EDN articles from July 2005

EDN archives from July 2005

Are we losing our innovation religion? Outsourcing innovation starts a dangerous downward spiral.(EDN. COMMENT)
July 7, 2005... If you really want to worry about the state of our industry--for both our engineers and our companies--pick up a copy of the March 21, 2005, Business Week, which is available free online with registration or at your local library. The...

Feedback loop.(pulse: INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 7, 2005... "Did I read that right? You can program the DSP directly in Visual Basic? Somebody actually built a VB compiler that generates native DSP code? What's next? Programming a DSP in Cobol?" Ken Dyck, in EDN's Feedback Loop on...

Intense LEDs take on the sun.(Light emitting diodes)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... According to Richard Saffa, vice president of visible LEDs at Optek Technology, the company's OVL series of LEDs performs in full sunlight for a variety of display and signage applications, including commercial outdoor advertising. The...

Book leads those on the digital dark side to the analog force.(A Baker's Dozen : Real Analog Solutions for Digital Designers )(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 7, 2005... A familiar name to EDN readers, Bonnie Baker takes many of the subjects and themes of her popular "Baker's Best" column into more detail and depth in A Baker's Dozen: Real Analog Solutions for Digital Designers (Newnes/Elsevier, ISBN...

Simple transformer monitors ac currents.(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Is there an electrical component as versatile as the venerable transformer in its various manifestations? For measuring ac current, the 5600 series from C&D Technologies combines isolation to 500V with primary current rating to 10A. The device...

Track-and-hold device allows direct capture of signals greater than 10 GHz.(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... The extremely wideband RTH050 dual trackand-hold device from Rockwell Scientific enables direct conversion of gigahertz-range signals and signal edges with rise times of approximately 20 psec. This unit has small-signal input bandwidth of 15...

Dilbert.(Cartoon)
July 7, 2005... OUR NEW STRATEGY IS TO SELL FEWER UNITS AT HIGHER MARGINS. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] QUESTION : HOW'S THAT DIFFERENT FROM SAYING OUR SALES STINK, SO WE'RE CUTTING COSTS? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I CALL IT A STRATEGY SO "YOU WON'T...

LED module delivers 60 lumens.(Light emitting diodes)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... BivarOpto's LK series encompasses single-chip, 1W LEDs targeting safety, signaling, emergency, and general illumination. The 465- to 635-nm surface-mount devices, also available in white to 8000K, use a Cree XLamp die that includes an aluminum...

Tool analyzes ICs.(Integrated circuits)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Giga Scale Integration claims that its new IC-economic-analysis tool can help you figure out whether a foundry's less expensive, standard 90-nm process or even its 130-nm process will meet your design requirements just as well as the same...

Embedded DSP simplifies programming.(Digital signal processors)(Sheldon Instruments)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Sheldon Instruments' recently released SI-C6713DSP-PC104p embedded DSP board in the PC/104-Plus form factor targets real-time test, measurement, and digital-control applications. With a typical power consumption of only 2.25W, the board...

Physical guide routes optical guide.(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Even optical fibers, although relatively rugged, may still need some support and protection when designers cram them into today's tight and crowded boxes and systems. The OFFGS (optical-fiber-flexible-guide system) from Richco Inc provides the...

Emulators speed event-based verification.(pulse: INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 7, 2005... Tharas Systems Inc has released two new emulator systems that use multiprocessor SOCs (systems on chips). The single-user Hammer S-Class emulator has a capacity of 16 million gates and targets hardware designers needing to speed event-based...

Module enables graphical embedded programming.(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... National Instruments recently announced an embedded-development module for its popular LabView software that extends graphical programming to any 32-bit embedded processor. With the module, designers can describe algorithms and program their...

Todd Westerhoff: EDA industry should use what it sells.(Q&A)(Interview)
July 7, 2005... As a high-speed-design manager for Cisco Systems Inc and a former product manager for Cadence Design Systems, Todd Westerhoff feels the pain of EDA customers he used to sell to and advise. He has 25 years of experience in modeling and analyzing...

WiCon panel opines on state of wireless standards.(GLOBAL DESIGNER)
July 7, 2005... At the WiCon (Wireless Connectivity) World show in London in May, Mike McCamon, executive director of the UWB Forum (www.uwbforum.org), described as "an utter mess" the current situation of competing personal-wireless-connectivity standards....

Yokogawa Electric Corp (www.yokogawa.com) of Japan has released the DL9000 series: digital-oscilloscope platform.(BITS & PIECES)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Yokogawa Electric Corp (www.yokogawa.com) of Japan has released the DL9000 series digital-oscilloscope platform for the 1-GHz band. For more, see www.edn.com/050707p1.

Wipro Technologies (www.wipro.com), the software services arm of India's Wipro Ltd, has created an SOC (system-on-chip)-based MP3 player.(BITS & PIECES)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Wipro Technologies (www.wipro.com), the software services arm of India's Wipro Ltd, has created an SOC (system-on-chip)-based MP3 player that can operate either as a stand-alone chip or as part of a mobile phone. For more, see...

FPGAs implement high-end image-processing applications.(pulse: INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
July 7, 2005... New FPGAs with more DSP resources and embedded-processing capabilities have made the global image-processing market more competitive. According to Rahul V Shah, ASIC manager at elnfochips, an ASIC-design and -verification-services provider,...

One in a million.(BAKER'S BEST)(signal-to-noise-and-distortion )
July 7, 2005... Comparing devices from different manufacturers can be difficult not only at the bench, but also at the beginning of your investigation. If you start with the product data sheets, sometimes specification names don't match specification units of...

Maximizing signal-path performance.(SIGNAL PATH / designer)
July 7, 2005... The signal path offers many opportunities for the system designer. In the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) signal path, making good design choices in buffering a sensing device, charging the switch-capacitive input of an ADC, and minimizing...

Contactless traveling: electronic passports embed contactless chip technology to streamline passage through customs and significantly hinder counterfeiters.(PRYING EYES)
July 7, 2005... Much has been written over the past year about the transition tO electronic pass. ports. Reasonably minded privacy advocates attack potential security loopholes in the technology, and the lunatic fringe makes absurd claims about a grand...

CAT5 tracks: audio goes the distance, reliably and on time: do you want to route high-bit-rate digital audio over long expanses with minimal latency and "five-nines" reliability? Find out whether a conventional ethernet scheme will meet your needs or whether you need an audio-optomized variant.
July 7, 2005... The next time you're at a music concert, take a look at the cabling that connects on-stage gear to the mixing board in the middle of the audience. Odds are good that you'll see one or several thick "snakes" containing bundles of wire, with each...

Which interface will get traction? Fibre channel rules in the SAN world, and InfiniBand is progressing in computer cluster, but a faster flavor of the venerable ethernet looms as a potential Jack-of-All-Trades.
July 7, 2005... Typical enterprise IT departments now support three networks. Ethernet links PCs and servers. FC (Fibre Channel) connects SANs (storage-area networks) that connect servers to storage arrays. And proprietary interconnects, Myrinet, or emerging...

Understanding the advanced switching interconnect.
July 7, 2005... The ASI (Advanced Switching Interconnect) serial-interconnect technology provides high-performance features of proprietary fabrics and uses the standards-based economy of scale and ecosystem of PCI Express. Through enhancements in the...

Structured ASICs deserve serious attention at 90 nm; the cost of 90-nm--not to mention 65-nm--silicon is outrageous. Users should take a long, hard look at structured ASICs when considering which fabric to use for their next logic design.(Application specific integrated circuits)
July 7, 2005... Four years after ASIC vendors introduced their first structured-ASIC devices in response to FPGA vendors eating up their market share, the structured-ASIC market has yet to become a popular choice for logic designs. But analysts say that...

Power supply control solutions ... at the touch of a button; high performance analog solutions from Linear Technology.
July 7, 2005... Portable devices need to draw minimal current when off--ideally zero--to maximize battery life. Implementing push-button on/off control disconnects everything from the battery except the push-button control circuitry. Providing graceful...

Windowed-watchdog timers enhance system security: a supervisory function enables system recovery to prevent execution errors.
July 7, 2005... As microprocessor-controlled systems begin to carry out more and more functions involving human safety, the importance of close performance monitoring is increasing. The low cost and range of features for many of today's microprocessor...

Contact-debouncing algorithm emulates Schmitt trigger.(design ideas: READERS SOLVE DESIGN PROBLEMS)
July 7, 2005... Among other interface problems, contact bounce complicates the connection of mechanical contacts or any noisy digital input signal to a microcontroller. Although designers have proposed a variety of hardware and software approaches that address...

Inexpensive peak detector requires few components.
July 7, 2005... Requiring no rectifier diodes, the positive peak-detector circuits in figures 1 and 2 exploit the open-drain output of a Texas Instruments TLC372 fast comparator, I[C.sub.1]. Both versions of the detector are simple and inexpensive and provide...

Low distortion, low noise differential amplifier drives high speed ADCs in demanding communications transceivers: Design note 366.(DESIGN NOTES)
July 7, 2005... Design Note 366 Introduction Today's communications transceivers operate at much higher frequencies and wider bandwidths than those of the past. Combining this with higher resolution requirements, transceiver design can become...

Free program designs and analyzes passive and active filters.
July 7, 2005... At one time or another, most electrical engineers encounter a requirement to design or analyze an analog filter. Despite an abundance of graphical-user-interface-based digital-filter-design tools, such as The MathWorks (www.mathworks.com)...

VMR maintains precision and stability under electrical-transient abuse.(PASSIVES)(voltage-monitoring resistor)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... With a noninductive design, the transient-tolerant VMR (voltage-monitoring resistor) has an operating-voltage rating from 250 to 2000V ac rms. The VMRs feature a transient-peak-voltage capability of 15 kV and a [+ or -] 25 or [+ or -]...

SMT drum-core power inductors meet UL94 standards.(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Five series of unshielded and shielded SMT drum-core power inductors comply with the guidelines of ROHS (restriction of hazardous substances) and UL94 V0 standards. Unshielded inductors are the 0.73x0.6x 0.45-in. PF0504 series with 15 values...

Capped resistors deliver lower overall board temperature.(PASSIVES)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Delivering thermal compliance and isolation from pc boards, the SMC series "capped" resistors come in ratings as high as 2W. Capped ends provide an overall lower board temperature. SMC1 series resistors are rated for 1W at 70[degrees]C with...

Variable-linearity coils suit CRT applications.(cathode ray tube)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... The 8255 and 8256 pc-board-mounted, variable-linearity coils target applications with yoke-current requirements of 6 and 9A, respectively. Additional features include extended operation as fast as 90 kHz and a footprint of 20.32 mm in diameter...

Small transformers target DSL equipment.(Digital subscriber line)(Epcos Inc)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Suited for DSL equipment, Series B78416 interface transformers with an EP5XL core are 25% smaller, 31% lower, and 48% lower in volume than the EP7-based transformer. The devices have the same longitudinal balance and total-harmonic-distortion...

High-current inductors have self-shielding design.(PASSIVES)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Part of the Toroid Terminator family, the HM55A Series has a self-shielding molded-inductor design, delivering as much as 40A rated current, and has an operating-temperature range as high as 155[degrees]C. Designed as a replacement for...

Passivated film resistor targets moisture-sensitive applications.(PASSIVES)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... A proprietary passivation layer between the Nichrome resistive element and the epoxy overcoat allows the RNCS series of anticorrosive precision chip resistors to operate in harsh and wet environments. The line comes in 0402 to 2512 sizes, has a...

Microminiature chip inductors have high Q value.(PASSIVES)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... PM0402T and PM0603T micro-miniature-chip-inductor series measure 1x0.5x0.35 mm and 1.6x 0.8x0.45 mm, respectively. Features include an inductance range of 1 to 68 [micro]H at 100 MHz, a Q value of 17 at 300 MHz, a minimum self-resonating...

EMI filter has UL94 VO enclosure.(Electromagnetic interference)(voltages)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... These compact EMI filters come in an UL94 VO plastic enclosure and are available for 100 to 120 or 200 to 240V line voltages. Standard models feature 5-mH common-mode inductors suitable for as much as 6A service. The devices cost $3 (1000). ...

Ceramic capacitors reduce short-circuit risk.(PASSIVES)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Targeting automotive electronic circuits, series B37941X capacitors suit applications with capacitors permanently connecting to the positive pole without extra safety measures. Rated at 100 and 50V, they feature a capacitance range from 1 to...

Dual-channel video-format converter renders side-by-side high-quality images.(INTEGRATED CIRCUITS)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... The AVCS000 dual-channel video-format converter features two high-quality video-conversion channels and dual 3-D architecture. It enables picture-in-picture rendering of two images on a wide-screen HDTV with a 1080-pixel line-progression...

Storage-chip portfolio has hard-coded TMA.(INTEGRATED CIRCUITS)(traffic-management-arbitrator)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... The NASn01 (network-attached-storage, in which n stands for the number of SATA 1 hard-disk drives the chips can support) series includes the NAS8xx, NAS4xx, NAS2xx, and NAS1xx. Featuring content protection through RAID 0, 1, 4, and 5; multiple...

Codec simultaneously runs ADC and DAC.(INTEGRATED CIRCUITS)(Analog to digital converters)(Digital to Analog Converters)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... As a single-ended-input, two-wire control version of the WM8590, the WM8591 stereo-audio codec can simultaneously operate the ADC and DAC at different sample rates. Available now for sampling, the codec costs $1.45 (10,000). * Wolfson...

Simulation testbench simulates transmissions and channel noise.(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... The WiMax simulation testbench simulates subscriber transmissions; developers can use it alongside Aspex's 802.16d/e PHY (physical-layer) baseband architecture. The software is written in Matlab and meets Aspex's reference code for implementing...

Mixed-signal-IC family suits LCD-TV applications.(Integrated circuits)(Liquid crystal displays-television)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... The single-chip VCT 69xyP family of pin- and software-compatible ICs features a 3-D comb filter, a component input for HDTV signals, LVDS outputs, European HD-Ready label for WXGA FPD-TVs through a 24-bit RGB interface, and an [I.sup.2]S audio...

Robot vacuum cleaner cleans up in many ways.(reality check: YESTERDAY'S HYPE MEETS TODAY'S REALITY)(Brief Article)
July 7, 2005... Labor-saving home appliances are the stuff of fact (think clothes washers and dryers) and fiction (think "The Jetsons"), but sophisticated home robots have had a difficult time in the market, due to their cost, performance, and maintenance...

Some products fall down on the job--literally!(EDN.COMMENT)
July 21, 2005... Overlooking the most mundane design details can significantly hurt a product. Recently, I've been using Omron's HJ-112 pedometer and the Pharos EZ Road GPS (global-positioning system), and both dubiously illustrate the point. EZ Road isn't...

Industry's first high power density 1A SOT-23 buck switching regulators.(Featured Products)(Advertisement)
July 21, 2005... The LM2734 and LM2736 are monolithic, high-frequency (550 kHz and 1.6 MHz), PWM step-down DC-DC converters in six-pin, thin SOT-23 packaging. With a minimum of external components and support through WEBENCH[R] online design tools, the...

100V power MOSFET drivers.(Design idea: Thermal Solutions in Power)
July 21, 2005... The LM5100/01/05/07 high-voltage gate drivers are designed to drive both the high-side and the low-side N-Channel MOSFETs in a synchronous-buck or half-bridge configuration. The floating high-side driver is capable of operating with supply...

Thermal issues and solutions in power management.(DESIGN idea)(Advertisement)
July 21, 2005... Power converter design is a multidisciplinary process; an effective designer needs to understand analog and mixed-signal circuit design, wound components, electromagnetic compatibility, packaging, and thermal design. Packaging and thermal...

AC-DC current-mode PWM controller.(Featured Products)
July 21, 2005... The LM5021 off-line pulse width modulation (PWM) controller contains all of the features needed to implement highly efficient off-line single-ended flyback and forward power converters using current-mode control. The LM5021 features include an...

800 mA Sub-bandgap low-noise adjustable voltage regulator.(Featured Products)(LP3878-ADJ)(Brief Article)
July 21, 2005... The LP3878-ADJ is an 800 mA adjustable output voltage regulator designed to provide high-performance and tow-noise in applications requiring very low-output voltages. Output noise is typically 18[micro]V with a 10 nF capacitor to the bypass...

"Terminator" causes no panic, keeps fast signals from coming back.(pulse: INNOVATIONS & INNOVATORS)
July 21, 2005... For high-speed digital lines, the CHC series of termination networks from the IRC Division of TI Electronics maintains maximum signal integrity with nine Thevenin pairs in an 18-resistor array. According to Jerry Seams, application manager,...

Energy-metering IC targets range of applications.(pulse: INNOVATIONS & INNOVATORS)(integrated circuit)
July 21, 2005... STMicroelectronics has released the STPM01 chip, which focuses on various electricity-metering issues and can function as a stand-alone power meter in low-end equipment or as a peripheral in complex microprocessor-based meters for remote...

Single-chip WLAN device supports MIMO.(pulse)(wireless local area network)(multiple-in, multiple-out)
July 21, 2005... Wire-line-and wireless-communication silicon provider Metalink Broadband has introduced the MtW8170 baseband chip, which is the company's second WLAN (wireless-LAN) offering in the last month. The new offering complements Metalink's MtW-8150, a...

Connector has nonmagnetic appeal.(pulse)
July 21, 2005... Specialty applications often require special components, such as Amphenoi's modified version of its established Amphe-Lite series of connectors. The new version provides a nonmagnetic interconnect for applications such as MRI...

Dilbert.(pulse)
July 21, 2005... OUR DIFFERENTIATING VALUE-ADDED STRATEGY IS TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE. HOW WAS THAT? DOES ANYONE FEEL DIFFERENT? MY URGE TO HURL HAS INCREASED A LITTLE BIT. THAT'S WHAT CHANGE FEELS LIKE.

US military to adopt mobile-base-station technology.(pulse)
July 21, 2005... Software-defined-radio vendor Vanu Inc recently demonstrated a prototype of a mobile GSM (global-system-for-mobile-communications) cellular base station, which the company based on its proprietary Anywave all-software GSM base station. The US...

Ethernet takes to industry.(pulse)
July 21, 2005... Not too long ago, many pundits said that Ethernet would be unsuitable for industrial, medical, or field applications. However, the momentum of the standard and its performance improvements proved them wrong. A successful installation, however,...

Feedback loop.(pulse)
July 21, 2005... "From what I've seen, the best, brightest engineers have nothing to worry about--not even from the Chinese, Koreans, and Indians. There is always a place here for a talented engineer who can make money for the company no matter what business...

Architecture targets USB applications.(pulse)(Chipx inc. applies usb 2.0)(Universal serial bus)
July 21, 2005... Structured-ASIC start-up ChipX, formerly Chip Express, is releasing a new structured-ASIC architecture with an initial device family focusing on applications using USB 2.0. Elie Massabki, vice president of marketing at ChipX, says that the new...

IrDA gets faster, grows into new applications.(pulse)
July 21, 2005... RF wireless, in the form of Bluetooth, WiFi (Wireless Fidelity), U1NB (ultrawideband), and RFID, is getting lots of attention. However, basic IrDA (Infrared Data Association) technology is still an appropriate, cost-effective link for many...

Hong Kong team wins power-supply-design contest.(GLOBAL DESIGNER)(Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
July 21, 2005... Design contests are big things in Asia these days., because there is a feeling that Asian designers lack system-design expertise. Therefore, semiconductor companies, such as On Semiconductor, have started to promote design contests in the...

Multistandard software-defined-radio adds DRM format.(Digital Radio Mondiale)(Brief Article)
July 21, 2005... DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), a proposed standard for digital radio, enables broadcasters to reuse frequencies below 30 MHz as progressively smaller audiences are listening to the conventional services, including AM, long wave, and short wave,...

IC may become its own cooler.(Integrated circuits)(Brief Article)
July 21, 2005... A chip-scale refrigerator that can cool down to t,200 mK and below may provide a new way to implement cryogenic sensors used for extremely sensitive instruments. Researchers at the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)...

Free NIST software enhances scope timing.(pulse)(National Institute of Standards and Technology)(Brief Article)
July 21, 2005... Researchers at the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) have developed a technique for constructing an alternative, and more accurate, reduced-jitter oscilloscope timebase. The free software, which is suitable for new and older...

Optical switch routes single photons of quantum cryptography.(pulse)
July 21, 2005... Researchers at NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone), Japan, demonstrated switching of single photons for use in ultrasecure quantum cryptography, which may supersede public-key systems for even more secure links. (Any attempt to measure or...

Boost precision and accuracy with single chip capacitance- and impedance-to-digital converters.(Leading inside: A series of engineering insights by Analog Devices.)
July 21, 2005... High precision capacitance- and impedance-sensing applications traditionally required a complex collection of discrete components that needed to be skillfully combined together to provide an overall measurement solution. Not only was this time...

Big hurl.(SIGNAL INTEGRITY)
July 21, 2005... A trebuchet hurls its load with a dynamic grace unmatched by other ancient machines of war. This ingenious device reigned supreme as the ultimate weapon for 1000 years, proving the value of a good engineering concept. A trebuchet comprises...

Watching the currents flow.(TALES FROM THE CUBE)
July 21, 2005... It was late Sunday evening, and we were still trying to trace why the embedded DSL modern was feeding a strange 50-MHz carrier into the network--much stronger than -40-dB noise allows. And no 50-MHz signal existed on the design! Jeremy, the...

Stay out of the loop.(THE DATA DETECTIVE)
July 21, 2005... Engineers know they must provide a complete circuit in measurement systems because current flow requires a return path. People who work with electronic devices may forget, though, that a ground-return circuit has resistance and a voltage can...

Sun sets on IEEE 488, LAN and PC standards vie for its role: the move from a T&M-industry interface standard to one or more computer-industry standards presages mostly good news for test-system designers.(TECH TRENDS)
July 21, 2005... Like old soldiers, instrument-interfacing and -communication standards never die; they just fade away. The reason is that instruments themselves, except for the low-cost, handheld variety, which many managers and engineers regard as expendable,...

Rarely asked questions: strange but true stories form the call logs of analog devices.(RAQ's)
July 21, 2005... Slow "starting" ADCs (or the beneficial effects of in diagnosing converter problems) Q. To save power, my ADC is powered up only to make a measurement. The system is very accurate in continuous operation, but completely unpredictable when...

Thinking inside the box: buildings get a brain: stuck in a highly fragmented industry, building automation designers are formulating new initiatives to provide interoperability, simplify management, conserve energy, provide security, and reduce costs.
July 21, 2005... Although engineers have envisioned and implemented many Jetsons-like conveniences throughout the home, factory, and office, most end users are reluctant to pay extra for the hardware and software necessary to simplify mundane tasks. For...

A bit-o'-power: digitally controlled power conversion.
July 21, 2005... IRONICALLY, PERHAPS, THE LAST SUBSYSTEM TO UNDERGO A SUBSTANTIVE SHIFT FROM AN ANALOG- T0 A DIGITAL-CONTROL ARCHITECTURE IS THE MOST UNIVERSAL: THE POWER SUPPLY, BEWARE THE HYPE, HOWEVER, DIGITAL POWER CONTROL MAY BRING PERFORMANCE BENEFITS TO...

Power-supply interrupter fights ESD-induced device latch-up.(design ideas: READERS SOLVE DESIGN PROBLEM)
July 21, 2005... Under certain conditions, ESD events can damage digital circuits by causing latch-up. For example, when ESD triggers them, parasitic transistors normally formed as parts of a CMOS device can behave as an SCR (silicon-controlled rectifier). Once...

High-impedance FET probe extends RF-spectrum analyzer's usable range.(design ideas)
July 21, 2005... Current models of spectrum analyzers routinely offer frequency responses that begin as low as 10 Hz. When you combine them with 1-Hz or narrower band FFT software, expanded low-frequency performance makes the modern spectrum analyzer an...

Watchdog circuit protects against loss of battery charger's control signals.(design ideas)
July 21, 2005... Recharging a mobile phone's internal battery usually occurs under control of a proprietary charging algorithm that resides in the baseband controller. The charger connects to the internal battery through a P-channel-MOSFET switch of low...

Tiny versatile buck regulators operate from 3.6v to 36v input.(DESIGN NOTES)
July 21, 2005... Design Note 367 Introduction Linear Technology offers two new buck regulators that operate from a wide input voltage range (3.6V to 36V) and take so little space that they easily solve many difficult power supply problems. The...

Circuit adds foldback-current protection.
July 21, 2005... For many applications that require power-supply currents of a few amperes or less, three-terminal adjustable-output linear voltage regulators, such as National Semiconductor's LM317, offer ease of use, low cost, and full on-chip overload...

Motor-drive IC comes with a demonstration kit.(product roundup: DISCRETE SEMICONDUCTORS)(Brief Article)
July 21, 2005... Requiring no heat sink for electronic-motor-drive applications requiring operation at power as high as 180W, the IR3103 motor-drive half-bridge FredFET includes a gate-driver IC. The miniSIP-11 package features isolation ratings of 1500V...

Diode series has extensive selection.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2005... These L-Flat surface-mount packages for high-power rectifier diodes use a lead-clamp structure to provide a 32-m[m.sup.2] mounting area, measuring 4X8.2X 1.8 mm. Targeting circuit-protection applications in devices such as motor drivers, ac/dc...

MOSFETs feature low on-resistance and high switching speeds.(Brief Article)
July 21, 2005... Targeting power supplies for computer servers, telecom equipment, and flat-panel displays, the CoolMOS CS Server series of power MOSFETs has an on-resistance of 99 m[ohm] in a TO220 package or 45[ohm] in a TO247 package with switching speeds of...