EDN articles from November 2008

EDN archives from November 2008

3G wireless data: about to break?
November 13, 2008... by Ann R Thryft, Contributing Technical Editor Although the definitions of 3 and 4G wireless data networks, services, and terminals have been moving targets, some long-promised 3G capabilities are starting to appear. Meanwhile, 4G...

Solid-state drives challenge hard disks.
November 13, 2008... by Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor Hard-disk-drive vendors assert that more-than-50-year-old rotating storage will remain relevant for many years to come. Solid-state-drive suppliers scoff at these claims, calling hard-disk technology...

Linear wind-power meter compensates for temperature.
November 13, 2008... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville The rise of interest in renewable energy created by soaring fossil-fuel costs and global-warming fears has created a matching interest in associated support...

Oscillator uses dual-output current-controlled conveyors.
November 13, 2008... Abhirup Lahiri, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville In the last decade, engineers have done much work in designing and implementing current-mode circuits using...

Circuits drive single-coil latching relays.
November 13, 2008... Alfredo H Saab and Tina Alikahi, Maxim Integrated Products, Sunnyvale, CA Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville A single-coil latching relay is a relay with memory, usually with a magnetic structure that provides two stable...

Tech innovation addresses societal, environmental challenges worldwide.
November 13, 2008... By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief Intensive research and development in nanoelectronics and nanotechnology is critical for tackling societal and environmental challenges facing the world today. Speaking at the IMEC (www.imec.be ) ARRM...

Differential coupling.
November 13, 2008... by Howard Johnson, PhD The best-performing, highest-quality, and likely also most expensive differential link you will ever encounter appears on the front panel of an Agilent differential-network analyzer. This spectacularly intricate...

Designing intelligence into door-entry and security systems.
November 13, 2008... by Gordon Wilkinson, PhD, Trinity Convergence Designers now have greater opportunity than ever before to design more intelligence and flexibility into personal-security systems by using mature and proven standards-based technology. Learn...

New approach to ink boosts solar-cell efficiency to more than 17%.
November 13, 2008... by Margery Conner Advances in solar-cell efficiency usually focus on the cell itself: In a monocrystalline-silicon-solar cell, the efficiency can be as high as 18 or 19%. However, these high figures don't account for the efficiency-or...

Piccolo processors focus on real-time control for cost-sensitive designs.(Texas Instruments Inc.)(Brief article)
November 13, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Texas Instruments' new Piccolo series TMS320F280xx processors integrate a C28x processor core, peripherals, and a CLA (control-law accelerator). The devices target price-sensitive control applications, such as...

High-performance scopes enhance serial-data analysis.(LeCroy Corp.)
November 13, 2008... by Dan Strassberg LeCroy has introduced the SDA 7 Zi oscilloscopes with built-in SDA (serial-data-analysis) II serial-data-debugging software, which the manufacturer says redefines SDA in oscilloscopes. The new scopes go beyond compliance...

Energy scavenger achieves record power.(Brief article)
November 13, 2008... By Ron Wilson Engineers and scientists have long had an intense interest in energy-scavenging devices that can extract small amounts of electrical energy from such ambient sources as temperature gradients, incident light, stress, or...

Researchers explore nonvolatile resistive RAM as flash replacement.(Brief article)
November 13, 2008... by Ron Wilson As the end of the road draws ever nearer for flash memory, researchers are leaving no stone unturned in their attempts to find an alternative nonvolatile-storage mechanism that can scale to processes smaller than 32 nm-the...

Consolidation among mobile-IC makers squeezes supply chain.
November 13, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree Continuing the considerable consolidation in the mobile-IC supply chain, Freescale Semiconductor (www.freescale.com ) announced a planned exit from the cellular-handset-chip-set market. The company in October said...

India, Vietnam gaining as Asia/Pacific semiconductor-sales growth slows.(Brief article)
November 13, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree Gartner Inc (www.gartner.com ) has lowered its forecast for 2008 revenue growth in Asia/Pacific's semiconductor market from 6.4% to 5.2%. The research company based the change on the worsening global macroeconomic...

OEMs answer Greenpeace's call for stricter regulation.
November 13, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree OEMs are responding to more-stringent energy requirements from environmental group Greenpeace International (www.greenpeace.org ). No governmental organization has mandated the criteria, which include support for...

Align up!
November 13, 2008... by Arnold N Simonsen, Electrical Engineer A previously published Tales from the Cube column (Reference 1 ) brought to memory a similar experience I had with a relay-release time and an attempt to reduce inductive spikes. As a young...

Just use a 100Ω resistor.
November 27, 2008... by Bonnie Baker So there I was, a new hire for a leading-edge analog-electronics company. As it was my first job, I was wide-eyed and excited--confronting new problems left and right. One problem I ran into involved the stability of an...

RFID in embedded designs: your move.
November 27, 2008... by Warren Webb, Technical Editor With a built-in RFID reader, embedded systems can exchange data with tagged items to create a new category of applications in tune with their surroundings. RFID (radio-frequency-identification)...

Power SOCs: a *crazy* idea that just might work.
November 27, 2008... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor For power-management ICs, fitting an entire power supply, including switching, control, and passive components, onto one chip enables greater power efficiency and lower heat dissipation. Sophisticated...

*Chipiplexing* efficiently drives multiple LEDs using few microcontroller ports.
November 27, 2008... Guillermo Jaquenod, La Plata, Argentina Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Actual microcontrollers have powerful bidirectional I/O ports, and you can use different techniques to fully exploit such capabilities. Recent Design...

Achieve precision temperature control with TEC Seebeck-voltage sampling.
November 27, 2008... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville TEC (thermoelectric-cooler) temperature-control systems often have limited stability. The causes of these limitations are the thermal properties of the...

Instrumentation-amplifier-based current shunt exhibits 0V drop.
November 27, 2008... Marián Eatofka, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Passive current shunts for measuring the value of current flowing through a relatively small-value resistor often...

Spark detector uses proximity.
November 27, 2008... Robert Most, Ferris State University, Big Rapids, MI Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Hall-effect ICs find use as proximity sensors in applications such as proximity detection and angular-velocity measurement on rotating...

Configure a low-cost, 9V battery-voltage monitor.(Brief article)
November 27, 2008... Paul C Florian, McKinney, TX Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville This Design Idea describes a 9V battery-voltage monitor whose total parts cost less than 34 cents (Figure 1 ). You configure transistor Q1 as a 10-mA current sink....

From lithography to test.
November 27, 2008... by Rick Nelson, editor-in-chief This year, I commented on the importance of taking test into account during the design phase (Reference 1 ). Examples I cited included Asset InterTech's focus on providing open tools for embedded...

Studying the second-generation iPod Touch.
November 27, 2008... by Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor A partnership with iFixit bears abundant fruit: high-resolution images of the innards of Apple's latest high-end iPod product. What sustenance, seeds, and worms does an intensive inspection reveal?...

Know your ceramic capacitor, part two.
November 27, 2008... by Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor The last installment of Analog Domain introduced the four classifications of ceramic capacitors that the EIA (Electronics Industries Alliance) defines in its standard EIA 198-1F...

Driving high-power LEDs in series-parallel arrays.
November 27, 2008... by Chris Richardson, National Semiconductor The light from an LED is proportional to the current flowing through it. The challenge for the drive circuitry for applications using multiple high-brightness LEDs is to get the same current...

Get hardware fast.
November 27, 2008... by Jon Pearson, Cypress Semiconductor Corp Build a testbench using the microcontroller in your project to simplify the new-task learning curve, get a head start on hardware/firmware integration, and shorten the overall development cycle....

Test system spans digital, RF domains.
November 27, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has announced the DigRF (digital-radio-frequency) V4 test system. The product provides comprehensive stimulus and analysis for developers of RFICs (radio-frequency integrated circuits) and baseband...

PSoC supports CyFi low-power RF.
November 27, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Developers can now use Cypress Semiconductor's PSoC (programmable system-on-chip) devices with the company's new, 2.4-GHz CyFi low-power RF product, which combines a PSoC processor running the CyFi star-network-protocol...

30-GHz signal analyzer offers 40-GHz bandwidth.
November 27, 2008... by Graham Prophet As part of a series of instrumentation announcements in both signal generation and analysis, Rohde & Schwarz has introduced the FSV midrange signal and spectrum analyzer. The device has an analysis bandwidth of 40 MHz,...

Hand grenade or coffee thermos: two very different models of a laptop battery.
November 27, 2008... by Margery Conner Take a look at these two quotes, both regarding the amount of energy stored in a laptop battery pack. The first is from a New York Times article about solar-thermal-energy generation: "The idea is to capture the sun's...

Avnet LightSpeed's Cary Eskow: illuminating energy-efficient design.(Interview)
November 27, 2008... by Suzanne Deffree Cary Eskow is director of LightSpeed, the solid-state-lighting- and LED (light-emitting-diode)-business unit of Avnet Electronics Marketing (www.em.avnet.com/lightspeed ). A 28-year Avnet veteran, he leads Avnet's...

All fail down.
November 27, 2008... by Larry Baxter, Capsense.com Computer terminals were failing all over town--not all towns, just those with low humidity, such as Las Vegas, which was particularly hard-hit. I was called in as a consultant for a company there to repair the...