllers, three more digital-power-controller ICs have appeared: Microchip's new part is a close-the-loop-digitally device; Maxim's is a hybrid approach in that the control loop...

Digi's Joel Young.(Digi International)(Interview)
August 3, 2006... by Warren Webb Building better networks Joel Young is both vice president of research and development and chief technical officer at Digi International, where he leads projects to simplify device networking. He has a bachelor's...

ETSI adds IP support to DAB, simplifying a DVB-H migration.
August 3, 2006... by Maury Wright Despite the efforts by Nokia ( www.nokia.com ) and Qualcomm to guide the deployment of mobile-TV services to DVB-H (digital-video-broadcasting-handheld) and MediaFlo technologies, respectively, those aren't the only...

Chinese fab gets popular IP blocks.
August 3, 2006... by Maury Wright Chinese fab SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) has just added plans to support IP (intellectual-property) cores from ARM in 90-nm-chip designs. The two companies announced that SMIC would offer ARM's...

Main players will pick DVB-H for mobile TV.
August 3, 2006... by Melanie Reynolds, Features Editor, Electronics Weekly The mobile-TV technology that finally dominates will employ open standards and a competitive market, according to Nokia. "The analogy here is GSM [global system for mobile...

Free-space optics: last-mile link fogged in.(Brief article)
August 3, 2006... by Maury Wright Vendors have pushed approaches ranging from hovering airships (see www.edn.com/article/CA6339271 ) acting as wireless access points to massive mesh RF networks as the no-wires answer to last-mile links where no fiber...

HP-IB revolutionized ATE: Designers benefited from smarter connected instruments.
August 17, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief The article that Hewlett-Packard contributed to EDN in 1972 describing an instrumentation bus didn't even mention HP-IB (Hewlett-Packard Instrument Bus). But, as the photo confirms, the article was the...

Digital bus simplifies instrument-system communication.
August 17, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Interconnecting programmable instruments into a test system is a formidable task. Here's a rundown on the considerations involved, and a busing scheme that does the job. Donald C Loughry, Hewlett-Packard...

Sifting the DFM players.
August 17, 2006... by Michael Santarini, Senior Editor With new DFM-tool companies popping up every month, it can be hard to select which you need for 65-nm processes. But the top three foundries at that node have made some of the choices for you. Does...

Smart-building systems converge.
August 17, 2006... by Warren Webb, Technical Editor As building-automation data flows onto enterprise networks and the Internet, designers are turning to integrated systems and Web-based services. Growing customer demands for open, interoperable...

Ultralow-cost, two-digit counter features few components.
August 17, 2006... Noureddine Benabadji, University of Sciences and Technology, Oran, Algeria Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville The ultralow-cost, two-digit- counter circuit in Figure 1 represents an attempt to reduce the number of components...

Two-wire, four-by-four-key keyboard interface saves power.
August 17, 2006... Stefano Salvatori, University of Rome, Rome, Italy, and Gabriele Di Nucci, EngSistemi, Rome, Italy Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville You can use a microcontroller that includes an ADC to design a two-wire-plus-ground keyboard...

Gain-of-three amplifier requires no external resistors.
August 17, 2006... Marián Stofka, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Analog Devices' ADA4862-3 comprises three wideband amplifiers, each configured by an internal, fixed-value...

Editorial ethics: meeting the ASBPE's transparency mnadate.(American Society of Business Publication Editors)(Editorial)
August 17, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief I just got back from a trip that included two days at the ASBPE (American Society of Business Publication Editors) National Editorial Conference, at which editorial-ethics issues were hot topics. At the...

Voltage-regulator model.
August 17, 2006... by Howard Johnson, PhD I love switching-regulator modules. They are efficient, you can configure them for many uses, and you can easily model them. Figure 1 shows a typical characterization test for a regulator module--a Texas...

Designing Ethernet into industrial applications.
August 17, 2006... by Michael Jones, Micrel Inc The right architectural decisions and careful implementation can help you meet your design goals. Ethernet, today's de facto office-networking standard, is increasingly finding its way onto the factory...

LabView celebrates 20th anniversary with new version, new features.
August 17, 2006... by Dan Strassberg The lifetime of successful programming languages is approximately 50 years, according to James Truchard, PhD, co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of National Instruments. That's an amazing amount of time...

Tiny board delivers Web connectivity.
August 17, 2006... by Warren Webb A frequent design-retrofit task is to add network connectivity to stand-alone embedded controllers or handheld instruments. Targeting these efforts, Mosaic Industries recently announced the Ethersmart Wildcard, a 2x2.5-in....

Lithography-savvy IC router circumvents third parties.
August 17, 2006... by Michael Santarini Physical-IC designers now have an alternative to Cadence ( www.cadence.com ), Synopsys ( www.synopsys.com ), and Magma ( www.magma-da.com ) physical-design flows: Sierra Design Automation's new detailed-router tool....

Packet switching comes to backplanes.
August 17, 2006... by Ron Wilson By looking at switching equipment, you'd never know that the trend in the communications and networking world is toward TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). Once packetized data enters a line card and...

Battery-free sensors convert motion into energy.
August 17, 2006... by Matthew Miller MicroStrain has won a US Navy contract to develop wireless strain sensors that can operate indefinitely thanks to their ability to harvest energy from the rotating helicopter components on which they are installed. ...

Semiconductors, wireless SiGe transistors hit 500 GHz.
August 17, 2006... by Matthew Miller A team of researchers from IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology has demonstrated SiGe (silicon-germanium), heterojunction, bipolar transistors operating at more than 500 GHz. Although the group used liquid helium...

Components, hardware, and interconnect webs of optical fiber see in all directions.
August 17, 2006... by Matthew Miller Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have fashioned a web of optical fibers into an optical system that boasts potentially useful advantages over conventional 2-D lenses or detectors. The...

India's Innoviti connects watches to wireless data.
August 17, 2006... by Chitra Giridhar, EDN Asia Bangalore start-up Innoviti Embedded Solutions has developed a two-chip, wireless product that enables wrist watches to receive personalized messages and news feeds. One chip performs the RF-reception tasks,...

Research giant, vision expert collaborate on 3-D-chip-package research.
August 17, 2006... by Maury Wright With products ranging from handsets to MP3 players to industrial-control systems shrinking in footprint, system designers must find innovative ways to package the electronics. Using 3-D IC packages is one technique that...

Palm PCs: micro PC or macro failure?
August 17, 2006... by Paul Rako Way back in 2000, a few friends working at Apple decided to leave and create a palm-sized computer that would run Windows XP. They called the company Oqo. The product used a low-power Transmeta processor, and the prototype...

Specs: Sometimes timing really is everything.(Linear Technology )
August 17, 2006... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor Most of EDN 's "Tales from the Cube" tell a story about how a design or applications engineer encountered an unexpected technical challenge and overcame it with a clever fix. Here's a cautionary tale...