EDN articles from February 2009

EDN archives from February 2009

The direction of light.
February 5, 2009... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor Residential and commercial lighting currently accounts for 20% of the electricity used in the United States. Although CFLs are the best options for increasing efficiency and decreasing power needs, HB-LED...

The ATSC coupon-eligible converter box: a consumer-electronics case study.(Case study)
February 5, 2009... by Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor The pending NTSC shutoff has US consumers clamoring for rebate-eligible hardware that will stave off the loss of over-the-air television. How do manufacturers distinguish themselves from opponents...

Convert signals to proper logic levels.
February 5, 2009... Abel Raynus, Armatron International Inc, Malden, MA Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville When designing a test station incorporating a microcontroller, you often face voltages in the test that exceed the maximum input level...

DDR-differential-clock source on SOC drives two DDR-memory chips.
February 5, 2009... Goh Ban Hok, Infineon Technologies, Singapore Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Many system engineers assume that a differential-clock source should drive just one chip. If a system design requires driving two DDR-memory chips,...

Flying capacitor and negative time constant make digitally programmable-gain instrumentation amplifier.
February 5, 2009... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Numerous and evil are the forces of darkness that conspire to frustrate accurate analog-to-digital conversion of wide-dynamic-range analog signals. Among...

MOSFET prevents battery damage.
February 5, 2009... Santosh Bhandarkar, Wep Peripherals, Mysore, India Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Sealed-lead-acid batteries, which find wide use in power-electronics products, such as UPS (uninterruptible-power supplies), inverters, and...

Voltage doubler improves accuracy.
February 5, 2009... S Chekcheyev, Tiraspol, Moldova Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville The voltage doubler in Figure 1 provides more accurate voltage doubling than does the conventional voltage doubler in Figure 2 because it uses transistors instead...

OLEDs: better off once the delusion is dead.
February 5, 2009... By Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor When fiscal times get tight, R&D budgets fade. I realize that, at first glance, this statement seems elementary and obvious. However, you may be surprised by how quickly those with a vested interest...

Unified electrodynamic force.
February 5, 2009... By Howard Johnson, PhD Fire two charged particles at the same moment, with the same initial velocity, into a perfect vacuum (Figure 1). The two particles, having the same electric charge, repel one another. This repelling electric force, F...

EDN's 2008 Innovation Award finalists: Make your voice heard.
February 5, 2009... Staff You pick the winners in our 19th annual program honoring engineering excellence. Yes, you can! The 2008 presidential election may be just a distant memory, but another critical choice requires your voice. Our editors have named...

Optimizing standard-definition video on high-definition displays.
February 5, 2009... By Frank Kearney, Analog Devices The availability of large-screen HD LCD TVs and plasma displays is driving the popularity of digital-TV broadcasts and HD-signal interfaces. However, the ability to support legacy sources with the highest...

Regulated charge pump delivers 30 mA at 5V.
February 5, 2009... by Paul Rako IC maker austriamicrosystems has released the AS1302 inductorless dc/dc boost converter, which can deliver output currents as high as 30 mA from a voltage input of 2.9 to 5.12V. The output-voltage regulation is 3%. The part...

Embedded module simplifies local networking.
February 5, 2009... by Warren Webb Connect One's new Nano LANReach embedded-LAN module easily connects any embedded device to 10/100BaseT LANs with minimal programming. Measuring only 2.533.5 cm, including a built-in RJ-45 connector, the Nano LANReach offers...

$695 board offers 16 isolated differential-analog inputs, two isolated analog outputs.
February 5, 2009... by Dan Strassberg Microstar Laboratories, maker of DAP (Data-Acquisition Processor) boards and network-ready DAPservers, recently announced the MSXB 085 isolated analog expansion and termination board. Each board provides 16 isolated...

Module offers seven-year production support.
February 5, 2009... by Warren Webb Targeting high-performance applications in medical imaging, gaming, test, and industrial automation, Adlink Technology recently announced the ETX-AT single-board computer as the newest member of its COM (computer-on-module)...

Dual-input charger IC operates from USB or wall adapter.
February 5, 2009... by Paul Rako Advanced Analogic Technologies has introduced the AAT3691 dual-input battery-charger IC with overvoltage protection to 28V with a response time of less than 1 msec. The IC assesses which input source offers minimum charging...

Nonmagnetic-connector family suits MRI equipment.
February 5, 2009... by Margery Conner MRI (magnetic-resonance imaging) uses a powerful magnetic field to create an image of what's happening under a patient's skin. Because of these magnetic fields, the components within the MRI scanner must be nonmagnetic,...

Researchers advance quantum-memory-retention time.(Brief article)
February 5, 2009... by Ron Wilson Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have announced a significant advance in the retention time of multiatom quantum-memory devices--from a previous maximum of 32 msec to 7 msec. The significance of the advance...

Germanium-on-insulator materials have high hole mobility.
February 5, 2009... Staff As device designers look beyond 22 nm, it is becoming clear that we are simply running out of carrier mobility. Strain engineering has helped a lot. By applying physical strain to the channel of a MOSFET, you can significantly...

Troubled economy could open more doors to outsourcing.
February 5, 2009... By Rob Spiegel Manufacturers that shunned outsourcing may change their tunes during this economic downturn. One area of potential growth for EMS (electronic-manufacturing-services) providers is with portions of the electronics market, such...

Changes to ROHS coming.
February 5, 2009... By Suzanne Deffree The EC (European Commission) in December 2008 released its proposed changes to WEEE (waste in electrical and electronic equipment) and ROHS (restriction of hazardous substances), aiming to improve and simplify the...

CE sales shrinking.
February 5, 2009... By Suzanne Deffree US sales of CE (consumer electronics) are expected to be down in 2009 for the first time in recent history. Despite the fact that the CE industry reached new sales highs in 2008, it is expected to dip 0.6% year over year...

Getting real with the real-time clock.
February 5, 2009... by Vishwas Vaidya, Tata Motors In the 1990s, I was the lead servo-system engineer for the world's largest radio telescope (Reference 1). Our team was responsible for real-time motion control of 30 45m-diameter giant antennas that composed...

Throw those bits away.
February 19, 2009... By Bonnie Baker A high-quality load cell may have a 2-mV/V output-transfer function, meaning that for each volt of excitation you get A2 mV of the full-scale output signal. With an excitation of 4.096V and a full sensor deflection, the...

Making oscillator selection crystal clear.
February 19, 2009... By Paul Rako, Technical Editor Silicon and MEMS oscillators are joining venerable quartz crystals and ceramic resonators in the highly diverse oscillator market. You don't need a crystal ball to select the right device for your...

Verifying FPGA designs: Simulate, emulate, or hope for the best?
February 19, 2009... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor Simulation is a fact of life for many FPGA users today. But when is it time to stop simulating and just drop the design into the chip? Once upon a time, you verified a logic design for an FPGA by...

Digital controller compensates analog controller.
February 19, 2009... David Caldwell, Flextek Electronics, Carlsbad, CA; Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Emerging digital ICs for power control lack basic features, such as the built-in gate drive and current limiting, that you would normally find in...

Circuit provides constant-current load for testing batteries.
February 19, 2009... Vladimir Rentyuk, Modul-98 Ltd, Zaporozhye, Ukraine; Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Suppose that you need to test a 1.5V, AA-size alkaline battery. You can apply a short circuit and measure current, or you can measure...

MOSFET-based, analog circuit calculates square root.
February 19, 2009... Abhirup Lahiri, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India; Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Square-root-calculating circuits find wide use in instrumentation and measurement systems for such tasks as calculating the...

*Hippasian* nonlinear VFC stretches dynamic range.(voltage to frequency converter)
February 19, 2009... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC; Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Hippasus of Metapontum was a Greek philosopher who lived approximately 500 BC. A disciple of Pythagoras, Hippasus discovered some interesting properties of...

Decoder lights the way.
February 19, 2009... Jean-Bernard Guiot, Mulhouse, France; Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville To display the status of two digital outputs, you can simply connect an LED and its resistor on each output. You must, however, interpret, or "decode," the...

Technical and political suggestions for Detroit.
February 19, 2009... By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief Do the Detroit automakers deserve a bailout, or should they be left to go the way of the dinosaurs (Reference 1)? Perhaps there are other options. In a recent article, Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer...

A tale of two digital-video converters.(Plextor ConvertX PX-TV100U)(Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U)
February 19, 2009... By Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor Software versus hardware compression defines the difference. These digital-video converters offer similar functions; the less expensive unit even offers a TV tuner absent from its pricier peer....

Suppressing nonstationary noise in mobile handsets.
February 19, 2009... By Lloyd Watts, Audience Mobile carriers are intimately aware of the role that voice quality plays in customer retention. One of the primary factors affecting voice quality is environmental noise, so any means of suppressing noise provides...

PCIe clock distribution in embedded systems.
February 19, 2009... By Ian Dobson and Jim Holbrook, Integrated Device Technology Inc As PCIe rapidly becomes the I/O interface of choice for high-performance systems, clock-distribution and jitter-reduction requirements create challenges for the...

Controller targets mobile robots.
February 19, 2009... By Warren Webb Robot technology is appealing to embedded-system designers not only because of the mechanical-control aspect but also because of the potential it has to shield humans from dangerous and even life-threatening situations....

Companion processor supports video editing on the phone.
February 19, 2009... By Graham Prophet Semiconductor start-up Movidia has announced the MA1110 multimedia processor for mobile phones. The MA1110 operates as an attached processor to the baseband or to another applications processor in medium- to high-end...

Electric-car development spurs investment in US battery manufacturing.
February 19, 2009... By Margery Conner At last month's Detroit Auto Show, General Motors announced that LG Chem, a Korean lithium-ion-battery-cell manufacturer, will be providing the cells for the Chevy Volt PHEV (plug-in-hybrid-electric vehicle). GM made much...

Instrument performs jitter-tolerance tests.
February 19, 2009... By Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies' new N4903BJ-BERT (bit-error-ratio tester) enables you to accurately characterize and test compliance of next-generation devices that support multigigabit-per-second serial-bus standards, such as PCIe...

PCIe Jammer provides inline-error injection.
February 19, 2009... By Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has introduced the N5323A Jammer inline-error-injection tool for PCIe (peripheral-component-interconnect-express) protocol testing. This unit allows you to shorten test cycles and improve time to...

AMD and Virage Logic try a new model for third-party IP.
February 19, 2009... By Ron Wilson An innocuous-looking announcement on the wires last month from AMD (www.amd.com ) and Virage Logic (www.viragelogic.com ) didn't sound like much. But it may be the sound of the curtain coming up on a whole new business model...

Magma Design Automation's Rajeev Madhavan.(Excerpt)
February 19, 2009... Interview conducted and edited by Rick Nelson The evolving EDA business, the depressed economy, the state of the semiconductor industry, and the future of education in the United States were all on the mind of Rajeev Madhavan, chairman and...

Reversal of fortune.
February 19, 2009... By Glen Chenier, Teeter Totter Tree Stuff Years ago, I had to design a dc/dc converter, or SMPS (switched-mode power supply), to generate isolated 48V dc from a 5V rail. A manager asked why I could not just use an off-the-shelf 48V-to-5V...