[Engineering Feature] Leading-Edge Products Help Designers Put A Stopper In The Power Amp's Power Drain
Transmitter power amplifiers (PAs) consume more power than any other circuit in today’s wireless applications. In some cases, PAs swallow up more than 50% of the power budget. Also, their inefficiency produces excessive wasted power as heat. With cellular basestations joining the green trend and cell phones including ever more features and multiple radios that shorten battery life, the industry is turning its attention to the PA. One main factor causes the PA’s...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] MMICs Meet Bandwidth Demands At Millimeter-Wave Frequencies
Microwave component and module manufacture has been well understood and automated for many years. Myriad applications benefit from the capabilities driven by high volumes of microwave point-to-point links. But at frequencies around 60 GHz, the manufacture of millimeter-wave systems turns from a highvolume automated operation into a hand-tuned black art. Success in building millimeter-wave modules and subsystems by integrating very high-frequency monolithic...
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John McNicol
[Leapfrog: First Look] Back-Illuminated CMOS Imagers May Increase Cell-Phone Camera Sensitivity By Two F-Stops
Tessera Technologies reports a conflict (and resolution) between the need to reduce cell-phone imager chip cost and size by producing everhigher- resolution imagers on smaller die and the consumer demand for digital-camera image quality in cell phones. The most recent solutions separate image capture from image processing—in other words, moving that processing, which can be accomplished using relatively cheap CMOS, off the more expensive imager chip. The...
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Don Tuite
[Leapfrog: First Look] Haptic Feedback Chips Make Virtual-Button Applications On Handheld Devices A Snap
V irtual pushbutton switches on handheld screens may work well, but users also want haptic feedback telling them their button-push was effective. Haptic feedback enthusiasts fondly remember the “buckling spring” technology of the IBM Model M keyboard, but time moves on. Designers who want to include haptic feedback for virtual buttons on a flat piece of glass today should look at Maxim’s MAX11810 and MAX11811 (25-MHz SPI or 400-kHz I2C). These...
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Don Tuite
[Design View / Design Solution] Develop Seamless Interconnection Among Multiple General-Purpose Boards
As the cost to create ASICs continues to climb, a board design featuring multiple, more generic ICs becomes attractive. But arriving at a standardized, high-speed board interconnect has proved difficult. The XMOS Link, as implemented in the XS1 family of programmable devices, can be used as a standard board interconnect for seamless connection between multiple devices to address the problem. In particular, an XMOS Link can be readily implemented in an...
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Sam Garcia
[Ideas For Design] Generate A Differential Signal Using A Transformer Plus Signal Splitter
Most function generators and network analyzers have one port to provide the output signal. If a differential signal is needed, then you may need to acquire a network analyzer with two output ports at great cost. Of course, there are alternate solutions in generating a differential signal without acquiring expensive equipment. The two most popular solutions include the use of a transformer or a power splitter. Why do we want to generate a differential ...
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Raymond Ho
[Ideas For Design] Create A Simple Crowbar To Protect Prototypes From Supply Overvoltage
Designers often test prototypes with a variable-voltage bench power supply. If they leave the bench for any length of time, someone may borrow the supply or otherwise change the voltage to a level that could damage components in the prototype. This problem can be prevented by using a variable-voltage “crowbar” circuit connected across the power-supply terminals along with the prototype under test (...
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Sanjay R. Chendvankar
[Editorial] New Wireless Devices Keep Coming At Me
When we started planning this Wireless Everywhere issue, I naturally began to think of the wireless devices I’ve been using more and more in my own life. Strangely enough, I haven’t purchased any of my latest gadgets myself. I’ve obtained them either from my company, Penton Media, or through review units sent by enterprising public relations people. 3G GADGETS ARE PILING UP For me, 3G started with a Motorola Q that I...
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Joseph Desposito
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Dataplane Processing Unit More Flexible Than DSP
Baseband communications dataplane processing is one of the most demanding environments around. Tensilica’s ConnX Baseband Engine is designed to address this challenge (see the figure). Tensilica calls its architecture a dataplane processing unit (DPU), in contrast with CPUs and DSPs. The processor cores are based on Tensilica’s Extensa LX. The system includes one scalar core plus eight SIMD...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Support Will Have Android Showing Up In Embedded Apps
Android has lots of buzz, especially when it comes to smart phones. But it also will be showing up in embedded applications as the range of support expands. One of the leaders is Mentor Graphics. Its recent acquisition of Embedded Alley, a major Android supporter, was highlighted at this year’s DAC 2009 show. Mentor Graphics is looking to support smart-phone developers as well as anyone else interested in utilizing Android in an embedded application....
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 7-in. LCD Panel Eases Integration
Reach Technology’s 7-in. Evervision LCD module builds on a wide 130° viewing angle color LCD and adds a 32-bit ARMbased SLCD5 controller with SD card memory support and a serial interface. The backlit display has a resolution of 800 by 600. Operating temperature ranges from –20°C to 70°C. Resistive touchscreen support is optional. Power requirements are 12 V dc and 900 mA. REACH TECHNOLOGY ...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] USB-SATA Bridge Chip Breaks USB 3.0 Barrier
Fujitsu’s 65-nm MB86C30A USB 3.0-SATA Bridge chip looks to bring the full performance of SATA storage to USB. USB 3.0 specs up USB 2.0’s 480-Mbit/s transfer rate to 5-Gbit/s transfer. This translates into 300 Mbytes/s versus USB 2.0’s 37 Mbytes/s. This is also on par with SATA-II’s 3 Gbits/s with a typical throughput on the order of 260 Mbytes/s. This matching performance is key for external storage units. The chip also incorporates a 32-bit RISC processor and ...
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William Wong
[Engineering Essentials] Multi-Antenna Techniques Require Thorough Testing Solutions
Multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) is the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communication performance. Performance is the operative word here, in terms of capacity, bandwidth, throughput, range, or a host of other parameters that enhance the user experience. Advanced wireless communications standards such as Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11), WiMAX (IEEE 802.16), and LTE (Long- Term Evolution from 3GPP) use multiple ...
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Graham Celine
