[Engineering Feature] Speed-Merchant UWB Ushers In Wireless Video
Once again, we're on the verge of the launch of a new wireless technology that will change how we use our electronic products. And much like other wireless technologies, the change will be very positive. With Ultra-Wideband (UWB), we will enjoy high-speed wireless connectivity in consumer products, especially TV and PCs. But like most other wireless technologies, UWB is taking more time than expected to get out the door. UWB is a wonky kind of wireless, but what...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] An Out-Of-Box Experience: Development Kits
Inexpensive development kits can realistically open the door to a world of options. In the past, designers would stick with a chip family or vendor due to the high cost of changing platforms and the difficulty in evaluating new systems outside their normal realm. Vendor loyalty is still valuable, but the ability to quickly evaluate new hardware platforms lets designers check out alternatives for their favored vendors or other vendors. Cost isn't the only reason for the flood of...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] Digital-IBA Controller Mophs To Monolithic
WITH EXPANDED CONTROL CAPABILITIES AND A SHRINKING footprint, Power-One's digital-IBA (intermediate bus architecture) controller goes from a module to a chip—with no change in price. The IBA scheme manages and controls power distribution to individual loads on circuit boards in complex systems. At first glance, the controller-on-a-chip may seem like an incremental development. But with recent announcements concerning PMBus-compliant products and Vicor's factorized power...
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Don Tuite
[Leapfrog: First Look] Tiny 10-A POL Module Needs Less Bulk Capacitance
THERE'S A NEW ENTRY IN THE NON-ISOLATED point-of-load (niPOL) sweepstakes. Linear Technology's 10-A (14-A peak) step-down regulator module incorporates everything except input and output capacitors in a lowprofile (2.8 mm), 15- by 15-mm surfacemount land-grid array package. The module consists of a current-mode controller, ultra-low RDS(ON) FETs with fast switching speed and integrated Schottky diodes, and an inductor. Thanks to its low package profile, it can be mounted on the...
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Don Tuite
[Design View / Design Solution] Minimize The Cost Impact Of Your Power-Factor-Correction Circuit
Most applications that use power factor correction (PFC) are mandated by regulatory requirements like the IEC1000-3-2 harmonic reduction requirement in force since January 1, 2001. The regulation places certain limits on harmonic currents drawn by power supplies. This, in turn, requires an active PFC circuit. Some low-power, cost-sensitive applications still manage to use a passive PFC circuit. Comprised of only inductors and capacitors, a passive PFC circuit is simple and efficient for...
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Vipin Bothra
[Ideas For Design] Design A 25-W Mini-Ballast For Compact Fluorescent Lamps
For decades, and continuing today, the fluorescent lamp has been the cheapest way to produce white light with the minimum amount of energy taken from the mains (lumens/watt). As such, hundreds of millions of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are sold every year, with an ever-increasing demand for higher reliability. Today's lighting systems need ballast control functions to drive compact fluorescent lamps, adding cost and requiring more design time. Also, these functions must often be...
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Tom Ribarich
[Ideas For Design] Add Universal Protection For Sensitive Lab Circuits
Electronics lab experiments often use low-power control cards that can fail even in expert hands. These cards contain ICs that fail if the supply voltage exceeds a certain value or has an unsuitable polarity. Also, current must be limited to avoid damage to the card. Therefore, protection against inverted polarity, overvoltage, and overcurrent is needed. In our case, the control card that we wanted to protect consumed less than 50 mA, a negative input voltage wasn't allowed, and a sensitive...
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Juan Ejea
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[POV: Point Of View] RoHs Compliance: Take A Supply-Chain Perspective
Electronic manufacturers have less than eight months left to ensure compliance with the EU's Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive. Various interpretations of the directive's requirements have exacerbated the significant technological challenges to successful compliance. But these guidelines will go a long way toward helping you reach that goal. As a global manufacturer of electronic equipment, IBM must ensure all of its equipment sold in the EU complies with...
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Jacklin A. Adams
[Editorial] GSPx Shows Multiprocessors To Meet Video's Challenges
The Global Signal Processing Exposition (GSPx) last month in Santa Clara provided a great opportunity to catch up on the latest challenges and solutions in this fast-moving world. To sum up the trends in a single word: multiprocessors. Intel and AMD have made headlines with the dual-core approach. But GSPx made it clear that the multiprocessor trend is far-reaching and rapidly becoming an essential approach to solving today's signal-processing challenges. For the uninitiated,...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: I had to laugh at your recent column.* I experienced similar product destruction with my (brand x) air cleaner. Let's see, I lost: all belts and wheels in two high-end (industrial) VCRs—and one a second time. Also, belts in three audio CD players, in a DVD player, three computer CD drives and one DVD drive, plus a belt in a vacuum cleaner—three times. (Ouch!! That's painful!! /rap) The air cleaner seems to be two appliances in one. It has an...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Industry Barometer
According to Electronic Design's most recent poll, the outlook for design projects is trending up nicely as the year comes to a close. Only 30% of respondents are concerned about slowdowns or layoffs. That's 10 percentage points less than three months ago, putting the current confidence level on par with the outlook back in December 2004. More than half of designers indicate either a good or increased amount of projects, and 26%—the highest percentage all year— say they...
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Lisa Maliniak
[TechView: Analog & Power] APEC 2006 Moves From New Orleans To Dallas
The IEEE's 2006 Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC) originally was slated for February in New Orleans. Then hurricane Katrina hit. The conference managers wanted to stay out of the way of relief efforts, so they scrambled and found a new venue. The show and conference now will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas, March 19-23. Let's say you were already set to go. So, you only have to shift your plans by a month. Now let's say you wanted to go,...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Classic Transformer-Design Text Available Again
THE POWER SOURCES MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION (PSMA) is celebrating its twentieth anniversary by offering hardcopy reprints of a classic text on transformer design for less than a student would have paid for it in college. If you're an EE who got into the design of magnetics in school, you may have used Nathan Grossner's classic Transformers for Electronic Circuits as a text—or you would have if you're in a certain narrow age bracket. The book only came out in 1983,...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Communications] Twisted Pair Defies The Laws Of Physics With 10 Gbits/s
The first time someone told me it was possible to transmit baseband serial digital signals at 10 Gbits/s over copper cable, I thought it was some kind of April Fool's gag. But it really is happening. It just isn't easy. Several companies have been working on a cheap way to implement 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) over the installed base of CAT5e/6 twisted pair. 10GE has been around a while, but its adoption has been limited because of the higher cost of the fiber-optic cable...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Embedded] MCU Families Have Lots Of Life Yet
The HC08 and Coldfire microcontroller (MCU) dynasties from Freescale continue with the MC9S08Q 8-bit family and the 32-bit MCF532x and MCF537x MCUs. The MC9SO8Q targets low-power applications requiring a wide range of peripherals and a small footprint. It includes a high-resolution analog-to-digital converter and an on-chip clock. The 32-bit Coldfire family targets connectivity, control, and security applications. It includes hardware encryption support and a range of...
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William Wong
[TechView: Embedded] SBC Handles Analog And Network
THE ELEKTRA ELK200-EA-XT PC/104 single-board computer (SBC) from Diamond Systems combines analog and digital data acquision with extensive communication support. It includes four serial ports and 10/100-BaseT Ethernet, as well as USB 1.1 support. The analog complement includes a 100-KHz analog-to-digital converter with a 512-sample time-stamped FIFO. There also is a quad-channel 12-bit digital-to-analog converter. The board has 24 programmable digital I/O lines and two...
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William Wong
[TechView: Test] Generator-BERT Combo Simplifies Jitter-Tolerance Testing To 12.5 GHz
With 5-Gbit/s and better serial bus standards coming soon, design and test of the next generation of serial bus devices will feature a cast of significant signal integrity and jitter issues. New transmission techniques, like spread-spectrum clocking, will make device characterization more difficult. The answer, in Agilent Technologies' view, is the N4903A serial bit-error-rate tester (BERT) with advanced jitter-generation for jitter-tolerance testing of serial devices at up to...
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John Novellino
[TechView: Test] Protocol Analyzer Manages Network-To-Probe-To-PC Triple Play
TRIPLE-PLAY (VOICE, DATA, AND VIDEO) services are driving the market for 3G mobile networks. The design, deployment, and operation of these networks, which are based on the highly complex Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), present difficult challenges. Tektronix's NSA18 protocol analysis system for UTRAN (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) meets these challenges with automated topology discovery and analysis of interactions between network components. Its...
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John Novellino
[TechView: EDA] SystemVerilog Verification Spans Planning To Closure
In design verification, one size does not fit all. What works on the enterprise level may not work for the design team or individual designer, and vice versa. On the heels of its acquisition of Verisity, Cadence has rethought its approach to verification and resegmented its products into a multitiered structure that mimics the old Verisity approach. The first fruits of that rethinking have arrived in the form of the Incisive Design Team family of products. It was developed for...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] EDA Roundup
TO DRIVE CUSTOM PROCESSOR DESIGN, CoWare and Associated Compiler Experts (ACE) have forged a multiyear strategic alliance. Under its terms, CoWare will continue to deliver ACE's C-Compiler technology deeply integrated into the CoWare LISATek processor design tool suite. The LISATek suite enables the design of custom processors by specifying the optimum instruction set, profiling the application on the automatically generated processor model, and finally generating the synthesizable RTL from...
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David Maliniak
