EDN articles from December 2007

EDN archives from December 2007

Robots on the march.
December 3, 2007... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor Robotics is gaining momentum as an engineering discipline. A variety of available platforms and tools supports it. This article is the first of a two-part hands-on project exploring the topic. ...

Phase steps overcome slim testing margins.
December 3, 2007... by Stefan Walther and Guido Schulze, Verigy With a new multiple-strobe technique, your ATE can find the passing setup-and-hold margins during high-volume production testing of source-synchronous circuits. With many circuits and systems...

Transimpedance synchronous amplification nulls out background illumination.
December 3, 2007... Stefano Salvatori and Gennaro Conte, University Roma Tre, Rome, Italy Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville Light sensors find use in a host of important applications, spanning from consumer electronics, such as ambient-light...

Microcontroller drives LCD with just one wire.
December 3, 2007... Noureddine Benabadji, University of Sciences and Technology, Oran, Algeria Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville HD44780 LCDs are the most popular alphanumeric displays in embedded systems. The only downside is that they use six...

Filter simplifies software-defined radio.
December 3, 2007... John Wendler and Ray Tremblay, Tyco Electronics, M/A-Com Wireless Systems, Lowell, MA Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville SDRs (software-defined radios) provide enormous flexibility, permitting you to change modes or waveforms...

Thermoelectric-cooler unipolar drive achieves stable temperatures.
December 3, 2007... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville Most engineers know about the solid-state refrigerators called Peltier devices or, more commonly, TECs (thermoelectric coolers) and how they can actively...

Development boards speed learning and product-development cycle.
December 3, 2007... by Maury Wright, Editorial Director I suppose the headline is a no-brainer. Of course, development boards help you come up to speed on a new technology. And the boards can jump-start a project, allowing you, for instance, to immediately...

Protect yourself.
December 3, 2007... by Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor This installment of 'Analog Domain' focuses on one of the growing circuit-implementation challenges that confronts IC, subsystem, and system designers alike: interface ESD protection. Two...

Lossless propagation.(properties of lossless propagation )
December 3, 2007... by Howard Johnson, PhD Inject a fast rising edge into a long, uniform transmission structure. Imagine the signal propagating with uniform velocity and negligible attenuation for some distance. Figure 1 depicts two snapshots taken at...

Coding SPI software.
December 3, 2007... by Dariusz Caban, PhD, Silesian University of Technology The SPI requires three wires for data transfer plus a device-select signal. Designers can implement peripheral communications using processor-based hardware or the software routines...

Decompensating amplifiers improve performance.
December 3, 2007... by Walter Bacharowski, National Semiconductor Manufacturers offering unity-gain-stable amplifiers hope to address a wide market and minimize the effort of learning to use the device. Yet these vendors sacrifice a significant portion of the...

Grid and resolution.
December 3, 2007... by Pallab Chatterjee, Contributing Technical Editor A recent trend confusing two quite different terms has had a huge negative impact on the yield, reliability, and manufacturability of DSM (deep-submicron) and subwavelength semiconductor...

Chips improve efficiency for notebook, desktop power supplies.
December 3, 2007... by Margery Conner Digitally controlled power supplies-those in which the control loop closes digitally-have so far found favor primarily in applications requiring large amounts of power. For example, ColdWatt's (www.coldwatt.com ) 1200 to...

802.11n WLAN comes in one chip.
December 3, 2007... by Graham Prophet, EDN Europe Broadcom has announced the BCM4322, a single-chip offering for the IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi standard-or, strictly speaking, compliant with the 11n draft 2.0 specification, as ratification of the standard is due for...

PIC microcontrollers reach into 32-bit processing.
December 3, 2007... by Robert Cravotta Microchip's PIC32 microcontroller family brings 32-bit processing options to the PIC line of processors. Microchip based the processors on the upgraded MIPS32 M4K core, and they maintain compatibility with the company's...

Transceiver features multiband digital downconverter.
December 3, 2007... by Warren Webb Currently available communications protocols and new requirements for wireless-Web digital services have produced numerous wireless standards, each with unique signal requirements. To address these new standards, Pentek...

FPGA-design environment squeezes power consumption.(Brief article)
December 3, 2007... by Maury Wright EDA tools for FPGAs and ASICs commonly include optimization capabilities for timing and gate efficiency, but Actel claims that its new Libero Version 8.1 package is the first FPGA development tool to include...

Matlab adds support for parallel applications, multithreaded computations, 64-bit platforms.
December 3, 2007... by Ann Steffora Mutschler To help engineers and scientists model increasingly complex systems in less time by allowing development of parallel applications independently of the resources that are available for execution, The MathWorks...

DaVinci processor targets HD transcoding.
December 3, 2007... by Robert Cravotta Texas Instruments' DaVinci DSP-based TMS320DM6467 system includes targeted video accelerators that deliver multiformat HD (high-definition) transcoding in a single device. The programmable system centers on the C64x+ DSP...

Taming tiny, unruly waves for nanoscale optics.
December 3, 2007... by Fran Granville Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a way to predict the behavior of unruly waves of light during nanoscale radiation-heat transfer, opening the door to the design of a spectrum of new...

Smart optical microchips could advance telecom.
December 3, 2007... by Fran Granville Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a theory that could lead to 'smart' optical microchips that adapt to different wavelengths of light, potentially advancing telecommunications,...

Quantum-dot transistor counts individual photons.
December 3, 2007... by Fran Granville The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) has designed and demonstrated a FET containing quantum dots that can count individual photons-the smallest particles of light. Designers could easily integrate the...

Scope.(International Solid-State Circuits Conference)(embedded computer systems)(Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to expand its design expertise)
December 3, 2007... Edited by Ron Wilson Looking Ahead To ISSCC 2008 The ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference), the foremost annual technical conference for leading-edge-IC developments, runs from Feb 3 to 7, 2008, in San Francisco....

Demand still high for 8-, 16-bit microcontrollers.
December 3, 2007... Edited by Suzanne Deffree As the industry continues its move to 32-bit microcontrollers, demand from the electronics supply chain is still not only solid for 8- and 16-bit varieties, but growing, according to industry sources. ...

Component shortages to hurt hand-set-unit growth.
December 3, 2007... Edited by Suzanne Deffree The traditionally high sales quarter for the handset market may face some obstacles this fourth quarter. Strategy Analytics (www.strategyanalytics.net ) has reported that it expects component shortages to have a...

Design challenges go green.
December 3, 2007... Edited by Suzanne Deffree Freescale Semiconductor (www.freescale.com ) is the latest company to announce a design challenge targeting green electronics. The Austin, TX-based company has invited embedded-systems engineers and engineering...

Mind the gap!
December 3, 2007... by Jeff Fries, GE Transportation I recently had to revamp one of my company's more-than-30-year-old designs. Like any project these days, the new design needed to be smaller, cheaper, include many more functions, and see completion in a...

Holiday wishes target technological harmony.
December 14, 2007... by Maury Wright, Editorial Director As I write this column in early December, I've yet to even think about holiday shopping, but my son was quick to proffer a lengthy wish list. That list and a gentle prodding from Matt Miller,...

Delta-sigma ADCs in a nutshell.
December 14, 2007... by Bonnie Baker Delta-sigma converters are ideal for converting signals over a wide range of frequencies from dc to several megahertz with very-high-resolution results. Figure 1 shows the basic topology, or core, of a delta-sigma ADC,...

Embedded electronics guides casino gaming.
December 14, 2007... by Warren Webb, Technical Editor With legal-gambling revenues skyrocketing and electronics technology at center stage, embedded-system manufacturers are lining up to bet on the future. When you step into a casino in Las Vegas or...

High-brightness LEDs usher in new applications and standards.
December 14, 2007... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor As high-brightness LEDs increase in power, they will enable new applications ranging from architectural lighting to medical products. Energy Star lighting standards are evolving to keep the focus on total...

Actively driven ferrite core inductively cancels common-mode voltage.
December 14, 2007... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville An earlier Design Idea illustrated one approach to that traditional headache for the analog designer: the dreaded ground loop (Reference 1 ). That Design...

Improved optocoupler circuits reduce current draw, resist LED aging.
December 14, 2007... Peter Demchenko, Vilnius, Lithuania Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville It seems deceptively simple to establish galvanic isolation with the help of optocouplers between circuits that operate at different ground potentials....

Cascade two decade counters to obtain 19-step sequential counter.
December 14, 2007... Jeff Tregre, Dallas, TX Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville This Design Idea offers a practical approach to cascading two or more Johnson counters together with a bare minimum of parts. The CD4017 Johnson decade counter finds...

Dual-input sample-and-hold amplifier uses no external resistors.
December 14, 2007... Marián A tofka, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville At least two classic ways exist to address applications requiring sampling of a sum of analog voltages. The most...

Microfuel cell enables ubiquitous computing.(Brief article)
December 14, 2007... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor This fall's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco included a section on technologies that will help extend the computing time of laptop computers. Medis Technologies (www.medistechnologies.com)...

Common mistakes in electronic design.
December 14, 2007... by Craig Hillman, PhD, DFR Solutions Designing for reliability plays a critical role in the ultimate success or failure of your product and helps you avoid common design mistakes. Most executives responsible for managing product...

Pcell and IP realities for fabless design.
December 14, 2007... by Pallab Chatterjee, Contributing Technical Editor The current methodology for SOC (system-on-chip) design employs a hierarchical approach that maximizes the use of IP (intellectual-property) blocks. This method replaces the previous one,...

Lawsuit has implications for digital control of power subsystems.
December 14, 2007... by Margery Conner A federal-court jury found that Artesyn Technologies' digital POL (point-of-load) PMBus-compatible product had infringed on Power-One's Z-One digital-power-management-and-control patents. In the lawsuit, Power-One claimed...

Mezzanine card captures precise analog data.(MEN Micro Inc. unveils mezzanine board )(Brief article)
December 14, 2007... by Warren Webb MEN Micro's recently unveiled M36N analog-input mezzanine board comes in an M-module form factor and features high-resolution data acquisition for the myriad analog signals designs encounter in industrial automation,...

Cadence makes logic verification OVM-savvy.
December 14, 2007... by Michael Santarini Cadence Design Systems has added several enhancements, including support for the OVM (open-verification methodology), to its Incisive logic-verification-tool lineup. Traditionally, verification engineers have composed...

RF-test system supports 4×4 MIMO, 40-MHz IEEE 802.11n WLAN MIMO.
December 14, 2007... by Dan Strassberg Keithley Instruments has released a 4x4 (four-transmitter-, four-receiver-per-sector) MIMO (multiple-input/multiple-output) RF-test system for R&D and production testing of next-generation RF-communications equipment and...

Qualcomm moves 3G chips to 45-nm process.
December 14, 2007... by Suzanne Deffree Qualcomm Inc this month announced that it has made the first phone call on a 3G chip it manufactured with 45-nm-process technology. Qualcomm made the call on the 45-nm chips received from TSMC ( Taiwan Semiconductor...

Chano Gómez on powerline networking's *universal* hope.
December 14, 2007... by Brian Dipert A profusion of incompatible 'standards,' the memory of poor initial products, and the technical challenge of the application have thus far retarded the adoption of powerline networking. Chano Gomez, vice president of...

National Instruments targets high-volume applications.(National Instruments Corp. releases reconfigurable programmable logic arrays)(Brief article)
December 14, 2007... by Warren Webb Integrating hardware that includes an embedded real-time processor and a reconfigurable FPGA, National Instruments' new cRIO-9072 and cRIO-9074 CompactRIO systems target high-volume industrial applications. The systems...

Integrated dc/dc regulators improve efficiency in server, embedded-system applications.
December 14, 2007... by Margery Conner Energy efficiency continues to be a major concern for server-farm operators, who can expect to pay three times the cost of the servers in operating costs over the life of the equipment. Further, the Environmental...

Scope.(DesignCon 2008)(Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Ltd.'s wireless microphone)(trends in consumer electronics industry)
December 14, 2007... Edited by Ron Wilson Looking Ahead To DesignCon 2008 This long-standing electronics-design conference will open in its 2008 incarnation at the Santa Clara, CA, convention center, Feb 4 through 7. Evolving with the industry has...

Surprise, surprise.
December 14, 2007... by Phil Ouellette, Mettler-Toledo Inc I once had to track down an intermittent power-on-reset problem. I designed an 8052-processor-based USB peripheral with external memory. The design used 74VHC573 octal latches to demultiplex the memory...

The Hot 100 Products of 2007.
December 14, 2007... by Staff As the mercury drops below freezing, it's nice to be able to focus our attention on something hot. For some of you, this scenario might mean lounging on a sunny beach in Hawaii, piña colada in hand. For EDN , it's compiling...