EDN articles from February 2008

EDN archives from February 2008

Mobile television: strong, weak, or zero reception?
February 7, 2008... by Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor On-the-go TV is here; some contend that it's been here for a while. Meanwhile, the number of 'third-screen' options is rapidly expanding-from gear that fits into your palm to an LCD in the back seat...

Robots on the march.
February 7, 2008... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor Evolving robotic-development platforms primarily focus on how to jump-start developers, but they also provide much-needed mechanisms to reuse the software components from one robotic project to another....

Design an RTD interface with a spreadsheet.
February 7, 2008... Robert S Villanucci, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville RTDs (resistance-temperature detectors) are the preferred sensor choices for designs requiring precision. Although RTDs are...

Isolated supply powers DVM module.(digital-voltmeter)(Brief article)
February 7, 2008... Richard Dunipace, Fairchild Semiconductor, Irving, TX Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville Low-cost DVM (digital-voltmeter) modules are economical and can significantly reduce design time for instrumentation. Yet, these modules...

IC performs delayed system reset upon power-up.
February 7, 2008... Goh Ban Hok, Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific Ltd, Singapore Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville In most applications, the MR (manual-reset) pin usually connects to a switch to create a manual-reset signal to the supervisory...

One microcontroller pin drives two LEDs with low quiescent current.
February 7, 2008... Antonio Muñoz, Laboratorios Avanzados de Investigacion del I3A, Zaragoza, Spain, and Arturo Mediano, PhD, GEPM University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville The basis for this Design Idea...

EDN's 2007 Innovation finalists: The show must go on!
February 7, 2008... by Staff Though EDN 's writers are not on strike, they have indeed reached an impasse. They have done all they can to recognize engineering excellence over the past year. Now, you must step in to help decide the most innovative engineers,...

Yao! What a handshake!
February 7, 2008... by Howard Johnson, PhD Two men of average height meet in a crowded bar. They grasp hands. One man follows through with a vigorous up-and-down motion. The other holds on with a passive, limp action. Their meeting produces a normal, hearty...

Adlink delivers 10W processor blade.(Adlink Technology Inc. launches cPCI-3600 3U )(Brief article)
February 7, 2008... by Warren Webb With low-power military, automation, and transportation applications in mind, Adlink Technology recently announced the cPCI-3600 3U CompactPCI board, which it based on the latest AMD (www.amd.com ) Geode LX 800@0.9W...

Electronic manufacturing capacity to see global rebalancing.(trends in contract manufacturing and cost control)(iSuppli Corp.)(Brief article)
February 7, 2008... by Suzanne Deffree Electronics-contract manufacturers will begin focusing on other factors beyond labor cost when it comes to selecting a location for production in the coming years, according to iSuppli Corp. According to the company, in...

IC technology allows waveform access at previously inaccessible internal points.
February 7, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Several of the latest high-end digital oscilloscopes incorporate facilities for reconstructing waveforms that probes can't reach. However, Vitesse Semiconductor says that such de-embedding is no better than the device...

Thermoelectric platform aims to cool hot spots.
February 7, 2008... by Suzanne Deffree Nextreme Inc claims that its new thermoelectric platform can lower heat in specific areas of laser diodes, LEDs, and sensors. The microscale-thermal- and power-management-product maker recently announced its...

MEN Micro extends universal-submodule concept.(Brief article)
February 7, 2008... by Warren Webb Designing unique I/O-mezzanine modules for each application can be expensive and time-consuming. MEN Micro attacks this problem with a USM (universal-submodule) concept that it based on reconfigurable-FPGA architecture....

Getting more bang out of that chip design.(Georgia Institute of Technology conducted a reaearch on IC by using copper films)(Brief article)
February 7, 2008... by Ron Wilson The Georgia Institute of Technology and the Indian Head Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center have developed a novel approach to the formation of nanoporous copper films. The approach is making it possible to literally...

Carbon nanotubes boost flexible thin-film transistors.
February 7, 2008... by Ron Wilson Researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and Brewer Science Inc have developed a flexible film loaded with carbon nanotubes for use in printable electronic circuits. The researchers based the technique on an...

Graphene may be best conductor ever.
February 7, 2008... Ron Wilson Researchers at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, working in conjunction with teams at the Institute for Microelectronics Technology and High Purity Materials (www.ipmt-hpm.ac.ru/index.en.html ) in Russia, the...

Scope.(International Symposium on Quality in Electronic Design, volume 2008,)(Delco Electronics Corp. developes TV sets in automobiles)(trends in government aid to education in USA)
February 7, 2008... Edited by Ron Wilson Looking Ahead To ISQED 2008 The International Symposium on Quality in Electronic Design, volume 2008, will take place March 17 to 19 in San Jose, CA. As the only conference focusing on quality in IC design,...

EU ROHS exemption, definition changes to impact restricted substances, design requirements.(European Union. European Commission to review it's list of restriction-of-hazardous-substances)
February 7, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree The EC (European Commission) is set to adjust the EU (European Union) ROHS (restriction-of-hazardous-substances) directive this year to reflect additional substances and changes to exemptions. ROHS is...

The stalling power supply.
February 7, 2008... by William Saks, Northrop Grumman A few years ago, a co-worker complained that he didn't know how he was going to get his project, a radar processor, through qualification testing due to a power-supply problem. The system used two...

Delta-sigma ADCs in a nutshell, part 3: the digital/decimator filter.(analog to digital converters)
February 21, 2008... by Bonnie Baker Following the modulator in the delta-sigma ADC is a digital/decimator circuit. This circuit samples and filters the modulator stream of 1-bit codes. At the modulator output, high-frequency noise and high-speed sample rates...

Tightened power-efficiency regulations force power supplies to keep up.(energy efficency for manufacturing industries)
February 21, 2008... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor Both voluntary and mandatory power-regulation standards have forced manufacturers to meet minimum power-efficiency standards or risk losing customers-and, sometimes, markets. New versions of standards and...

As SOCs grow, test-and-measurement instruments move on-chip.
February 21, 2008... by Ron Wilson, executive editor Complex ICs are not only absorbing more of the systems around them, but also swallowing the test equipment designers use to bring up, evaluate, and calibrate the chips. It's just geometry. As...

NE555 timer sparks low-cost voltage-to-frequency converter.
February 21, 2008... Gyula Dioszegi and János Nagy, Divelex Ltd, Budapest, Hungary Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville In 1971, Signetics-later Philips (www.philips.com )-introduced the NE555 timer, and manufacturers are still producing...

Optoisolators compute watts and volt-amperes.
February 21, 2008... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville A decade or so ago, I designed a simple circuit that included a quad optoisolator arranged in a full-wave analog-multiplier bridge (Figure 1 ). It sensed...

Single-supply circuit measures –48V high-side current.(AD629 Differential amplifiers and AD8603 Operational amplifiers)
February 21, 2008... Wenshuai Liao, Analog Devices, Beijing, China; Stephen Lee, Analog Devices, Wilmington, MA; and Yanhui Zhao, Beihang University, Beijing, China Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville The nominal -48V rail, which finds wide use in...

Three-state switch interface uses one microcontroller pin.
February 21, 2008... Kartik Joshi, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville Human interfaces for electronic gadgets sometimes require three states for control. A single-axis joystick has states to...

AC-continuity tester finds single-ended faults in cables.
February 21, 2008... Kevin Bilke, Maxim Integrated Products, Fleet, Hants, UK Edited by Charles H Small and Fran Granville An ac-based continuity tester for front-line test-and-repair jobs provides a simple go/no-go test for localizing faults in...

EDN Innovation: Awards season comes to technology.
February 21, 2008... by Maury Wright, Editorial Director In the Feb 7 issue of EDN , we announced the finalists for the 18th edition of our EDN Innovation Awards program. We strive to recognize the brightest technologies and engineers each year, and this year...

TV peripheral encompasses superset processor.
February 21, 2008... by Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor In September 2002, Delkin (www.delkin.com ) introduced its eFilm Picturevision, which enables the playback of audio, still-image, and video files on a variety of memory-card formats. The price was...

What does 'better' mean?(engineers must provide service to make consumer electronics best)
February 21, 2008... by Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor Since the days of Scottish inventor and engineer James Watt, engineering practice has focused on balancing multiple goals: improving performance, increasing robustness, expanding function,...

VMM application packages: the next level of productivity.(Verification Methodology Manual)(methods to increase industrial productivity)
February 21, 2008... by Janick Bergeron, Synopsys A standardized verification methodology increases output without sacrificing design quality. The history of the EDA industry shows a clear, repetitive pattern. Designers develop new proprietary...

USB battery-charger designs meet new industry standards.
February 21, 2008... By Takashi Kanamori and George Paparrizos, Summit Microelectronics USB is not just for data transfer any more; there are too many good reasons to use it in such applications as charging handheld-device batteries. New standards address such...

35-GHz waveform-analyzer plug-in triggers sequential-sampling DSO.
February 21, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has introduced a precision waveform analyzer in the form of a double-width plug-in for its model 86100C DCA-J (digital-communications analyzer)-an ultrahigh-bandwidth sequential...

MEMS-oscillator maker aims to oust quartz.
February 21, 2008... by Graham Prophet SiTime, which is bringing MEMS (microelectromechanical-system)-based oscillators into volume production, aims to replace quartz as the frequency reference in clock and timing oscillators. The company claims that its...

Upgradable scopes capture 1G-sample records on all channels simultaneously.
February 21, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has announced a series of high-performance real-time-sampling DSOs (digital-storage oscilloscopes) that you can purchase with or upgrade to a waveform-memory depth of 1G samples on each of four...

GPON-ONT IC delivers Gigabit Ethernet, voice, and video.
February 21, 2008... by Maury Wright Deployment of GPON (gigabit-passive-optical networks) is finally happening in North America with Verizon's drive to push fiber to the home (see '100-Mbps broadband: how, why, when, and where?' EDN , July 6, 2006, pg 48,...

Octal continuous-time sigma-delta ADC targets ultrasound and industrial applications.
February 21, 2008... by Paul Rako National Semiconductor is the first company to bring to market a high-speed, continuous-time sigma-delta converter. The 12-bit ADC12EU050 octal converter operates at 50M samples/sec and uses only 44 mW per channel. Whereas...

AMD unveils 55-nm graphics processors for less than $100.
February 21, 2008... by Ann Steffora Mutschler With the aim of delivering outstanding graphics performance to the mainstream, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) recently added the entry-level ATI Radeon HD 3400 and mainstream ATI Radeon HD 3600 graphics processors...

GreenPeak Technologies' Cees Links: wireless-networking visionary.(Excerpt)
February 21, 2008... By Warren Webb Cees (pronounced case) Links is an engineer and the chief executive officer at GreenPeak Technologies (www.greenpeak.com ), an international supplier of low-power wireless-system modules compatible with IEEE 802.15.4 and...

A helping hand.(career overvie and service provided to United States. Department of Defense)(Personal account)(Company overview)
February 21, 2008... by Steve Lubs, Department of Defense Early in my career, I designed several kinds of signal demodulators, including AM, FM, and PM devices. Two of our standard building blocks were analog multipliers and discrete integrators. My boss was...