Analog Hotspot

The typical entertainment center is more than TV nowadays. And all of these options means a variety of video standards. HDTV And DTV In the U.S., broadcasting companies face several challenges stemming from Congress' requirement for across-the-board DTV signaling by 2009 in both standard-definition television (SDTV) and HDTV. Greater obstacles await HDTV-capable television manufacturers, as they try to overcome three particularly thorny problems....

If you want to add your own twist to a codec or video-processing technique, upgrade equipment in-system, or simply look for a less expensive solution, skip dedicated silicon and go with a DSP chip or an FPGA that can be updated in-system. IP OFFERINGS If you're looking for an IP solution, Hantro sells encoder/decoder IP that can handle MPEG-4 Simple Profile, H.263 Profile 0, H.264 Baseline, VC-1 Simple Profile, and JPEG...

In addressing some of the standard versus resolution issues resident with flat-panel HDTV design, Intersil first decided to upgrade the PLL that generates the pixel clock. HD resolution requires a PLL with low jitter. However, the range of resolutions is tough for analog PLLs to handle. This is because designers would have to optimize the loop filter across horizontal frequencies from 10 to 150 kHz. So, Intersil designed a digital PLL with a digital loop controller and a numerically...

Legacy SD video signals from home videotapes and copy-protected commercial tapes and DVDs introduce their own problems in multistandard HDTV receivers. One problem is simply that SD sync signals are unterminated, and the resulting reflections on the transmission line can distort transitions and lead to false triggering. VCR head switching and fast-forward/rewind modes introduce other challenges, as does Macrovision copy-protection. The problem with head switching is that it can...

In the not-too-distant future, a single fiber-optic cable will deliver phone service, an Internet connection, and of course, digital television (DTV), movies, and other multimedia to the home. Until that time, though, most consumers will have to deal with some combination of plain-old telephone-service phone wires, digital satellite, cable, Ethernet, USB, wireless networks, and so on. If we narrow the focus to DTV and other forms of high-resolution video, most...

Hi Bob: It's funny you used that circuit to demonstrate "Error Budget," as we recently went through this exercise with the exact same circuit as Figure 1 (see "What's All This Error Budget Stuff, Anyhow?" June 8, p. 18). Too bad it was only done after we discovered the problem while we were evaluating a production run. (Ouch! The circuit of Figure 2 is cheap, but the first circuit is less accurate, even if you shop for 6-cent 0.1% resistors. /rap) A...

The transition from diodes to synchronous-rectification (SR) MOSFETs in secondary circuits of flyback converters increases with each new generation of MOSFETs, improving performance at little or no cost penalty. SR MOSFETs can be more efficient than diodes, allowing lower operating temperatures and smaller heat sinks, or no heat sinks at all. However, they require a control circuit to manage their switching behavior in order to emulate a diode. The usual synchronous rectifier control method...

Various power-converter architectures use their transformer in different modes. In continuous conduction mode (CCM), the magnetic field never completely collapses due to the transformer's mode of operation. Instead, the energizing portion of the electromagnetic cycle begins before the de-energizing portion of the cycle completely converts the stored magnetic field back into electrical current. If you imagine the triangular current waveform that results from a square-wave voltage drive on the...

A SIC design isn't for the faint of heart. Success requires expertise, and the challenges increase with the movement to submicron designs. Yet with the complexities of ASIC design, customers will often leave performance on the table. Partnering with an integrated device manufacturer (IDM) that understands the process can let customers focus their resources where they can add the most value, the design itself. The IDM can manage the other areas of the process, speeding time-to-market...

Hey Bob: This motorcycle road-racing engineer can tell you that the whole nitrogen-fill thing is usually a load of you know what (see "Bob's Mailbox," March 16, p. 20). The first thing they do when demounting/mounting your tire is to spray the entire bead area with copious amounts of soapy water. Repeatedly. So all the dry nitrogen in the world isn't going to amount to a hill of beans when the environment inside the tire is quite moist. To make it worth anything you'd need...

The hottest battleground today among analog-to-digital converter (ADC) suppliers is the successive-approximation register (SAR) arena. SARs serve the medical/industrial market with zero latency and high linearity at modest conversion rates. New SAR products seem to notch up improved performance specifications every three to four months. The latest entry, Texas Instruments 16-bit ADS8422, raises the ante on speed by 33% (see the...

How does an analog foundry reduce power consumption in an RF mixed-signal process while accommodating for the differences in scalability between logic and analog circuit elements? Jazz Semiconductor plans to do it with a 0.13-µm silicon-germanium (SiGe) biCMOS technology that combines 90-GHz SiGe transistors with the company s existing 1.2-V, 0.13-µm digital CMOS platform. A 2.8-µm thick top metal layer boosts inductor performance. Also part of...

Today's system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs contain more analog/mixed-signal (A/M-S) content than ever, but analog designers and device modelers continue to struggle with their development efforts. A/M-S models are developed with HDL-dependent (hardware description language) tools that are tied to proprietary EDA platforms. This limits productivity and impedes analog-IP reuse. Along comes Lynguent, a privately held startup, with its ModLyng integrated modeling...

Several factors influence the significant growth of electronics in the automotive arena, chief among them are technology, competition, performance, safety and regulations. As semiconductor technology advances, component costs are becoming lower and devices become more reliable than electromechanical solutions. Competition is driven by the fact that carmakers are using electronics-based features. Car makers are also in need of optimizing fuel consumption levels and engine performance, which...

Think about cars from the past. Actuators drove almost every mechanical and hydraulic system. Nowadays, there's an alphabet soup of electronic components and systems. Electronic sensors augment or have even replaced the various mechanical systems. Some high-end cars feature as many as 70 electronic-control units (ECUs). The average car has up to 35 sensors, while a high-end model has up to 60. The typical car also carries about a half-dozen airbags. What it all means is that today's cars are...

When it comes to hot markets, you can't leave China and India out of the discussion. They're not only huge consumers of products and services, but major semiconductor, wireless, and other American companies are finding they must spend millions to set up local design and manufacturing centers if they hope to establish themselves as major market players in these countries. Indeed, the rate of U.S. companies announcing and establishing new R&D and manufacturing facilities in China...

You can't get rid of the mixer in any RF or wireless product. That makes a good mixer the very core of every RF design. But you don't have to worry about that thanks to Linear Technology's LT5560. It can be used for upconversion or downconversion in public service radios, WiMAX transceivers, RFID readers, VHF/UHF transceivers, satellite receivers, or cell-phone basestations. Its operational frequency ranges from 10 kHz to 4 GHz. Its double-balanced mixer core design maximizes...

Dear Bob: When looking at datasheets or application notes that have the schematics of an IC in them, I often see very strange components; transistors with two, three, or even four collectors or emitters, and a component that looks like a capacitor where one plate is a resistor. The LM675 datasheet on page 5 has both of these. For example, check out Q12, Q15, Q16, and R23. Application Note 446B on the LM12 internal design also has these. On page 3, Figure 3, Q3 and Q4 have two...

Recently, International Rectifier released its iMotion control platform for air conditioners in China and Japan (see "Air Conditioner Chip Set Is Way Cool," March 30, 2006, p. 36). This month, IR released a version for washing machines with a global market. The iMotion platform comprises a digital-control IC and a driver IC with on-board power devices. The control IC's 8051 core handles the user interface and a custom motion-control engine (MCE) that...

Faster, more powerful processing. A better handle on nonlinear wave propagation. Higher-performance transducers. The development of specialized contrasting agents. Advances in image and real-time signal processing. All of these factors are contributing to a renaissance in ultrasonic medical imaging. Healthcare providers already have an array of impressive tools at their disposal. But ultrasound manufacturers aren't sitting tight, as they pioneer innovative machines for...