EDN articles from March 2004

EDN archives from March 2004

"See" change.(leading edge)
March 4, 2004... "Every now and then, you recognize that a product is so obviously superior to what came before it, the writing is on the wall in block letters big enough for Mr Magoo to read." --David Pogue, on the DVD's eventual replacement of the VCR,...

Tiny reed switch is hard to see, easy to use.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... BELL LABS AND WESTERN ELECTRIC matured Band mass-produced the venerable reed switch for use in AT&T central-office switching. It may have lost that role, but designers of specialty applications still prefer it for its extraordinary reliability...

$20 module replaces RS-232 wiring.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... A NEW WIRELESS MODULE from Radiotronix combines a spread-spectrum transceiver with a protocol controller for transparent wire-replacement applications. The Wi.232 replaces RS-232/422/485 wiring and supports low-data-rate, low-power...

Embed logic-analysis probes in your Xilinx FPGA.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... OF ALL THE logic-analysis products that Agilent announced on March 1, the B4655A FPGA dynamic probe logic-analysis application appears to hold the greatest promise of revolutionizing the way you work. The product, which carries an introductory...

Keep an eye on keeping an eye on power.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... It's the eternal question: How do you test the tester? With the Model 8100 from Rotek Instrument Corp, you get a precision source of ac voltage, current, and phase angle for calibrating watt, VAR (volt-ampere-reactive), watt-hour, voltage, amp,...

Dilbert.
March 4, 2004... I FIRED OUR PLANT-WATERING SERVICE AND HIRED A LESS EXPENSIVE ONE. THAT'S THE SORT OF LEADERSHIP THAT WILL TURN THIS COMPANY AROUND. WERE WE DOING WELL? OUR PLANTS ARE PLASTIC.

Leading edge.(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... According to the Consumer Electronics Association, vendors last year sold some 3.1 million prepackaged home-theater systems, which included five speakers, a subwoofer, and an audio-video receiver, nearly triple the number sold in 2000. The...

Quarter-brick supply delivers big power, fast response.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... VIGOR IS EXPANDING its extensive power-supply line with a family of IBC (intermediate-bus-converter) modules in quarter-brick format that incorporate BCMs (bus-converter modules) and offer high efficiency, low noise, and fast response. You can...

Consortium unveils HyperTransport 2.0.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... THE HYPERTRANSPORT TECHNOLOGY Consortium has released Version 2.0 of the HyperTransport Technology I/O Link Specification, which introduces 2 billion-, 2.4 billion-, and 2.8 billion-transfer/see speed grades using dual-data-rate clocks at...

Integrated TDM drops glue, increases flexibility.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... ZARLINK Semiconductor has introduced the ZL50073 family of high-density TDM/TSI (time-division-multiplexed/time-slot-in terrace) devices for high-bandwidth converged- and wireless-networking equipment, such as classes 4 and 5 central-office...

Avoid "tuner in a can," yet receive more video.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... MICROTUNE'S MT2121, a SiGe (silicon-germanium) monolithic device, receives and tunes the 50-MHz to 1-GHZ range, making it a good choice for cable set-top boxes and similar applications. It complies With CableLabs OpenCable requirements and...

Approach radically alters design and manufacture of large electronic systems.(leading edge)(power digital manager)(point-of-load de/de converters)
March 4, 2004... POWER-ONE'S latest products can significantly influence the design and manufacture of large electronic systems for such purposes as telecommunications central-office equipment, high-performance computing, and automatic-test equipment. The...

Power IC tackles basic, inefficient "droppers".(leading edge)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... IN MANY LOW-COST, non-isolated applications that can tolerate poor regulation of derived voltage, designers use simple resistors or capacitors to decrease the voltage, but these passive designs are inefficient. The LinkSwitch-TN family from...

Maximizing noise partitioning.
March 4, 2004... EVERY SYSTEM DESIGN begins with a block diagram. The interconnections between blocks illustrate the functional flow of signals within the product. If your block diagram shows the signaling rate, total bandwidth, protocol, and signaling...

Fibers carry light on the outside.(Sightings: the outlook for new technology)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... A TEAM including researchers from Harvard University and Japan's Tohoku University has created glass fibers 50 nm in diameter--narrower than even the wavelengths of light they carry. Whereas normal optical fibers confine light within...

Silicon exhibits a healthy glow.(Sightings: the outlook for new technology)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... STMICROELECTRONICS HAS REPORTED significant progress in the effort to coax light out of silicon--an endeavor crucial to producing cost-effective optoelectronic devices. Traditional approaches involve combining silicon with relatively rare and...

A new dimension for MEMS.(Sightings: the outlook for new technology)(microelectromechanical systems)(Enter Invenios)(fabrication of microelectromechanical systems)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... CURRENT METHODS of fabricating MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) are inherently 2-D; constructing 3-D MEMS requires costly, tricky assembly of 2-D MEMS components. Enter Invenios (www.invemos.com), a company that has developed a...

Solar compass finds north the old-fashioned way.(Sightings: the outlook for new technology)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... BY USING A MULTIPLE-PINHOLE SCREEN in front of a sensing array, plus image-processing algorithms, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have built a solar compass that determines the axis of rotation of the Earth and, thus, true north. It...

Is there any design left in engineering?(edn.comment)
March 4, 2004... DESIGN AND ENGINEERING aren't what they used to be, as EDN's audience well knows. Years ago, before processors and software ruled the world, designers would build up a circuit from relatively low-level building blocks, such as resistors,...

Juggling jobs: increasingly, engineers find themselves having to balance the concurrent development of the hardware and software components of a product.(design feature)(Prototyping)(Modules)
March 4, 2004... UNTIL THE USE OF ASICs became common, execution platforms were developed and debugged before most of the software for them was written. Software engineers did not complete most of the operating-system development until the hardware was robust...

The many faces of SOC verification.(design feature)(system on chip)
March 4, 2004... To meet the challenges and reap the rewards of SOC (system-on-chip) design, engineering teams need appropriate verification strategies that address the economic or time constraints associated with a design project. Modern verification...

Hands-on project: and then there was one: five years ago, I built a multimedia-enhanced PC platform for the living room. Now for the encore: just how much could I squeeze into one box, how small could the box be, and would the result meet or beat the multiple boxes it replaced?(Cover Story)
March 4, 2004... BY THE END OF LAST YEAR, more than 30 manufacturers were reportedly shipping living room-targeted PCs in all shapes and sizes, based on Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition. This statistic bears testimony to the vision of of the PC as...

A universal approach to hot-swapping power in telecommunication systems: maintain good power to all modules while removing bad modules and inserting new modules into a running system.(design feature)
March 4, 2004... TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT SYSTEMS can't tolerate downtime. We never want to shut down telephone exchanges, data-network equipment, cellular-communication facilities, or hospital information systems. However, even the most robust systems with...

4-phase monolithic synchronous boost converter delivers 2.5A with output disconnect in a 5mm x 5mm QFN package: Design Note 332.(Design Notes)(Advertisement)
March 4, 2004... Introduction The LTC[R]3425 is the industry's first 4-phase, monolithic synchronous boost converter. It can start up with as little as 1V and operate with inputs up to 4.5V. The output voltage range is 2.4V to 5.25V, making it well suited...

Circuit provides efficient fan-speed control.(design ideas)
March 4, 2004... AS MOORE'S LAW plunges US into the realm of multigigahertz processors and PCs with gigabytes of RAM, engineers face the task of removing the heat that these state-of-the-art components produce. Cooling such systems poses a dilemma. If you...

Simple circuit forms multichannel temperature monitor.(design ideas)
March 4, 2004... YOU CAN USE an ADT7461 single-channel temperature monitor, an ADG708 low-voltage, low-leakage CMOS 8-to-1 multiplexer, and three standard 2N3906 pnp transistors to measure the temperatures of three separate remote thermal zones (Figure 1)....

PWM controller drives LEDs from high-voltage lines.(design ideas)
March 4, 2004... POWERING LEDs from a wide dc range--say, 30 to 380V--without wasting a lot of power in the regulating block, is a difficult task when the LED current needs to be constant. Dedicated LED drivers are available, but they usually implement boost...

Circuit forms satellite-dish command decoder.(design ideas)(Eutelsat Corp.)
March 4, 2004... BY DECODING THE COMMANDS sent by a direct-broadcast satellite receiver that uses the DISEQC (digital-satellite-equipment-control) protocol, you can troubleshoot the commands or simply listen in. Eutelsat Corp (www.eutelsat.com) offers the...

Use a microcontroller to design a boost converter.(design ideas)
March 4, 2004... BOOST CONVERTERS, like other switchers, have traditionally received their control signals from a dedicated circuit. However, a recent trend is to integrate simple switching-power-supply building blocks into generic devices, such as...

150W dc/dc converters.(power sources showcase)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Produce regulated single outputs of 24, 36, 42, and 72 V from 36, 48, 72, and 125V dc inputs * Come in 2.4 x 5.8 x 1.5-in. chassis with integrated filtering and hold-up capacitors * MIP150 series, $134 (100) Absopulse Electronics...

POLA-compliant converters.(power sources showcase)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * 15-device series conforms to the POLA (Point-of Load Alliance) form, fit, and function standard * Provide outputs of 6 to 30A in through-hole and surface-mount packages * PTH series, $9 to $24.86 (10,000) Artesyn Technologies Inc,...

Switching power supply.(power sources showcase)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Desktop unit accepts 85 to 264V ac input, delivering 48V dc output with 60W of total power * Provides a hold-up time of 20 msec and an MTBF of more than 550,000 hours * DAS60, from $42 (OEM) Astec Power, 1-760-930-4600, www....

Desktop power supplies.(power sources showcase)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Deliver as much as 100W of output power from a 5.9l x 2.76 x 1.38-in. package * Accept inputs of 90 to 264V ac and provide outputs of 12 to 48V dc * AED100 series, starts at $49 (1000) XPiQ Inc, 1-508-429-9883, www. xp-iq.com

Isolated dc/dc converters.(power sources showcase)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * 15W 1x2-in. devices accommodate input ranges of 9 to 36V dc and 18 to 72V dc * Supply tightly regulated output over entire input-voltage range * BR series, $20 (OEM) Calex Manufacturing Company Inc, 1-925-687-4411, www.calex.com ...

Point-of-load converters.(power sources showcase)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * 5A (YNM), 10A (YNL), and 16A (YNS) series operate from a 10 to 14V dc IBA bus * Provide fixed and programmable outputs from surface-mount packages with industry-standard footprints * YNM series, $9.50; YNL series, $13; and YNS...

PC/104 analog I/O card.(Embedded Systems)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Provides 16 analog inputs with 16-bit resolution and a sampling rate of 200,000 samples/sec * Employs a 1M-sample FIFO buffer and a 16-point moving average filter * Stratus-X-ND, from $495 Apex Embedded Systems, 1-608-256-0767,...

CAN-bus-developer's kit.(Embedded Systems)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Comprises a CAN driver and C-API service-call library for the royalty-free Integrity RTOS * Initially available for the MSCAN (Motorola Scalable Controller Area Network) architecture * CAN Application Developer's Kit, from $18,000...

Linux digital-receiver driver.(Embedded Systems)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * For use with the Model 7631 PCI and Model 7131 PMC 16-channel digital receivers * Supports initialization, control, and application functions * Model 4994 Linux V2.4 kernel driver, from $1500 Pentek Inc, 1-201-818-5900,...

Data-acquisition server.(Embedded Systems)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Intended for front-end data collection, aggregation, and distribution * Furnishes six PCI-X adapter slots for flexible 1/O configuration * SMARTpac 600, from $21,250 Sky Computers Inc, 1-978-250-1920, www.skycomputers.com

RF-transceiver-evaluation kit.(Embedded Systems)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Allows observation of the AMIS-52000 433.92 MHz transceiver's Sniff and Quick-Start programmable low-power operating modes * Contains hardware, software, and documentation targeting low-data-rate wireless applications * AMIS 52000...

Multiple-input frame grabber.(Embedded Systems)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Records data from analog color cameras through 16 separate analog inputs for security and monitoring applications * Offers onboard scaling (1:1 to 1:8), PCI 2.2 support, and optional JPEG compression * p3i_SEC, $1200 with four inputs...

AES 128 IP core.(Microprocessors)
March 4, 2004... * Brings AES 128 encryption to the QuickMIPS family of programmable SOC devices * Delivers 300-Mbps full-duplex throughput * AES 128 core is free to QuickLogic customers QnickLogic Corp, 1-408-990-4000, www.quicklogic.com

8-bit flash microcontrollers.(Microprocessors)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Deliver fault-redundant clocking and the ability to shut the system down reliably * Offer three power-management modes for optimum control of power consumption * P1C16F737, $3.13; PIC16F747, $3.61; PlC16F767, $3.64; and PIC16F777,...

Multimedia-applications processor.(Microprocessors)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Uses 90-nm process technology and the same software environment as all OMAP chips * Optimized to be paired with TI's TCS wireless chip sets for GSM/GPRS/EDGE, cdma2000 1X, and UMTS applications * OMAP 1710, samples available in the...

Integrated development/debugging environment.(Microprocessors)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Offers profile-guided optimization, a memory profiler, and an automatic aware scripting engine * Targets the Blackfin processor, ADSP-218X/219X/2199X DSP families, and SHARC/ TigerSHARC processors * VisualDSP + + Release 3.5, from...

FPGA-based DSP-software tool.(Microprocessors)
March 4, 2004... * Allows you to link your custom boards via generic JTAG interface * Performs real-time signal capture for debugging at system speeds with easy access to the ChipScope Pro tool * System Generator for DSP V6.1, $1995 Xilinx Inc,...

Processor-core tool kit.(Microprocessors)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2004... * Lets you write and simulate application software in C or assembly to evaluate the XAP2 16-bit RISC processor core * Runs under Windows * XAP2 SDK, free trial is available for downloading at www.cambridgeconsultants. com/asic ...

Letter from the editor.(A Special Supplement To EDN)(Power-over-Ethernet)(Editorial)
March 4, 2004... This first installment of EDN's four-part Power Technology supplement series introduces "case studies" which spotlight how a company solved a particular design problem. Power-over-Ethernet (POE) is a timely subject for this supplement, and...

Market overview: broadband powering paradigms.(Broadband Communications Power)(Power over Ethernet)
March 4, 2004... The current broadband technology picture is one of contrasts. In cases like Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), deployment has been remarkably fast. In others, like digital subscriber lines (xDSL), it has been painfully slow. Some powering technologies...

Keeping power up.(Broadband Communications Power)
March 4, 2004... The current broadband technology market is being driven by the quick deployment of wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology, the new powering technologies of Power-over-Ethernet (POE), and the sustained dominance in the "last-mile" market of...

Powering PoE switches and routers.(Case Study Spotlight)(Power over Ethernet)
March 4, 2004... PROBLEM/CHALLENGE Falling prices and the low need for additional bandwidth of many switching products has forced switch and router manufacturers to come up with compelling business reasons for buyers to purchase additional equipment. One...

Power semis seek surge in broadband.(Broadband Communications Power)
March 4, 2004... At the same time that the communications sector of the electronics industry is struggling to find a sustainable recovery, Darnell Group (www.darnell.com) projects that the worldwide market for last-mile broadband power products will double from...

Broadband powering.(Broadband Communications Power)
March 4, 2004... PROBLEM/CHALLENGE With the recent ratification of the IEEE 802.3af Power-over-Ethernet (POE) specification, manufacturers of devices, such as Internet Protocol (IP) phones, WLAN access points and security cameras are rushing to introduce...

But how do the Martians feel?(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Spirit Mars-rover landing)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... "We're sending a complicated system into an unknown environment at very high speed. I feel calm. I feel ready. I can only conclude it's because I don't have a full grasp of the situation." Mark Adler, deputy mission manager for NASA's...

Test high-speed crosspoint switch in ac domain.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)
March 18, 2004... THE 2x2, 1.5-Gbps Scan90CP02 crosspoint switch from National Semiconductor provides LVDS (low-voltage differential signaling), programmable pre-emphasis, and support for IEEE 1149.6. The recently approved IEEE 1149.6 specification extends the...

Serial data storage receives broad board support.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... TARGETING EASIER OEM DESIGN of serial-data-storage systems, Ario Data Networks has announced a trio of similar SATA (Serial ATA) bridge-controller boards. The Ario-FST is for 2-Gbps Fibre connections, the Ario-SST is an Ultra 320SCSI board, and...

Enhanced software boosts power of broadband, deep-memory communications-signal analyzer.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... WHAT USED to be Celerity, a division of L3 Communications, is now the Cupertino, CA, division of Aeroflex, the company that owns several other well known RF-instrument manufacturers, including the former Marconi Instruments and IFR Systems....

Tester keeps your cables in harness.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... Engineers spend lots of money on high-end test equipment and then often resort to jerry-built, basic ohmmeter-type tests for their cables. But these crude setups are always time-consuming and often inconsistent, so a commercial cable tester,...

Dilbert.
March 18, 2004... YOU'VE GOT TO FOCUS ON EXECUTION! I THINK HE WANTS ME TO EXECUTE PEOPLE. MAKE IT LOOK LIKE AN ACCIDENT. FROM NOW ON, MY STAFF MEETINGS WILL BE TWO HOURS LONG.

Imaging competitors choose divergent paths to a nebulous destination.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)
March 18, 2004... AT FIRST GLANCE, Texas Instruments' $15 (100,000) TMS320DM320, with its prominent dual ARM9 and C54x DSP cores inside, may look identical to the earlier generation $13 DM310. However, whereas the DM310 used a 144-MHz ARM925, the DM320 uses a...

Be a SATA superstar.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Serial ATA Storage Architecture and Applications)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 18, 2004... IF EDN's RECENT APPETIZER on serial ATA whetted your appetite for knowledge about this subject, you might want to try Intel Press' Serial ATA Storage Architecture and Applications as your next course (see "Speedy simplicity," EDN, Jan 22, 2004,...

Bus advancements improve cell-phone connections.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)
March 18, 2004... THE EVER-INCREASING amount of data flowing between various subsystems in modern cell phones, coupled with unrelenting pressure to reduce the phones' cost and size, creates considerable engineering challenges that two interconnect innovations...

T&M-application-development package should please loyal users and attract new ones.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... AGILENT Technologies' VEE (Visual Engineering Environment) graphical package for developing measurement, control, test, and data-acquisition applications doesn't have the largest market share, but it does have a loyal following. Agilent says...

TCAM engine hits 18 Mbits with dual LA-1 interfaces.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... NETLOGIC MICROSYSTEMS' new NSE5512GLQ network-search engine operates as fast as 250 MHz, has 18 Mbits of table storage, and supports dual LA-1 (look-aside) interfaces, as defined by the Network Processing Forum. Many NPU...

Anticipate the accuracy of your converter.(baker's best; analog to digital converter)
March 18, 2004... SOME OF THE MORE COMMON ADC questions I hear from engineers are: "How do I know that an ADC will give me good, reliable code?" and "Can I determine this knowledge from the converter's data sheet?" Of course, the answer to these questions...

The nuances of op-amp integrators.(analog angle)
March 18, 2004... AN INTEGRATOR THAT you configure with an op amp is a simple circuit consisting of a resistor, a capacitor, and an op amp, so how can anything go wrong? In Figure 1, when [Z.sub.F] is a capacitor, the closed-loop ideal-gain equation is...

Visibility = vulnerability.(edn.comment)(Editorial)
March 18, 2004... I'VE JUST WRAPPED UP a pretty nerve-racking 24 hours of computer inspection, education, and cleanup. As a result, I've revised my position on open-source software, in an admittedly pessimistic direction. My experience reveals some critical...

Positive prognosis: electronics is transforming health care, making diagnostics, monitoring, and medical procedures more distributed.(tech trends)
March 18, 2004... THE INCREASING incorporation of electronics into medical-equipment designs is providing the impetus for the miniaturization and increasing data collection and -analysis capabilities of medical devices. The opportunity for new medical tools,...

Noise 102: a few more basic concepts, presented in this concluding installment of our two-part series, can get you started thinking about designing for low noise.(Cover Story)
March 18, 2004... AT A GLANCE * It's usually safe to assume that noise sources are uncorrelated and sum as root sum squares. Correlated sources, which would add directly, are far less common than uncorrelated ones * Noise bandwidth is always greater...

Plug in: safeguard ac powerline quality: today's proliferation of electronics creates power-quality problems that are sufficiently severe to attract regulatory action.(design feature)
March 18, 2004... AT A GLANCE * Supply-line harmonic pollution compromises public safety. * Europe demands that equipment meets emissions limits. * Amendment 14 obsoletes the reviled Class D "special waveshape." * Immunity tests safeguard...

Power over Ethernet: high performance analog solutions from Linear Technology.
March 18, 2004... The newly approved IEEE 802[R].3af specification defines a method to allow DC power and data to be delivered simultaneously over Ethernet networks. With about 13W of power available, many devices can be powered by their Ethernet connection,...

Sense dc current from the high side: although rail-to-rail operational amplifiers are now an accepted way to sense high-side dc current, a dependable circuit requires meticulous analysis and design.(design feature)
March 18, 2004... IT IS OFTEN DESIRABLE to perform current sensing on the high side of a load. However, engineers must overcome design hurdles to successfully realize such an implementation. Now, with the availability of rail-to-rail op amps, the circuit in...

Slew efficiency plays primary role in op-amp selection: the selection of high-speed op amps involves judicious trade-offs among the myriad specifications of more than 300 available products. The most important spec to consider is the slew-rate-to-supply-current ratio.(design feature)
March 18, 2004... FOR HIGH-SPEED AMPLIFIERS, the primary parameters of interest are power consumption, slew rate, bandwidth, and noise. In most cases, bandwidth is a qualifying, rather than differentiating, factor. Experienced system designers look to pulse...

Preserve the quiet in your mixed-signal ASIC: a general understanding of how system-on-chip designs create and transmit noise and how to keep noise from affecting sensitive circuits can go a long way toward attaining first-pass success.(design feature)
March 18, 2004... THE LOW WAFER COSTS that high-density digital CMOS processes offer have made them the preferred choice for mixed-signal ASICs, especially for system-on-chip designs. The ability to add large numbers of submicron logic gates with minimal impact...

Should advances in DAQ-driver software drive application developers to change?(The measure of innovation: a special series sponsored by National Instruments)
March 18, 2004... If you develop DAQ (Data Acquisition) or T&M (Test-and-Measurement) applications, yon may he so comfortable with the hardware-driver software you have been using that you have not kept up with the advancements that suppliers of...

The slow road to 10-Gbps Ethernet: lower speeds don't usually equate with innovation. But in the realm of 10-gbps Ethernet, two "low-speed" interconnect standards, Lx4 and CX4, are reducing implementation cost and enabling new applications.(design feature)
March 18, 2004... IRONICALLY, ONE OF THE MAJOR innovations enabling 10GE (10-Gigabit Ethernet) connectivity today involves reducing--not increasing--the speed of interconnects. Two new "low-speed" PMD (physical-media-dependent) standards, LX4 and CX4, will play...

Easy-to-use differential amplifiers simplify balanced signal designs--Design Note 333.(Design Notes)
March 18, 2004... Introduction The LTC[R]1992 product family provides simple amplification or level translation solutions for amplifying signals that are intrinsically differential or need to be made differential. In addition to the uncommitted...

Motor uses simple reverse-battery protection.(design ideas)
March 18, 2004... THIS DESIGN Idea presents a low-side, reverse-battery-protection technique for a de-motor system. The system in Figure 1 incorporates two protection options. The common practice of using a diode for reverse-battery protection does not work with...

Simple setup tests .bit-error rate.(design ideas)(bit-error rate)
March 18, 2004... TRADITIONALLY, THE reception quality of a digital receiver is expressed in terms of BER (bit-error rate). This figure is the proportion of received bit errors in a given period. Typically, you measure the BER in the lab by applying an RF...

Solar-powered motor runs on 10 nA.(design ideas)
March 18, 2004... DESIGNS FOR SOLAR-POWERED applications with low-duty-cycle requirements can often rely on capacitors for energy storage in place of less reliable batteries. Typical applications include solar positioning, telemetry transmitters, chemical pumps,...

Photovoltaic switch disables unused LEDs.(design ideas)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
March 18, 2004... IN MANY APPLICATIONS, it's desirable to disable LEDs used for system verification. Many options are available for the disabling function, including manual SPST (single-pole single-throw) switches, enhancement- and depletion-mode MOSFETs,...

Boost converter works with wide-range negative-input supply.(design ideas)
March 18, 2004... ASSUME THAT A DESIGN requires positive voltage, but only a negative-voltage power source is available. Using a standard boost-converter IC in the circuit of Figure 1, you can efficiently generate a positive voltage from a negative source. The...

Surface-mount TCXOs.(Amplifiers, oscillators, and mixers)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... * Offer standard frequencies of 12.6, 13.0, 14.4, 19.2, 19.68, 19.8, and 26 MHz in 3.2x2.5x1.2-mm packages * Exhibit low phase noise of--137 dBc/[square root of Hz] typical at a 1-kHz offset * NT3225 series, $2.95 (10,000) for a...

Crystal clock oscillators.(Amplifiers, oscillators, and mixers)(Brief Article)
March 18, 2004... * Come in 3.2x5-mm ceramic cases for use in IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless access points and WLAN equipment * Operate from 3.3V (S1633) and 2.5V (S1634) supplies over a frequency range of 40 to 60 MHz * S1633, S1634, $1.10 (1000) ...