EDN articles from March 2007

EDN archives from March 2007

Power this: testing audio ICs.
March 1, 2007... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor SOCs for set-top boxes, television monitors, disk players, and mobile media players have or soon will have HD capability. But another aspect of this evolution--one that could prove even more challenging to...

Video-enabled home-networking technology trickles to market.
March 1, 2007... by Maury Wright, Editor In Chief Network bandwidth, latency, and signal disruptions limit deployment of distributed video by both consumer-electronics vendors and major service providers. Consumers have readily adopted home networks...

Current mirror improves PWM regulator's performance.
March 1, 2007... Grant Smith, National Semiconductor, Phoenix, AZ Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Power-supply designs requiring high-performance isolated feedback often use an error amplifier similar to the one in Figure 1 , which relies...

Low-cost current monitor tracks high dc currents.
March 1, 2007... Susanne Nell, Breitenfurt, Austria Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville To measure high levels of direct current for overload detection and protection, designers frequently use either a current-shunt resistor or a toroidal core...

Digital-I/O circuit adapts to many interface voltages.(Column)
March 1, 2007... Steve Hageman, Windsor, CA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville To test products in my R&D lab, I build many universal data-acquisition systems that connect to a PC or another controller through RS-232 links or LANs. These small...

Expert columnists cover analog, signal integrity, and chip design.
March 1, 2007... by Maury Wright, Editor In Chief In this issue of EDN , we're adding a new columnist to our stable of outside experts that bring you first-hand accounts of issues in the analog, chip-design, and signal-integrity areas. We welcome Pallab...

OFC madness.(oxygen free copper)(Column)
March 1, 2007... By Howard Johnson, PhD Ernie, a sometime correspondent, writes: The power cord on my oscilloscope broke because we stepped on it too many times. I heard that OFC cryogenic power cables are really good but expensive (hundreds of dollars)....

Optimizing handsets' multimedia connectivity and performance.(wireless telephones)
March 1, 2007... by Rukmini Sivaraman and Stephen Harris, Cypress Semiconductor Both consumer demand and competitive pressures are driving the rapid proliferation of handsets' multimedia capabilities. In striving to integrate the necessary peripherals,...

Comparing dc/dc converters' noise-related performance.
March 1, 2007... By Robert Marchetti, Vicor Corp Noise in DC/DC converters can differ from device to device. An understanding of the main dc/dc-converter topologies and their noise-performance disparities can help. Today, dc/dc-converter components...

The wheel goes 'round again.(processor architectures)
March 1, 2007... By Pallab Chatterjee, Contributing Technical Editor Recent technology and product announcements remind me of the saying, "Everything old is new again." This phrase has been popping into mind more frequently as industry pundits herald new...

EMI woes and cures.
March 1, 2007... by Glen Chenier, Teeter Totter Tree Stuff Ever since the first poorly shielded home computers caused annoying herringbone patterns or worse on neighbors' television screens, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and other agencies...

Don't blame the manufacturer for this product's confusing name.
March 1, 2007... by Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies calls its latest signal generator--the N4916A--a de-emphasis signal converter because the standards body responsible for the technology that underlies the instrument refers to the technology as...

LeCroy's cosimulator for serial-data-bus analyzers focuses on eye pattern.
March 1, 2007... by Margery Conner With serial buses operating at gigahertz speeds, designers of chips and boards that communicate with and over these buses often incorporate equalizers at the bus interface. Equalizers, essentially digital filters tuned...

Software-radio transceiver fits harsh environments.
March 1, 2007... by Warren Webb Pentek's latest conduction-cooled, wideband software-radio transceiver targets harsh-environment applications, such as unmanned aerial vehicles and battlefield-communications systems. The Model 7141-703 PMC/XMC module...

Network analyzer's second signal source reduces test and setup time, complexity.
March 1, 2007... by Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has introduced the PNA-X network analyzer, which the company expects to become a new industry standard for microwave network analysis from 10 MHz to 26.5 GHz. The high-performance unit offers what...

Class G speaker amplifier includes charge pump.
March 1, 2007... by Paul Rako Maxim has recently introduced two monophonic audio amplifiers to drive speakers in mobile phones and other handheld systems. The MAX9730 drives conventional dynamic speakers; the MAX9788 works with new ceramic speakers. The...

Soaring power costs pace power-supply efficiency for servers.
March 1, 2007... by Margery Conner A generation ago, aluminum producers located their smelters close to dams to take advantage of cheap hydroelectric power; now, server farms cozy up to dams for the same reason. Witness Google's locating its newest...

Underwater sensor hears like the fishes.
March 1, 2007... by Matthew Miller A team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed an underwater acoustic sensor that improves upon earlier hydrophones by more accurately assessing the direction from which a sound emanates. Inspired by the...

Photonic system has polarizing effect.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... by Matthew Miller Researchers at MIT have demonstrated the ability to accurately process arbitrarily polarized light in a densely packed photonic circuit. The breakthrough moves this essential function into the realm of compact, precise,...

Frequency comb gets upgraded to brush.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... by Matthew Miller Physicists at the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) have created the first 2-D pictures of a frequency comb, enhancing the metrology tool's usefulness in applications such as optical atomic clocks,...

Scope.
March 1, 2007... Edited by Ron Wilson Looking Ahead To Presidents' Day at CTIA Wireless 2007 If you have any doubt that the convergence of information, communications, and media onto wireless devices has the attention of the rich and powerful,...

Brick to V·IC.
March 2, 2007... By Patrizio Vinciarelli, CEO, Vicor Corporation Revolution to Evolution to Revolution Revolution. In 1984, Vicor introduced a DC-DC converter employing a new power-conversion topology that reduced inefficiency by one half and achieved...

Power Milestones of the Future.
March 2, 2007... By Linnea Brush Predicting the future is both easier and more difficult than assessing the past. Easier in that no one can say you're wrong (yet); more difficult because you don't know if you'll be right. Predicting the breakthroughs that...

Milestones In POWER MOSFETs.
March 2, 2007... By Alex Lidow, International Rectifier In the decades since the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, the electronics industry--perhaps more than any other--has devised ways of doing more with less energy. The evolution of energy-efficient...

The First PWM Device.
March 2, 2007... By Robert Mammano, Staff Technologist and TI Fellow, Texas Instruments Incorporated Opening the Gates for the Power Management Industry It's easy to improve on a product technology when you know there is a market for it. However,...

Letter from the editor.(Editorial)
March 2, 2007... Staff The power electronics industry, ranging from ac-dc power supplies to Zener diodes, topped $70 billion in 2006. While this industry is typically thought of as providing a product that is a "necessary evil," it must be extremely...

Milestones That Mattered.
March 2, 2007... By Jeremiah Bryant Power electronics improvements, have enabled nearly every electronics innovation of the last 50 years. Of the thousands of steps forward, we selected 17 events that stand out as key power Milestones that Mattered. To...

IBIS and Spice timing mismatches.(I/O-buffer-information-specification)
March 15, 2007... by Bonnie Baker Growing up, I was a station-wagon kid. My parents sat in the front to see where we were going. The rest of us (six kids) took over the back, where we had a beautiful view of where we had been. Being in back wasn't bad,...

Board standards seek the holy grail.
March 15, 2007... by Warren Webb, Technical Editor As expectations for embedded systems soar, standards organizations are scrambling to offer designers the best combination of cost, size, reliability, and performance. Restricted budgets and shortened...

Imaging beyond pixels: enhancing the elementary picture.
March 15, 2007... By Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor With per-sensor pixel growth slowing, how else can digital-still-camera manufacturers differentiate from each other? How does this differentiation bring them into greater competition with...

Linear-brightness controller for LEDs has 64 taps.
March 15, 2007... Ahmad Ayar, Maxim Integrated Products, Sunnyvale, CA Applications that include LEDs but no microcontroller or other form of control intelligence can benefit from a simple circuit that provides manual control of the LEDs' light intensity....

Controlled power supply increases op amps' output-voltage range.
March 15, 2007... Yakov Velikson, Lexington, MA Increasing the output voltage of IC operational amplifiers usually involves adding high-voltage external transistors. The resulting circuit then requires correction to retain its operating characteristics....

Single-IC-based electronic circuit replaces mechanical switch.
March 15, 2007... Santosh Bhandarkar, Bangalore, India A simple and inexpensive electronic circuit uses a low-cost pushbutton switch to toggle the electrical power on and off. The circuit replaces a more costly and bulky push-push mechanical switch. The...

Microcontroller drives H bridge to power a permanent-magnet dc motor.
March 15, 2007... Luca Bruno, ITIS Hensemberger Monza, Lissone, Italy A traditional method of driving a low- to medium-power permanent-magnet dc motor involves using four MOSFET or bipolar transistors in an H-bridge configuration. For example, in Figure 1...

China assembles today, innovates tomorrow.
March 15, 2007... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Not another piece about China, right? I suspect that's your first thought, but please stay with me. I'm writing this while attending the Globalpress Electronics Summit 2007, and last night, we heard from...

Choosing to use an SIP.
March 15, 2007... by Mario Manninger, austriamicrosystems Developing an SIP product rather than an SOC for a portable multimedia platform begins with careful architecture planning. This development of austriamicrosystems' second-generation multimedia...

Rummage through a Roomba.
March 15, 2007... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor The Roomba from iRobot ( www.irobot.com ) is an autonomous vacuuming robot for use in consumers' homes. The unit is a circular robot that measures less than 14 in. in diameter and less than 3 in. in...

Board computer boosts performance, cuts power.(Brief article)
March 15, 2007... by Warren Webb Extreme Engineering Solutions has recently introduced a 3U single-board computer featuring the latest low-power, dual-core PowerPC processor from PA Semi ( www.pa semi.com ). The XPedite8070 targets the growing...

Jeda offers System C-assertion-coverage tool.
March 15, 2007... by Michael Santarini Privately held EDA company Jeda Technologies has added the NSCv (native-SystemC-verification) tool to its SystemC-tool suite. Last year, the company introduced its NSCa (native-SystemC-assertion) tool to give...

Stream Processors aims at parallel-signal processing.
March 15, 2007... by Robert Cravotta Start-up SPI (Stream Processors Inc) has unveiled a DSP architecture for tackling high-performance, massively parallel-signal processing without requiring designers to learn a new and esoteric software-development...

Video processor tackles diverse content.
March 15, 2007... by Brian Dipert The design team that began working its video-processing magic at Faroudja ( www.faroudja.com ) and then moved to Sage and later Genesis Microchip ( www.genesis-microchip.com ) through acquisition, and, even later, to...

Instruments and software let you use a logic analyzer to debug serial bus.
March 15, 2007... by Dan Strassberg When you first hear about the new, 312-Mbps DigRF Version 3 bus, you might think, "What? Another new high-speed serial bus-and not even a very fast one, at that!" However, the bus has several important reasons for its...

Printer Cartridge enables organic electronic R&D.(research and development)(Brief article)
March 15, 2007... by Margery Conner Much of the excitement about organic semiconductors and circuits centers on their polymer materials and their advantages: flexibility, low power, low cost, and low environmental impact. However, just as important to the...

Summit Micro's Pat Brocket.(Interview)
March 15, 2007... by Paul Rako Pat Brocket is president and chief executive officer of Summit Micro ( www.summitmicro.com ). Before joining Summit, Brockett was president and chief executive officer of Zarlink Semiconductor ( www.zarlink.com )....

Scope.
March 15, 2007... edited by Ron Wilson Looking Ahead To EDN 's Innovation Awards announcement The nominations are in, the judges have selected the finalists, and eager voters flocked to pick their favorites for the 17th annual EDN Innovation...

Serendipity revisited.
March 15, 2007... by Marvin Collins Years ago, I was the studio supervisor for an AM-radio station, where part of my responsibility was to maintain the technical equipment in good operating condition. I can no longer remember the problem I encountered on...

WiMax Gains in Mobile-Broadband Game, But 4G Lurks.
March 29, 2007... By Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Sprint Nextel, with Partners Intel, Samsung, and Motorola, will Drive Mobile WiMax Flavor in US Broadband Deployment. Both notebook-PC users and consumers carrying increasingly powerful smartphones or...

Hot, Cold, and Broken: Thermal-Design Techniques.
March 29, 2007... By Paul Rako - Technical Editor Variations in Temperature can make a Circuit Act Unpredictably or even Cause Catastrophic Failure. Here are some Tips on what to look out for in Your Designs' Reactions to Temperature Extremes. Both heat...

Consumer limitations.
March 29, 2007... By Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor A recent editorial by EDN Editor in Chief Maury Wright claimed that "a more open approach to the Apple codec and DRM (digital-rights management) might ultimately serve the company much better than...

Oscilloscope helps obtain Bode plots in non-50? environments.(Freescale Semiconductor Inc)
March 29, 2007... Antonio Eguizabal, Freescale Semiconductor Inc, Tempe, AZ Edited by Charles H Small and Brad Thompson A Bode plot can simplify characterization of an active or a passive network by showing frequency and phase representations of the...

PRBS generator runs at 1.5 Gbps.(pseudorandom-binary-sequence)
March 29, 2007... Lukasz Sliwczynski, AGH University of Science and Technology, Institute of Electronics, Krakow, Poland Edited by Charles H Small and Brad Thompson PRBS (pseudorandom-binary-sequence), or PN (pseudonoise), generators find a broad range...

Use SystemVerilog for coverage metrics.
March 29, 2007... Thomas L Anderson, Cadence Design Automation, San Jose, CA Edited by Charles H Small and Brad Thompson The design-and-verification industry is at the intersection of two important trends in the design and verification of SOC...

Miller on edge.(Miller capacitance)
March 29, 2007... By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor The last installment of Analog Domain derived the value for the Miller capacitance--the effective impedance between the collector and the base of a bipolar transistor in a common-emitter...

Pulse-width compression.
March 29, 2007... By Howard Johnson, PhD The signal in Figure 1 originates in a pristine state at its transmitter. After passing through a long coaxial cable, high-frequency losses within the cable round off the signal edges, making each edge somewhat less...

Efficient simulation and validation for mixed-signal SOCs.
March 29, 2007... By Jerry Twomey, Effective Electrons Adding Analog Content to Digital-IC Designs can be a Nightmare. Simulation and Validation Tools can Help Ward Off The Terror. The IC-design groups tackling complex digital-IC projects often have...

AWGs target digital-RF testing, provide optional digital outputs.
March 29, 2007... By Dan Strassberg Tektronix has announced the 600M- and 1.2G-sample/sec AWG5000 Series of AWGs (arbitrary-waveform generators), which use the same platform as the recently introduced 20G-sample/sec AWG7000 Series. Depending on the model,...

Cyclone III stirs up new programmable-logic opportunities.
March 29, 2007... By Suzanne Deffree, Electronic News In an effort to broaden opportunities for programmable logic to more complex and cost-sensitive high-volume applications that engineers would traditionally design with ASICs or ASSPs (application-specific...

Software Cuts Test-Lab Computer-Configuration Time.
March 29, 2007... By Dan Strassberg EdenTree Technologies has announced Configuration Manager, a software tool that, according to the company, automatically reconfigures computers to radically reduce the time required for testing cycles in test labs. The...

Silicon foundations simplify assembly lines.
March 29, 2007... By Brian Dipert Two consecutive press briefings at January's Consumer Electronics Show dealt with different products for different markets but delivered a similar message: that by migrating from a traditional approach comprising numerous...

OneSpin Spins Equivalence Checker for FPGA Users.
March 29, 2007... By Michael Santarini Formal-verification-tool maker OneSpin Solutions has made its 360 EC (equivalence checker) available to the FPGA market. The pushbutton 360 EC FPGA tool helps FPGA designers ensure that RTL (register-transfer-level)...

Phase-change memory creeps closer to the mainstream.
March 29, 2007... By Ron Wilson Recent announcements by Intel and Samsung have made it clear that the companies, both of which have for years been pouring research funds into phase-change memory, are determined to bring the technology to market. Samsung was...

EUV-Lithography Tool Produces First Patterns.(Brief article)
March 29, 2007... Edited By Fran Granville ASML Optics has shown the first patterns using the full-field EUV (extreme-ultraviolet) alpha demo tool at the State University of New York--Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering...

ISM-band antenna measures less than 4 mm long.
March 29, 2007... Edited By Fran Granville Fractus, a company that develops high-frequency antennas using area-filling-pattern technology, has announced development of an antenna measuring only 3.7x2 mm for the 2.4-GHz ISM (industrial/scientific/medical)...

Scope.
March 29, 2007... Edited By Ron Wilson Looking ahead: to the NAB conference The 2007 NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show (http://nabshow.com ) opens April 14 in Las Vegas. The show is primarily a way for equipment providers to pitch to...

The smallest change necessary.(using failure analusis technique for solving technical problems)(Viewpoint essay)
March 29, 2007... By Robert Cravotta - Technical Editor When I first started working with development of prototypes in field conditions, I inherited responsibility for the legacy test ground equipment. I took care of making any fixes to the system hardware...