EDN articles from March 2009

EDN archives from March 2009

Driving the convergence between fixed and mobile communications into the mainstream.
March 5, 2009... By Graham Celine, Azimuth Systems, and Sandy Fraser, Agilent Technologies Sustainable consumer demand for converged Wi-Fi-plus-cellular applications and services will depend on carrier-grade FMC services that deliver a good end-user...

Microcontroller converts digital-temperature-sensor readings without floating-point arithmetic.
March 5, 2009... Jordan Dimitrov, Toronto, ON, Canada Edited By Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Digital temperature sensors combine a sensor, an ADC, and a serial interface in a single chip. They feature wide enough measurement range, good accuracy and...

Discrete-component buck converter drives HB LEDs.
March 5, 2009... Dhananjay V Gadre, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India Edited By Martin Rowe and Fran Granville HB (high-brightness) LEDs require a large amount of current to operate. When driving HB LEDs from a voltage source, you...

Limit switches control dc-motor H bridge.(Brief article)
March 5, 2009... Andreas Grun, Wedemark, Germany Edited By Martin Rowe and Fran Granville You use limit switches to switch off a motor if it reaches one of its two end positions. Even if you build a microprocessor-based motor controller, you should...

Implement a clip-detection circuit for BTL Class D amplifiers.
March 5, 2009... Dimitri Danyuk and Rich Lenser, Niles Audio, Miami, FL Edited By Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Clip detection is a convenient feature in Class AB amplifiers. It produces a signal from a clip-detection pin that drives an automatic...

Time for a change in patent law.
March 5, 2009... By Paul Rako, Technical Editor The inventions of Scottish inventor and engineer James Watt in the late 18th and early 19th centuries led to the improvement of the steam engine and, ultimately, to the Industrial Revolution. So, it was with...

Designing for ROHS: Select the right lead-free-connector design for heat-sensitive applications.
March 5, 2009... By Don Brinkman, Molex The removal of lead-based alloys, which manufacturers commonly use for solder and plating, has been a main area of concern for engineers designing RoHS-compliant electronics. Learn how lead-free alternatives and...

LED chip sets help pico projectors bring big displays to small devices.
March 5, 2009... By Margery Conner Pico projectors, LED-based devices small enough to fit into an MP3 player or even a slightly oversized cell phone, were prominently on display at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas both this year and last....

Scope-based audio-bus, power-analysis tools target embedded-system designers.
March 5, 2009... By Dan Strassberg Tektronix has announced a triggering-and-analysis module for serial-digital-audio buses and a new power-analysis module. The modules plug into the company's DPO (digital-phosphor-oscilloscope) 3000 and MSO...

Deploying intelligent networks.(Brief article)
March 5, 2009... By Warren Webb Internet traffic is growing exponentially as more and more users employ high-bandwidth applications, such as on-demand, real-time video. As network data rates approach and exceed 10 Gbps, current communications-processing...

Embedded switch boosts mobile communications.
March 5, 2009... By Warren Webb Targeting rugged, communication-intensive applications in transportation and other mobile-system environments, MEN Micro recently introduced a 3U CPCI (compact-peripheral-component-interconnect)-managed Ethernet switch. The...

Point cooling advances for hot ICs.
March 5, 2009... By Ron Wilson Engineers have for years been suggesting using thermoelectric films to cool hot ICs because the films develop a temperature difference between their surfaces when you apply a voltage across them. The problems of getting the...

Researchers create speedy, rugged carbon-nanotube memory.
March 5, 2009... Staff Researchers at Helsinki University of Technology have demonstrated that single-walled carbon- nanotube FETs using hafnium-oxide as a gate dielectric can exhibit some of the characteristics of a flash-memory cell, including 100-nsec...

Distributors' credit practices crucial.
March 5, 2009... By Barbara Jorgensen If your company is having a tough time getting credit in the current economic environment, it needn't stop investing in design. Despite the global credit crunch, assistance may be no further away than a distributor....

China's semiconductor market to fall.
March 5, 2009... By Suzanne Deffree China's semiconductor industry should see a revenue decline in 2009, dropping 5.8% to $72 billion from 2008's $76.5 billion, according to iSuppli Corp (www.isuppli.com ). ISuppli notes that, even during 2001, when...

ECHA opens REACH consultation on authorization list.(European Chemicals Agency)(registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals)(Brief article)
March 5, 2009... By Suzanne Deffree The ECHA (European Chemicals Agency) has commenced a public consultation on first-draft recommendations to the REACH (registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals) regulation authorization list....

A lesson in humidity? No sweat.
March 5, 2009... By Richard Rice, Independent Contractor Years ago, I started a new job as a senior engineer for a medical-device company that designed and manufactured products for use in cardiology to diagnose heart arrhythmias and other types of patient...

Understanding FFT plots.(fast-fourier-transform)
March 19, 2009... By Bonnie Baker You can generate an FFT (fast-Fourier-transform) plot by periodically collecting a large number of conversion samples from the output of an ADC. Typically, ADC manufacturers use a single-tone, full-scale analog input signal...

FPGAs reshape embedded design.
March 19, 2009... By Warren Webb, Technical Editor As the economic slowdown takes its toll on development budgets, embedded-system designers are turning to FPGA (field-programmable-gate-array) technology to shorten design cycles, combat obsolescence, and...

Tamper-resistant smart power meters rely on isolated sensors.
March 19, 2009... By Margery Conner, technical editor Utilities are pushing to replace old electromechanical meters with microcontroller-based smart meters that, in addition to their intelligence and communication ability, are also tamper-proof. there is...

Buck converter uses low-side PWM IC.
March 19, 2009... L Haachitaba Mweene, PhD, National Semiconductor Corp, Richardson, TX The most common switching-power topology is a buck converter, which efficiently transforms high voltages to low voltages. Figure 1 shows a typical buck converter in...

Class AB inverting amp uses two floating-amplifier cells.
March 19, 2009... Joseph Wee Ting, Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Sinica Academy, Taipei, Taiwan Transistors often find use as three-pin amplifier devices, in which the input and the output share one pin. Thus, the input and the output must...

DPGA conditions signals with negative time constant.
March 19, 2009... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC DPGAs (digitally programmable-gain amplifiers) amplify or attenuate analog signals, which maximizes an ADC's dynamic range. Most monolithic DPGAs, such as the Linear Technology (www.linear.com ) LTC6910...

Instrumentation amplifier compensates system offset from single supply.
March 19, 2009... Luca Bruno, ITIS Hensemberger Monza, Lissone, Italy Many integrated instrumentation amplifiers have architectures that permit offset compensation. The reference terminal's voltage, VREF , adds in phase to the output to yield a gain of one....

Museum contends with multimedia rights.
March 19, 2009... By Rick Nelson, editor-in-chief Wherever technology goes, legal issues regarding copyright ownership seem to follow. When law and technology collide, it's often over piracy and DRM (digital-rights management). But it turns out that...

One sensor does the work of many.
March 19, 2009... By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor Digital cameras, still relatively inexpensive devices, have exponentially increased the number of pixels they can capture. Because silicon, a primary material in CCD (charge-coupled devices) and CMOS...

Bringing giant FPGAs to a new node.
March 19, 2009... By Ron Wilson, Executive Editor Altera Corp's design team for its 40-nm Stratix IV FPGA provides an example of the huge amount of work it takes to be the first to use a new process. Engaging with TSMC's (Taiwan Semiconductor...

Embedded instruments target product life cycle.
March 19, 2009... By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief EDN Innovator of the Year finalist Glenn Woppman describes technologies and partnerships that validate the embedded-instrumentation concept for chips, boards, and systems. EI (embedded instrumentation)...

It's time for innovation to go beyond the technical.
March 19, 2009... Ron Wilson, Executive Editor Our group was making money--how did I get laid off? It's a question a lot of engineers have to be asking right now. All over the industry, we see giant companies, such as IBM and Microsoft, announce great...

Life after layoffs: How to move forward after a job loss.
March 19, 2009... By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News With the number of job cuts continuing to rise and competition for open positions becoming more intense by the week, industry experts and career strategists share their advice on continuing an...

A focus on reducing power consumption in DSPs.(Interview)
March 19, 2009... By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor Octasic's Opus asynchronous architecture addresses power consumption for multicore DSP applications. The Vocallo multicore media-gateway DSP is the first product employing the Opus core. EDN...

Whatever happened to my dynamic range?
March 19, 2009... By Steve Green, Cirrus Logic If your testing results don't closely approximate the silicon vendor's specification claims, question your assumptions before concluding that your supplier is inflating the numbers. Recently, a customer who...

PFC controller achieves 96% efficiency.
March 19, 2009... By Paul Rako Fairchild Semiconductor has introduced the FAN9612 two-phase BCM (boundary-conduction-mode) PFC (power-factor-correction) controller for 100 to 1000W power systems. Driving external, high-voltage FETs, the device can realize...

AFS Nano speeds 5000-element design simulations.
March 19, 2009... By Rick Nelson Berkeley Design Automation has announced its AFS Nano, a version of the company's AFS (Analog FastSpice) with a 5000-element capacity limit that costs only $1900 for a one-year license. Targeting IC-block-level designers...

DDR3 test suite features 2G transfer/sec logic-state analysis.
March 19, 2009... By Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has introduced a comprehensive DDR (double-data-rate) 3 protocol-debugging and validation-test suite for digital-system designers who develop computer and embedded-memory applications. The test...

Lithium-ion cell-measurement instruments offer 48 24-bit-resolution inputs.
March 19, 2009... By Rick Nelson Data Translation has announced its Voltpoint series of voltage-measurement instruments for lithium-ion cell-by-cell determination. Each Voltpoint is a stand-alone box offering 48 24-bit-resolution inputs over a sampling...

DSP core supports 4G wireless infrastructure.
March 19, 2009... By Robert Cravotta Ceva's Ceva-XC DSP core employs the company's Ceva-X architecture to support 3.5 and 4G wireless designs. The new architecture accommodates one, two, or four vector-communication units alongside a single general...

One radio-test platform addresses development, production environments.(Rohde & Schwarz)
March 19, 2009... By Graham Prophet Rohde & Schwarz has announced a wideband-radio-test system that the company based on its 6-GHz CMW500 radio-test set. The new system will provide a single platform for both development and production-test environments,...

Mezzanine module uses FPGA technology.
March 19, 2009... By Warren Webb Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing recently announced an I/O-mezzanine COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) card that combines a user-programmable FPGA and configurable I/O in a PMC...

Chip design in recession: a view from an ASIC consolidator.
March 19, 2009... Interview conducted and edited by Ron Wilson There is no question that the recession, no matter what its future, is profoundly changing IC design. Investment patterns are changing, imposing huge and wrenching changes on engineers. And there...

Conspiracy theory.(Personal account)
March 19, 2009... By Garry Motter, SciMeasure Analytical Systems My company was developing a system to drive a CCD (charge-coupled device) at the end of a long cable. This device required 12 separate clocks, swinging between approximately 5 and -10V, of...