402 results found for TechView: Analog & Power, displaying items 1 - 20
October 22, 2009 Tree-To-Earth pH Difference May Generate Harvestable Energy
An experimental wireless mesh network for monitoring forests for fire danger was recently demonstrated while being powered by the trees themselves during the Global Semiconductor Alliance Emerging Opportunities Expo & Conference, held earlier this month in Santa Clara, Calif. The demonstration used energy-harvesting hardware developed by a Massachusetts company called Voltree Power. The test took place at the National Interagency Fire Center...
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Don Tuite
October 8, 2009 Powerline Carrier Modem Chip Facilitates Design Beyond Remote-Reading Meters
On Semiconductor’s AMIS- 49587 powerline carrier (PLC) modem does more than remotely read smart electric automatic meters. It invites a closer look at street lighting control, smart power plugs, building automation, and other applications that are part of the Smart Grid, which is a potentially disruptive technology that may offer new opportunities for design engineers (see “...
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Don Tuite
September 24, 2009 Transformer-Isolated RS-485/422 MEMS Transceivers Integrate DC-DC Converters, Terminations
There are other RS-485/422 transceivers with inductive isolation available, but Linear Technology has taken a step forward. Its LTM2881 µModule includes its own complete, isolated dc-dc power supply, including the transformer, eliminating the need for any external components. The integrated power supply powers the transceiver and provides an isolated 5-V supply output for powering any supporting external components. (ADI’s ADM2485 has an on-chip...
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Don Tuite
September 2, 2009
Digital Power Forum Comes To Santa Ana In Late September
The sixth annual Digital Power Forum (DPF ’09) is scheduled for Sept. 21-23 in Santa Ana, Calif. Organized by the Darnell Group, DPF ’09 will concentrate on “digital” power. That’s a slightly elusive term that can mean anything from closing the power-supply control loop in the digital domain to a wide variety of power-management technologies, from ICs for handhelds to power distribution in the data center and telco central office to the Smart Grid.
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Don Tuite
June 25, 2009 50-MHz Op Amps Self-Calibrate Offset
The MCP65X 50-MHz rail-to-rail operational amplifiers from Microchip Technology include an on-chip “mCal” calibration circuit that calibrates offset voltage at powerup or on-command. An internal power on-reset detector or a signal on an external pin initiates calibration. Self-calibration provides a lower initial voltage offset than conventional op amps, along with a means to continually control drift over time and temperature, Microchip says (...
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Don Tuite
June 25, 2009 USB Isolator Simplifies Safety In Medical, Industrial Apps
In embedded applications that use the PC architecture, the USB interface has supplanted RS-232 for remote control, diagnostics, firmware updates, configuration of operational settings, and data exchange. As with its predecessor, one drawback to USB in medical and certain industrial applications is the lack of a provision for isolation in the basic standard, though mains-powered patient monitors require it for safety cer tification, and...
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Don Tuite
April 16, 2009
dsPIC Controllers Take On Heavy-Duty SMPS Control Roles
Digital power continues to move deeper into the mainstream. Last month, Microchip Technology introduced seven PIC microcontrollers customized for switch-mode power supply (SMPS) applications. Microchip has offered SMPS controller chips before, but the new, in-circuit programmable, 16-bit dsPIC digital signal controllers (DSCs) are smaller and offer twice the performance (40 MIPS) at a lower price than the old SMPS family.
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Don Tuite
February 12, 2009 Low-Power, Dual 8-Bit ADCs Regulate Their Own Operating Voltage
The MAX19505, MAX19506, and MAX19507 8-bit, dual-channel analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) from Maxim Integrated Products provide a 49.8-dBFS signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and 69-dBc spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) at 70 MHz (see the figure). Available in speed ranges from 65 to 130 Msamples/s, they target cellular basestations and point-to-point microwave receivers, set-top boxes, or...
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Don Tuite
December 11, 2008 Fluorescent Ballast ICs Demonstrate Clever Dimming Design
International Rectifier has two new control ICs for dimming compact and tube-type fluorescents. Most designers won’t ever see them, though, because they go into the bases of compact bulbs or into lighting fixtures. Still, they’re interesting to study as examples of energy-efficient design and for the elegant way they provide dimming, including dimming in legacy systems that use triac controls. The IRS2530D DIM8 squeezes a complete dimming...
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Don Tuite
December 11, 2008 Direct Conversion Creates Pull For Continuous-Time Sigma Delta
It’s curious how a nascent trend can unleash a breakthrough technology with far-reaching effects. The case at hand involves an evolving movement toward the commoditization of basestations that tends to favor direct-conversion receivers, according to Nitin Sharma, product marketing manager for high-speed converters at Analog Devices. This trend led ADI to look at the continuous-time (CT) sigma-delta architecture for a standalone analog-to-digital...
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Don Tuite
November 19, 2008
Broadband Filter/ADC Driver Family Sports High Accuracy
A family of five single and dual low-pass active filter/analog-to-digital converter (ADC) driver amplifier devices from Linear Technology Corp. provides high performance and wide bandwidths.
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Staff
November 17, 2008 Fast ADC Sips Power, Simplifies Design-In
For portable applications as diverse as medical imaging units, professional video cameras, batterypowered software-defined radios, and industrial test and measurement designs, the 14-bit, 125-Msample/s LTC2261 analogto- digital converter (ADC) from Linear Technology dissipates 127 mW—less than one-third the power of alternative chips. The company acknowledges that much of the power savings arises from running the LTC2261 at 1.8 V (...
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Don Tuite
August 28, 2008 Chips Help Supercaps Flash White LEDs Brighter For Higher-Res Photos
As digital-camera and phone-camera resolution increases, high-resolution image sensors require more light. Firstgeneration low-res camera phones provided barely adequate flash intensity for taking closeups of friends at parties. Even second-generation camera-phone flash is still unsuitable for image sensors with greater than 3-Mpixel resolution. And that’s just talking about still photography. Video requires in-phone camera lighting to provide...
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Don Tuite
August 14, 2008 Set-Top Tuner Simplifies Design And Assembly
Tuners for set-top boxes, DVRs, PC TVtuner cards, and the like keep getting simpler to design in and less demanding to assemble into end products. Anadigics’ AIT1032 1-GHz double-conversion tuner implements upconverter, downconverter, voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), synthesizer, RF and IF amplifier, and RF and IF gain control functions with a combination of gallium-arsenide (GaAs) and silicon technologies. It’s designed to avoid...
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Don Tuite
August 14, 2008 RF Power MOSFETs Top Previous PAE Standards
Power-added efficiency (PAE) is the ratio of the difference of the power gain of an RF power amp to the dc power that amp consumes. In commercial wireless systems at 175 and 500 MHz in cell phones at 800 and 900 MHz, it’s customary to use two MOSFET stages in the final output, running off a 3.6-V rail. For those typical applications, Renesas has applied a new process technology to boost PAE. The n-channel first-stage RQA0014 has 55% higher PAE than...
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Don Tuite
June 26, 2008 Energy Harvesting Goes Commercial
Last June at Darnell’s Nanopower Forum, Face International demonstrated prototypes of its Lightning remote switching technology for home and business wiring (see “Zombies And Energy Harvesting” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 15788). At that conference, Lightning was essentially a charge stored in clouds of hope. By...
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Don Tuite
May 6, 2008
Higher-VBR MOSFETs Open New Design Opportunities
Several MOSFETs with higher breakdown voltages have hit the market. Some are rated for 40, 60, and 80 V, which is 10 V higher than existing devices in their respective classes, with significantly lower conduction losses. Others are rated for 900 V, again with improved conduction loss specs. At the high end of the breakdownvoltage range, Infineon Technologies is pushing the envelope with the industry’s first 900-V superjunction MOSFETs ...
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Don Tuite
April 24, 2008 Single Chip Digitizes High-Side Power Measurements
Single Chip Digitizes High-Side Power Measurements In-circuit power measurements frequently involve a currentsense amplifier or a hot-swap controller and an analog-todigital converter (ADC). Optimally, the current sensing is done on the high side of the load to avoid false grounds. But one problem with that approach is the presence of a high common-mode voltage on the amplifier input. Another is the typical ADC’s limited input voltage range. In addition, the cost of...
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Don Tuite
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