EDN articles from July 2008

EDN archives from July 2008

*Muxing* around with delta-sigma converters.
July 10, 2008... by Bonnie Baker A multiplexer in your circuit can scan through a number of input channels by sampling each channel in rotation. As a power and cost advantage, multiplexed systems have only one ADC that acquires the data from all of the...

Sensor-rich designs.
July 10, 2008... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor Designers are adding sensors and intelligent processing to fill the holes in their end-system capabilities, and it is yielding designs that cost less to produce and operate. As the cost of...

Bridging the new DisplayPort standard.
July 10, 2008... by Abdullah Raouf, Pericom Developers of the new DisplayPort standard designed it for efficiency. However, DisplayPort's partitioning differs from that of TMDS-based architectures, and engineers need approaches for bridging DisplayPort...

Low-cost circuit incorporates mixing and amplifying functions.
July 10, 2008... Guus Colman, Guy Torfs, Johan Bauwelinck, and Jan Vandewege, INTEC/IMEC, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville In many applications, the frequency-conversion steps comprise a buffer, preferably with...

Simple blown-fuse indicator sounds an alarm.
July 10, 2008... Vladimir Oleynik, Moscow, Russia Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Safety fuses or fusible links see wide use in modern electronic equipment to protect the load and the power supply--especially batteries--against short circuits...

Tester cycles system-power supplies.
July 10, 2008... Goh Ban Hok, Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific Ltd, Singapore Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Power-cycle testing is important because it tests the user environment. A poorly designed system board or chip can cause the...

Touch-activated timer switch extends battery life.
July 10, 2008... Israel Schleicher, Prescott Valley, AZ Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville A certain type of cordless optical computer mouse operates on two AA alkaline cells. It has no power on/off switch. When not in use, it automatically...

Where is EDA going now?
July 10, 2008... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor Is this the case of the vanishing electronic-design-automation industry? Early last month, the annual Design Automation Conference opened its doors to what was, by all accounts, a smaller-than-hoped-for...

Way, way off the grid: powering the Phoenix Mars lander.
July 10, 2008... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor The Phoenix lander's 90-day mission at the Mars pole is to gather dirt and rock samples with its robotic arm, analyze the samples with onboard instruments, and communicate results and respond to commands...

Designing embedded-system applications with high-level tools.
July 10, 2008... by Shelley Gretlein, National Instruments High-level programming languages help you more quickly deploy your application, but careful attention to details can improve the performance of your code and lead to an efficient application that...

Measurement-based simulation simplifies analysis of lossy backplanes and cables.
July 10, 2008... by Eric Sweetman, PhD Vitesse Semiconductor A systematic approach uses DSO-based TDR and TDT measurements to construct models whose simulated response displays an uncanny resemblance to the response of the real hardware. A challenge...

Interface module captures acceleration, vibration data.
July 10, 2008... by Warren Webb The latest analog-input board from United Electronic Industries features four isolated accelerometer/vibration-sensor channels with sample rates to 125k samples/sec per channel, 24-bit resolution, and 109-dB SNR...

Microcontroller interfaces ARM7 core with FPGA.
July 10, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Atmel's ARM7 (www.arm.com )-based AT91CAP7E microcontroller includes an FPGA interface, a six-layer AHB (advanced high-speed bus), a peripheral-DMA controller, and 160 kbytes of on-chip SRAM. The FPGA interface includes...

QorIQ moves Power architecture to multicore.
July 10, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Freescale's QorIQ next-generation PowerQUICC (quad-integrated-communications-controller)-processor line provides a migration path for embedded-multicore designs. The platform includes single-, dual-, and many-core...

8-bit I²C-bus expander has low standby current.
July 10, 2008... by Paul Rako Catalyst Semiconductor's new, 8-bit CAT9534 GPIO (general-purpose-input/output) expander connects to a system through an I2 C (interintegrated-circuit) serial bus. The expander, targeting I2 C and SMBus-based systems, is...

Flexis adds EMC/EMI support to microcontroller family.
July 10, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Freescale's Flexis AC family of microcontrollers, the third member of the Flexis series, adds support for quiet EMC (electromagnetic-compatibility)/EMI (electromagnetic-interference) performance to both the 8- and the...

VNA analyzes active-device nonlinear behavior.
July 10, 2008... by Rick Nelson Agilent Technologies has announced NVNA (nonlinear-vector-network-analyzer) capability for its PNA-X microwave-network analyzer, which operates from 10 MHz to 26.5 GHz. Requiring minimal external hardware, the Agilent NVNA...

Supercapacitor powers LED flash.
July 10, 2008... by Paul Rako Advanced Analogic Technologies has introduced a 2-MHz boost-converter IC that uses a supercapacitor to provide a large peak current to an LED-flash system. The 2A AAT1282 flash driver incorporates I2 C...

Ultralow-power real-time clock extends battery life.
July 10, 2008... by Robert Cravotta NXP Semiconductor's PCF2123 real-time clock has an operating current of less than 100 nA, or 0.15 [micro]W, on a 1.5V power supply. The 3x3x1-mm package includes a freely programmable alarm-and-timer function that can...

National Semiconductor's David Anderson.
July 10, 2008... by Paul Rako David I Anderson is chief technologist for power management at National Semiconductor. He has spent a long and distinguished career in the electronics business and often provides unique insights on the various panels and...

Too many cooks.(Column)
July 10, 2008... by Steve Lubs, Department of Defense It started out as a simple design idea. I was designing a receiver for a TDM (time-division-multiplexed) data stream. The format was several blocks of 4 data bits each and then one block containing 5...

Magnetic measurement tools attract attention.
July 24, 2008... by Paul Rako, Technical Editor Measuring magnetic fields requires specialized sensors and knowledge of physics and electronics. You can use a variety of instruments, including gaussmeters, teslameters, fluxmeters, and magnetometers, to...

HDL-design challenges and philosophies for real-world ASIC implementations.
July 24, 2008... by Jesse Chen, Silvus Technologies Prototyping with FPGAs works best if you do it with the final ASIC in mind. New requirements for the MAC (medium-access control) and PHY (physical-layer interface) of a wireless-communications system...

High-voltage, high-frequency amplifier drives piezoelectric PVDF transducer.
July 24, 2008... Enrique Vargas, Sergio Toral, Vicente González, and Raúl Gregor, Universidad Catolica Nuestra Señora de la Asuncion, Itapúa Antequera, Paraguay Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Piezoelectric...

Microcontroller detects pulses.
July 24, 2008... Abel Raynus, Armatron International, Malden, MA Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville While recently designing an automatic test station employing a microcontroller, I faced a nonstandard task: Detect the presence or the absence of...

Sample-and-hold amplifier holds the difference of two inputs.(Book review)
July 24, 2008... Marián Eatofka, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville You can fulfill a requirement for sampling the difference of two signals in two classic ways. You can subtract the...

Precision capacitive-sensor interface suits miniature instruments.(Book review)
July 24, 2008... Jiaqi Shen and Xiaoshu Cai, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville In some applications of capacitive sensors, the instrument's front end must be small enough to fit...

The trouble with software people.
July 24, 2008... by Paul Rako, Technical Editor It started back in 1985. That was when I noticed the trouble with software or, more specifically, the trouble with software engineers. The trouble was that companies were promoting software people with poor...

The secret, nonspectral lives of analog-input filters.
July 24, 2008... by Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor Analog-filter designs manage an uncommonly large number of core parameters compared with designs of other analog-circuit-block types. First, the application usually suggests the overall...

Crossing the river.
July 24, 2008... By Doug Smith Cross a river without a bridge, and your clothes get soaked. Cross a split-plane gap with a high-speed signal, and your whole development schedule gets soaked. As an EMI (electromagnetic-interference) specialist, I have...

Spread-spectrum-clock generators reduce EMI and signal-integrity problems.
July 24, 2008... by Cavit Ozdalga, SpectraLinear Inc As electronic products become faster and more complex, radiated-EMI emissions increase dramatically. With the recent proliferation of portable and wireless products, this growth heightens the probability...

Digital power debuts for 48V-dc servers.
July 24, 2008... by Margery Conner Power supplies that rely on analog-control loops may be highly efficient at full load but become less so when the load drops below its tuned "sweet spot." As a result, server farms for the telecom and datacom industries...

Network processor integrates programmable Ethernet switch.
July 24, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Xelerated's next-generation HX300 network-processor family integrates traffic management and fully programmable Ethernet switches. The Ethernet switches target fiber-access-aggregation switches, GPON...

Atrenta announces 1Team-Genesis, collaborates with STMicroelectronics.
July 24, 2008... by Rick Nelson Atrenta Inc announced at the 45th DAC (Design Automation Conference, www.dac.com ) the availability of 1Team-Genesis, which focuses on the capture of design specifications, the automated generation of design descriptions and...

Correction: right caption, wrong photo.(Correction notice)
July 24, 2008... by Warren Webb Our apologies to Pioneer and Sony for a photograph mix-up in our Jan 24, 2008, article "Digital video pushes the embedded-technology envelope." The article reference and caption for Figure 1 describe Sony's full-color OLED...

Wireless-sensor networks support IP traffic.
July 24, 2008... by Graham Prophet Jennic has introduced a single-chip implementation for 6LOWPAN (Internet Protocol Version 6 low-power over wireless-personal-area-network) for routing IP (Internet Protocol) traffic over low-power wireless networks....

New features yield 20-fold speed boost for 1.5- to 6-GHz oscilloscope.
July 24, 2008... by Dan Strassberg It seems as though, almost every month, one of the major digital-oscilloscope manufacturers announces a breakthrough product. Acquisition-memory depth has been increasing: In midrange real-time scopes, LeCroy's newest...

Audio codec incorporates charge pump for Class G headphone amplifier.
July 24, 2008... by Paul Rako Wolfson recently announced the low-power WM8903 audio codec for handheld consumer electronics. Wolfson varies the power-supply voltage to the headphone amplifier for Class G operation for a 30% increase in battery life....

Inspecting electronic materials--atom by atom.
July 24, 2008... by Ron Wilson The advantages of imaging individual atoms in electronic materials are obvious. As you learn more about the subtle impact of small quantities of impurities on a crystal, for example, it becomes more important to know just...

Carbon nanotubes may have a darker side.
July 24, 2008... by Ron Wilson The apparent harmlessness of carbon nanotubes has so far kept them outside the growing debate about the potential hazards of nanotechnology. Scientists believed that the structures were insoluble in water, and they appeared...

Online business booming for catalog distributors.
July 24, 2008... by Suzanne Deffree Online sales may still be a small percentage of total distribution sales, but it's a growing opportunity, especially for catalog distributors. According to Mark Larson, president of Digi-Key Corp (www.digikey.com ),...

MID-IC demand to climb.
July 24, 2008... by Suzanne Deffree Analysts expect global shipments of MIDs (mobile Internet devices) to skyrocket in the next four years, as will demand for the ICs in the small devices. Research from Forward Concepts (www.fwdconcepts.com ) predicts that...

City council overrides Mayor's efforts to trash New York e-waste bill.
July 24, 2008... by Suzanne Deffree The Big Apple may soon put the burden on electronics manufacturers when it comes to the recovery of e-waste (electronics waste). The New York City Council (www.council.nyc.gov ) overrode Mayor Michael Bloomberg's...

Ghost busting on the ocean floor.(Column)
July 24, 2008... by Hugh Shane Mitre Some years ago, I worked for a start-up that was engaged in the manufacture and operation of side-scan sonars in seafloor-mapping operations. Like any other good start-up, my company performed its development work on a...