EDN articles from August 2008

EDN archives from August 2008

The eyes of the electronic world are watching.
August 7, 2008... by Bonnie Baker Silicon photo sensors have been in electronic circuits since the inception of the era of silicon electronics. More than likely, scientists quickly discovered the photo-sensing characteristics of silicon in the lab, as they...

White spaces: ready for development permits or off-limits?
August 7, 2008... by Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor Is wireless spectrum scarce or abundant? Two coalitions' fresh perspectives on a long-standing issue have produced promising early results, but old-guard opponents are raising implementation...

Free software encircles embedded design.
August 7, 2008... by Warren Webb, Technical Editor Open-source software has become a staple in the embedded-system industry as designers struggle with escalating software complexity on limited budgets. With potentially huge savings on operating...

Simple toggle circuits illustrate low power-MOSFET leakage.
August 7, 2008... Tom Bruhns, Mukilteo, WA Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville The novelty circuit in Figure 1 illustrates the extremely low gate-leakage current typical of modern power MOSFETs. You can find parts that, in a moderately dry...

Circuit adds functions to a monostable multivibrator.
August 7, 2008... PM Ishtiaq, S Mufti, MA Darzi, and GN Shah, Nuclear Research Laboratory, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Kashmir, India Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Gate generation is often an inevitable step in digital-signal processing....

Piezoelectric driver finds buzzer's resonant frequency.
August 7, 2008... Mehmet Efe Ozbek, PhD, Atilim University, Incek, Ankara, Turkey Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Piezoelectric buzzers find wide use as audible-signal generators because of their low power consumption and clear, penetrating...

Low-cost digital DAC provides digital three-phase-waveform synthesis.
August 7, 2008... SA González, Universidad de Mar de Plata, Argentina, and R García-Gil, J Castello, and JM Espí,Universidad de Valencia, Spain Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Many applications involve the digital synthesis...

Semicon West boosts solar power.
August 7, 2008... by Rick Nelson, editor-in-chief Will synergies between the solar and the semiconductor industries help boost the use of solar power in North America? That scenario would seem to be a distinct possibility based on the turnout last month at...

Revisiting electronic ink.
August 7, 2008... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor Electronic ink has changed in the seven years since we last took a look at it. When EDN looked at electronic ink seven years ago, there were two visible commercial approaches to delivering display...

High-voltage, low-noise dc/dc converters.
August 7, 2008... by Jim Williams, Linear Technology Corp You can make a 1-kV dc/dc converter with only 100 [micro]v of noise. Photomultipliers, avalanche photodiodes, ultrasonic transducers, condenser microphones, radiation detectors, and similar...

USB-powered battery charger goes faster, cooler, safer.
August 7, 2008... by Margery Conner The ubiquitous USB port is becoming an international power-source standard for consumer electronics because it eliminates concerns over differences in regional wall plugs, voltages, and frequencies. Targeting that market,...

Miniature photocoupler features high-speed isolated switching.(Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH)(Brief article)
August 7, 2008... by Graham Prophet Toshiba Electronics Europe has launched the TLP117 miniature photocoupler for applications requiring a combination of isolation, high-speed data transfer, and low-power operation. The photocoupler integrates a high-speed...

Battery-operated, 6.2-GHz real-time spectrum analyzer incorporates DPX technology, GPS, and mapping.
August 7, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Tektronix describes its latest real-time spectrum analyzer, the $22,900, rechargeable-battery-operated, 10-kHz to 6.2-GHz SA2600, as a handheld instrument. King Kong might call it that, but few humans would. The company...

10-Gbps links span 30m in copper.(Phyworks)(Brief article)
August 7, 2008... by Graham Prophet According to fabless-telecom-chip-maker Phyworks, more than 80% of high-speed-data-center interconnections span less than 30m, and optical links over those distances have a heavy overhead in cost, space, and power. The...

Embedded computer offers multicore performance.
August 7, 2008... by Warren Webb Targeting embedded-system applications, such as industrial automation, multimedia kiosks, gaming, and medical devices, Ampro Computers recently announced the ReadyBoard 830 single-board computer, which the company based on...

ASML boosts immersion-lithography performance.
August 7, 2008... by Ann Steffora Mutschler Targeting 38-nm-memory and 32-nm-logic-semiconductor high-volume manufacturing, lithography giant ASML Holding NV recently introduced its Twinscan XT:1950i lithography system. The device uses a...

Digital isolators reach 2 Mbps, pack in as many as four channels.(NVE Corp. introduces optocouplers)(Brief article)
August 7, 2008... by Margery Conner Using optocouplers is a common, inexpensive method of signal isolation, but your application may be unable to tolerate optocouplers' tendency to degrade with age and temperature. Targeting that problem, NVE has introduced...

FPGA start-up aims at ASIC market.
August 7, 2008... by Graham Prophet FPGA newcomer SiliconBlue is targeting the market for ASIC replacement for portable, battery-powered devices. The iCE product is a conventional FPGA architecture--a look-up-table structure. Exploiting the features of the...

Broadband low-noise amplifier provides mobile-TV reception from VHF to L band.
August 7, 2008... by Graham Prophet Infineon Technologieshas released the BGA728L7 broadband low-noise amplifier for portable- and mobile-TV applications. The BGA728L7 covers the VHF (very-high-frequency) III, UHF (ultrahigh-frequency), and L bands. It...

15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business.
August 7, 2008... by Margery Conner After Limor Fried received her master's degree in computer science and electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, she started her own business designing and selling electronic kits,...

Dumping the noise.
August 7, 2008... By Jim Christensen, Kris Design Services I recently completed designing an ultrasonic receiver that accepted signals in the 100- to 200-kHz band, downconverted the signal to an audio band, digitized it, and sent it to a remote computer. The...

Electronic-system-level design: Is there fire beneath the smoke?
August 21, 2008... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor After years of overclaiming and underperforming, ESL design has a role in many design flows. But has anyone noticed? It was a shimmering promise on the horizon: As SOCs (systems on chips) became more...

Lithium-ion technology targets portable power.(lithium-ion cells are used in making of consumer electronics)
August 21, 2008... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor Work closely with your lithium-ion-cell manufacturer and battery-pack-design house to develop safety and performance features for your system's battery pack. A typical laptop-computer battery pack...

Astable multivibrator lights LED from a single cell.
August 21, 2008... Luca Bruno, ITIS Hensemberger, Monza, Lissone, Italy Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Lighting LEDs from a single 1.5V cell poses a problem because their forward voltages are higher than the cell's. The simplest way to light...

IC provides versatile toggle functions.
August 21, 2008... Louis Vlemincq, Belgacom, Evere, Belgium Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville The circuit in Figure 1 offers not only as many as six channels in a single IC package, but also a high level of additional flexibility. The...

Instrumentation amp has low offset, drift, and low-frequency noise.(Analog Devices B.V. introduces power amplifiers)(Brief article)
August 21, 2008... Marián A tofka, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Analog Devices' (www.analog.com ) digitally gain-programmable AD8231 instrumentation amplifier exhibits zero offset....

Four DIPs provide as many as 80 sequential-LED outputs.(Brief article)
August 21, 2008... Greg Carkner, Cobourg, ON, Canada Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville A previous Design Idea makes clever use of the ability of the 4017 CMOS counters to accept either positive or negative edge-clock signals, even though it leaves...

Program an op-amp gain block with a limited-adjustability, monolithic, solid-state resistor.
August 21, 2008... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Solid-state replacements for traditional electromechanical trimmer potentiometers are increasingly available in a variety of technologies from a variety of...

Hang up and drive; hang up and walk.
August 21, 2008... by Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief The cell-phone market is potentially huge. Sanjay K Jha, then chief operating officer of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technology, said in a June 11 Design Automation Conference keynote address that...

All about surface-mount ferrites.
August 21, 2008... by Lee Hill Simple, two-terminal SMT (surface-mount-technology)-ferrite-bead components perform crucial functions in many systems. For example, one might suppress electromagnetic emissions from a power wire. Another might provide isolation...

On-chip test capabilities solve the analog-test problem for high-speed serial interfaces.
August 21, 2008... by Navraj Nandra, Synopsys Inc Including analog-test hardware in an SOC provides visibility into the performance of on-chip serial links, helping to ensure signal integrity and reduce the cost of manufacturing test. A small amount of...

IP selection and power supplies.
August 21, 2008... by Pallab Chatterjee, contributing technical editor With the 'greening' of electronics and IC systems, power-supply strategies are critical portions of the IP (intellectual-property)-selection process. There are two major competing...

Lithium-ion capacitor combines more than 100,000 charge cycles, low self-discharge rate.
August 21, 2008... by Margery Conner Lithium-ion batteries are the current darlings of the automotive world because of their potential for finally making electric vehicles practical. They are not without their drawbacks, however, including their relatively...

FPGA IP completes wireless-backhaul method.
August 21, 2008... by Graham Prophet Wintegra's third-generation UFE3 (universal-front-end-3) IP (intellectual-property) core for high-channel-density, wireless-backhaul designs provides an upgrade path for designers migrating voice-centric cellular systems...

Keithley debuts software upgrade and switch/multimeter options.
August 21, 2008... by Rick Nelson Keithley Instruments at Semicon West (www.semiconwest.org ), which took place in San Francisco last month, introduced Version 7.1 of the KTEI (Keithley Test Environment Interactive) for the company's Model 4200-SCS...

16-bit, 10M-sample/sec ADC uses SAR architecture.(Analog Devices B.V.)(Brief article)
August 21, 2008... by Paul Rako Analog Devices' new AD7626 ADC provides 16-bit samples at a 10-MHz rate while using 130 mW. The part targets use in digital-X-ray machines, MRI (magnetic-resonance-imaging) systems, and ATE (automatic-test equipment), as well...

Multiarchitecture-DSP road map refines power-efficiency-versus-performance balance.(Texas Instruments Inc. introduces power controllers)
August 21, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Texas Instruments' multiarchitecture-processor plans expand a low-power-design emphasis beyond the fixed-point C550x series of processors and applies it to the high-performance C640x family, the floating-point C674x...

Photonics researchers decelerate light to accelerate data.(University of Southern California recieves funding for the research)(Brief article)
August 21, 2008... by Matthew Miller A research team at the USC (University of Southern California) Viterbi School of Engineering has received $4.3 million in DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funding to develop continuously tunable optical...

Technology gives windows a solar edge.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)(Brief article)
August 21, 2008... by Matthew Miller Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a technology that transforms a pane of glass into a solar concentrator that can gather light over its entire surface and conduct that light to solar...

Kerf-free wafering technology reduces polysilicon for photovoltaics.
August 21, 2008... by Ann Steffora Mutschler To substantially reduce the amount of polysilicon within the ingot-to-wafer manufacturing steps and eliminate some of the costly consumables in today's wafer manufacturing, Silicon Genesis has produced solar...

Organic-distributor growth remains steady in unsteady times.
August 21, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree In the electronics-distribution industry, merger-and-acquisition activity over the past 20 years has sometimes been as bustling as Grand Central Station during rush hour. A key player in that industry, Digi-Key...

Consumer telematics shifts to in-car connectivity.
August 21, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree Despite high gas prices and the fact that the automotive industry has hit the skids on the economic downturn in the United States, the consumer-telematics industry continues to see healthy levels of innovation,...

IPC Brussels meeting reveals ROHS-revisions concerns.
August 21, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree If you worry about the possible changes to the ROHS (restriction-of-hazardous-substances) directive, you are not alone. Industry leaders from across the electronics supply chain came together at an IPC...

It's an electromagnetic-mechanical world.(Viewpoint essay)
August 21, 2008... by David R Bryce, Dataram Corp In the late 1980s, I was working on a currency counter that included an option to detect counterfeit currency. The counter's mechanism consisted of shaft-mounted rollers that transported the bills, one by...