Roger Allan is a 39-year electronics journalism veteran, and served as
Electronic Design's Executive Editor for 15 of those years. He has covered just about every technology beat from semiconductors,
components, packaging and power devices, to communications, test and
measurement, automotive electronics, robotics, medical electronics, military
electronics, and industrial electronics. His specialties include MEMS and nanoelectronics techologies. He is a frequent contributor to the McGraw Hill Annual Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He is also a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and holds a BSEE from New York University's School of Engineering and Science. Email address: rsallan@optonline.net
829 results found for Roger Allan, displaying items 1 - 20
November 5, 2009[Engineering Feature] A Bright Future For LED Illumination
Nearly all market forecasts paint a positive picture on LEDs being used for general illumination. Market research firm Databeans Inc. expects the market for LED lighting applications, including white LEDs, to grow an average of 23% over the next several years. Worldwide sales this year alone will total $500 million, and LED revenues will hit $1.8 billion by 2013 (see the figure). The vast majority of such sales will be for...
November 5, 2009[Engineering Feature] White LEDs Promise Green Illumination Domination
The lighting is on the wall: Solid state is threatening to dismantle the dominion of incandescent and compact fluorescent light (CFL) sources. Illumination applications based on solid-state lighting are slowly replacing those previously ruled by the older technologies. Though very expensive to use, solid-state lighting has proven more efficient and in sync in a world where government initiatives are calling for a greener environment and less energy consumption. ...
October 8, 2009[Leapfrog: First Look] MEMS Digital Dual-Axis Gyro Improves Camera Stabilization
Addressing lower-cost opticalimage stabilization (OIS) as a major goal, InvenSense Inc. has unveiled the first digital dual-axis pitch and roll (X and Y) gyroscope for camera phones and digital still cameras. Its nextgeneration IDG-2000 family offers the smallest such devices on the market, housed in a 4- by 4- by 0.9-mm quad flat no-lead (QFN) package (Fig. 1). The chip is designed for OIS...
October 8, 2009[Engineering Feature] Automotive Networks Strive To Satisfy Safety And Bandwidth Needs
A quiet revolution is sweeping through automotive in-vehicle, vehicle-to-vehicle, and vehicleto- infrastructure communications and networking. Companies as well as standards organizations continue to successfully tackle major design challenges, such as the adoption of hardware and software approaches to meet demanding bandwidth, fault-tolerance, determinism, and reliability requirements. In fact, there’s marked improvement among a number of communications and control...
June 18, 2009[Technology Report] Electronics Helps Foster Decentralized Healthcare
Rising healthcare costs, a stretched-thin number of medical providers, longer life expectancies, and a growing number of elderly and disabled patients are transforming the face of medical care. Decentralization—moving healthcare away from medical facilities and into the patient’s home—is fast becoming the new model. In 2008, Medicaid spending for long-term care cost $99.5 billion, according the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...
June 18, 2009[Technology Report] Auto Electronics Revs Up For "Greener" Pastures
The automobile and electronics industries are struggling mightily through this economic tumult. Straddling these two giants, however, is a shining beacon—auto electronics. At last year’s Convergence Conference, a panel of experts from General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, and BMW suggested that the cost of electronics in a car will increase beyond the oft-quoted 20% figure and climb to 40% to 50%. Getting more extreme, Honda senior...
April 9, 2009[Technology Report] OLED Displays Bring Much-Needed Light To The End Of The Economic Tunnel
oOrganic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology continues to buck the industry’s current economic struggles, carving out lucrative applications in numerous display and lighting applications. And indications show that active-matrix (AM) OLEDs rather than passive-matrix (PM) OLEDs will eventually dominate this space. DisplaySearch forecasts that OLED display revenues will reach $6 billion by 2015, up from $591 million in 2008, with a compound annual growth rate...
April 9, 2009[Leapfrog: First Look] Alliance Launches Open-Source In-Vehicle Infotainment Development Platform
Leading automobile manufacturers and hardware and software suppliers have formed the Genivi Alliance, a nonprofit organization committed to driving the development and broad adoption of an open-source in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) reference platform (see the figure). The group will unite automotive, consumer electronics, communications, and application development companies investing in the IVI market and...
March 26, 2009[Engineering Feature] CCDs: Performance That Can’t Be Beat
When it comes to high-performance imaging in applications like professional photography, machine-vision inspection, high-definition TV, wireless security, scientific, and military/ aerospace applications, charge-coupled device (CCD) imagers are the only choice. They can deliver sensitivity levels far higher than those offered by CMOS imagers. But then again, comparing CCD with CMOS imagers is like comparing apples to oranges. It all depends on the...
March 26, 2009[Engineering Feature] CMOS And CCD Image Sensor Breakthroughs Promise A "Bright" Future
The latest generation of CMOS and charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors features wider spectral bandwidths, higher sensitivity levels, lower noise operation, and smaller form factors. Better fabrication processes help lower costs. And, novel architectures are injecting greater flexibility and versatility into circuit designs. As a result, imaging sensors now find homes in mobile phones, notebook and laptop PCs, digital still cameras, video games, toys, medical...
February 26, 2009[Engineering Feature] Those Elusive MEMS Market Figures
Getting a good fix on the market for silicon MEMS microphones is proving elusive, given the declining worldwide economy, the growing number of companies trying to get into this business, and the relatively small size of this market compared to other MEMS devices. On the high side, Yole Développement predicts that silicon MEMS microphones will experience a growth rate of 35% through 2012. Silicon microphones will replace inkjet heads as the largest MEMS product in unit terms, according...
February 26, 2009[Engineering Feature] Sound Check: Silicon MEMS Microphones Ready To Make Lots Of Noise
What’s that rumbling? It’s the ever-loudening boom expected to stand the silicon microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microphone market on its collective ears. Forecasters say the market explosion will really unfold after 2009. Two years ago, only three or four dominant silicon MEMS microphone manufacturers existed. Knowles Acoustics had the lion’s share, followed by Akustica, Pulse Engineering’s Sonion MEMS Division, and Infineon Technologies. Now the list...
February 19, 2009
[Technology Report] Automotive Sensors Tap Into Emerging Technologies
Automotive sensors are taking advantage of new materials and sensing principles as electronics penetrate further into automotive infotainment, safety, and comfort applications. Sensing technologies that go beyond the well-known piezoresistive, capacitive, and inductive sensing principles embodied in modern microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors are under investigation.
February 19, 2009
[Technology Report] Energy Harvesting Looks To Solve Critical TPMS Issues
Ever since Porsche introduced the first direct-type tire-pressure monitoring system (TPMS) in 1997, manufacturers have been struggling to solve two major technical challenges: developing a TPMS that requires as little power as possible to operate (either from a battery or an energy scavenging technique or both) and a form factor that better suits a tire’s shape. On top of that, the need for a low-cost manufacturing approach overshadows both of these issues.
February 12, 2009[Engineering Feature] Making The Healthcare System Technologically Friendlier
People are living longer. More people are living with chronic diseases and disabilities. There’s a shortage of medical providers. And, healthcare insurance premiums continue to skyrocket. Together, these factors cry out for a healthcare system that can serve people better. But while the tools for diagnostics and healthcare treatment rapidly advance in performance, no practical system exists for their mass-scale adoption. A lack of standardization among healthcare device inputs...
February 12, 2009[Engineering Feature] The Pulse Quickens For Cutting-Edge Medical Electronics Advances
Picture this: A heart patient is experiencing fluid buildup in the lungs—an early sign of heart failure. But, an implantable sensory medical device in the patient emits a signal to both the patient and his physician via a Bluetooth-equipped mobile phone, warning them of impending danger. Wishful thinking? Not really. The technology is already here and is continuously being refined. All that’s missing is the supporting infrastructure. Mir Imran, an inventor and...
January 20, 2009
[Technology Report] Use MEMS Technology To Make Sense In An Analog World
There’s a very bright future for microelectromechanical-system (MEMS) sensors and actuators that will give us an unprecedented level of access to our largely analog world. That was the theme of many presentations at the 2008 MEMS Industry Group (MIG) Executive Congress meeting, held in Monterey, Calif., last November.
January 15, 2009[Technology Report] Ever-Shrinking ICs Turn To Exotic Packaging Methods
The dizzying pace of semiconductor IC miniaturization and performance advances keeps changing the face of IC packaging. Demands for lower-cost packaging that must also deal with greater amounts of heat emanating from these tinier packages have designers scrambling. Many packaging efforts are being devoted to materials innovations that optimize the existing manufacturing infrastructure. Variations of the popular package-on-package (PoP) and package-in-package (PiP) approaches...
Roger Allan is a 39-year electronics journalism veteran, and served as
Electronic Design's Executive Editor for 15 of those years. He has covered just about every technology beat from semiconductors,
components, packaging and power devices, to communications, test and
measurement, automotive electronics, robotics, medical electronics, military
electronics, and industrial electronics. His specialties include MEMS and nanoelectronics techologies. He is a frequent contributor to the McGraw Hill Annual Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He is also a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and holds a BSEE from New York University's School of Engineering and Science.
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