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Engineering Feature
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593 results found for Engineering Feature, displaying items 1 - 20
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June 25, 2009
Oscillators Face The Final Frontier
High-reliability oscillator design for satellite systems poses many challenges to the engineering community. The custom nature of the design efforts as well as the quality requirements tend to lead to large, complex specifications that drive cost, design cycle time, and overall product lead time. Materials utilized in design and construction are also limited by environmental constraints such as outgassing, radiation, the use of pure tin, and shock/vibration...
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David Bail
June 11, 2009
The Mixed-Signal Angle On DFM
When most designers think of DFM, they think of deep-submicron SoCs and digital design. But more often, DFM is a factor in analog/mixed-signal flows for RFICs as well. “There’s no such thing as a pure RFIC anymore,” says Marc Peterson, director of RFIC product planning at Agilent EEsof. “All RFICs are mixed-signal chips these days, and they’re moving to the smaller process nodes where process variability is a much bigger problem.” A key part of mixed-signal...
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David Maliniak
June 11, 2009
Design For Manufacturing Sheds The Hype
Four to five years ago, the hype surrounding design-for-manufacturing (DFM) technology for advanced system-on-a-chip (SoC) design was near insufferable. At that time, 90 nm was the state-ofthe- art process node and most fabless houses were preparing for a shrink down from the 130-nm node. And without some way of feeding process parameters back into the design side, the likelihood of any chip yielding at 90 nm was slim to none. This set off a bit of panic among the...
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David Maliniak
May 21, 2009
Choosing The Top 101
If semiconductors are the heart of most electronic designs, then components like resistors, capacitors, inductors, interconnects, switches, sensors, LEDs, and displays represent many of the other body parts needed to complete the design. Each of these components comes in a wide variety of flavors. Last year, we covered components in our “EEPN in Electronic Design” department, while this year we changed the name of the section to “Electronic Design Products.” During the past...
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Joseph Desposito
May 21, 2009
The Top 101 Components Take Center Stage
WWhen designers create new devices, they need info about the latest electronic components to hit the market. One of the ways to gather this information is via Products of the Week. This e-newsletter is sent to more than 60,000 subscribers each Monday and covers innovative new products and technologies in the semiconductor, components and assemblies, boards and modules, and design, assembly, and test sectors, with direct links to the manufacturers’...
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Joseph Desposito
May 7, 2009
The Indianapolis 500 Electronic Edge
Surely most racing fans have May 24, 2009, circled on their calendars. For the non-gearheads, this Memorial Day marks the 93rd running of the Indianapolis 500. The event will pit 33 cars and drivers against each other in a grueling 500-mile race around a 2.5-mile track. The fastest average speed is more than 185 mph with top speeds cresting at about 235 mph. The front and back straightaways are only five-eighths of a mile long, so drivers spend a good deal of...
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William Wong
April 23, 2009
USB Flexes Its Industrial Strength
As PCs proliferate, their technologies become more affordable for a growing range of industrial applications. Programmable automation controllers, for example, are basically ruggedized PCs. Meanwhile, Ethernet has transformed from an office/home network to an industrial network that’s rapidly becoming the norm in factories. USB is also extending its industrial presence. Dataacquisition systems use it for easy connections and expansion. Robots employ USB for...
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Terry Costlow
April 23, 2009
The USB 3.0 Speed Bump
The latest version of USB, completed last year, increases bandwidth up to 5 Gbits/s, moving 25 Gbytes in only 70 seconds. While most industrial applications won’t need that much speed for I/O applications, observers feel that USB 3.0 will eventually play a role in applications that move lots of data. Though the first CPUs supporting the standard won’t move into high volume until later this year, industrial designers are already speculating how engineers may use...
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Terry Costlow
April 9, 2009
Energy Scavenging Offers Endless Power Possibilities
The universe is full of energy, and efforts to harvest that ambient energy are as old as the windmill and sailing ships. The convergence of three exponentially improving technologies, however, is creating striking new opportunities for ambient energy harvesting that can power applications unthinkable only a few years ago. The key to unlocking these opportunities is effectively managing minuscule amounts of power. Talk about extracting energy from the...
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Richard Quinnell
March 26, 2009
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...
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Roger Allan
March 26, 2009
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...
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Roger Allan
March 12, 2009
Keep Current With New Battery Technologies
A stunning array of battery types provides portable power for a sea of applications —from traction motors in interurban buses to flea-power transmitters in wireless mesh networks that harvest microscopic amounts of energy from small photovoltaic cells or piezo beams (Fig. 1). Despite a history that traces back at least to 1800, engineers continue to be presented with new chemistries and novel ways of exploiting the...
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Don Tuite
February 26, 2009
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...
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Roger Allan
February 26, 2009
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...
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Roger Allan
February 26, 2009
Representative Silicon MEMS Microphones
See "Representative Silicon MEMS Microphones, Commercially Available or Under Development"...
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Roger Allan
February 12, 2009
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...
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Roger Allan
February 12, 2009
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...
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Roger Allan
January 29, 2009
Regulatory Compliance Means Going The Extra Green Mile
Just when you thought you were beginning to understand Europe’s environmental regulations, the European Union turns the tables and will change them again. In the process, these requirements will become much more complicated, more costly, and—for product designers—more challenging. Adding to this growing complexity is the emergence of environmental restrictions that target the electronics industry from China, Korea, and India (...
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Ron Schneiderman
December 11, 2008
Controlling The Home
Multimedia is already part of home-automation systems. Take, for instance, Control4’s range of products from lighting and climate control to switched audio. Wallmount LCD panels provide a convenient portal to an array of controllable options within the home (see the figure). Home-automation system installers typically handle this class of product. In the past, these systems were...
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William Wong
December 11, 2008
The Real Universal Remote
One common element between home-automation and media systems are control points. These may be panels, radio or infrared remotes, and PCs. They could also be cell phones, wireless phones, or MP3 players. Unfortunately, the universal remote doesn’t exist yet. Infrared TV remote controls are a start, but they can be a pain to program. They also need to be pointed at the appropriate device or an action will not be recognized. Moreover, this type of remote is...
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William Wong
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