[Engineering Feature] High-Definition Radio: It's The New Wave
The crowded radio airwaves are crackling. Local AM and FM stations remain a staple among all age groups, whether you're tuned in while stuck in morning traffic or you've got the head-phones on during an evening jog. The Sirius and XM satellite radio business also continues to soar—it now totals just over 10 million subscribers. Internet radio plugs along, though few have tried it. And aren't podcasts just another form of radio? Now you can add another...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] Wireless Sensing Spawns The Connected World
Seamless connectivity between people, objects, and events—such a climate once seemed so daunting. Not any more, thanks to rapid-fire advances made in sensor, computing, and communications technologies, let alone the pervasive use of the Internet. Entirely new applications will embed computing power and wireless communications in our daily lives. Advances in both telecom and the Internet will converge to deliver ubiquitous wireless sensor networks and...
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Roger Allan
[Leapfrog: First Look] Air Conditioner Chip Set Is Way Cool
If you think appliances built for the North American market lag in innovation, you're probably right. For decades, white goods built for Europe and Asia have been quieter and more efficient. But as the implications of rising energy costs sink in, this is changing. Some companies in the U.S. and Canada are updating their product emphasis to take advantage of overseas markets' latest goal—efficiency without a price premium. For instance, take International Rectifier's latest...
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Don Tuite
[Design View / Design Solution] Master On-Chip Embedded Multiprocessor Coherence
Without a doubt, embedded systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) are becoming ?software-rich,?1 and they're incorporating more and more processors on one chip. The driving forces behind these changes are advances in fabrication technology (propelled by Moore's Law) to address short time-to-market pressures, greater design complexity, and the amortizing of high-cost ASIC fabrication through design reuse. There's also the economic benefit of higher performance with backward-compatibility...
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Sanjay Vishin
[Ideas For Design] Algorithm, Simple Circuit Add Natural Voice To A Design
Working on an embedded project? An 8-bit microcontroller with a pulse (PWM) peripheral can provide a low-cost and easy solution to adding natural voice to your next embedded endeavor. We recently implemented this technique in SuitSat-1 (see "Latest Radio Amateur Satellite Is No Empty Suit," March 16, 2006, p. 25). Listeners could hear recordings of schoolchildren saying "greetings from space," as well as telemetry readings (time, temperature, and battery voltage). ...
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Steven Bible
[Ideas For Design] Simple Toggle-Switch Driver Operates Coaxial RF Switches
Working on an embedded project? An 8-bit microcontroller with a pulsewidthmodulation (PWM) peripheral can provide a low-cost and easy solution to adding natural voice to your next embedded endeavor. We recently implemented this technique in SuitSat-1 (see "Latest Radio Amateur Satellite Is No Empty Suit," March 16, 2006, p. 25). Listeners could hear recordings of schoolchildren saying "greetings from space," as well as telemetry readings (time, temperature, and battery...
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Jiri Polivka
[POV: Point Of View] EDA Must Free Designers To Focus On Differentiation
Today's IC designers are in a tough spot. Differentiation has never been more important to the success of their products. Intensely competitive markets and shrinking product life cycles place a premium on any competitive edge. In an ideal world, designers would focus on making their product superior to its competitors. But the rising complexity of IC design drives them in a different direction. With ICs often integrating digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuits,...
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Mike Fister
[Editorial] Breaking The Fossil-Fuel Addicton: GM Readies Fuel Cells For The Masses
President Bush has called us a nation "addicted to oil." I had a taste of freedom from our fossil-fuel fixation when I road-tested a car powered by hydrogen fuel cells at GM's Advanced Technology Center in Torrance, Calif., earlier this month. I've written about fuel cells before. But harvesting their power for a spin around the block has made me a true believer in the technology's viability to break our oil dependency and to do so soon, particularly if President Bush...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Mental Math Stuff, Anyhow?
Some night when you can't get to sleep, try these puzzles in your head in the dark. They're at least as good as counting sheep. I've done them in my head, and they're kinda fun. 1. Little Egbert bought a mountain. Its shape was a perfect hemisphere with a 5270-ft radius, set on a flat plain. He decided to build a railroad to transport him to the top. It was a monorail, which made it very easy to plan, with minimum width, and only one rail. The rail was...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Piezoelectric Motor Delivers Precise Positioning In Small Applications
Sometimes you need a really small motor, and stepper motors and voice coil motors just won't cut it. Try the Squiggle series of piezoelectric motors from New Scale Technologies. These devices can deliver 10-µm closed-loop repeatability. They're based on a linear actuator that generates ultrasonic vibrations at 115 kHz in a threaded nut. This nut vibrates in an orbit that resembles a person's hips in a hulahoop motion. The microscopic motion causes the mating...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: The Industry] Electronic Design Industry Barometer Poll: Q1 2006
What's your outlook on the economic health of the electronics industry for this quarter? Robust and growing 13% Showing moderate strength 63% Stagnant 16% Somewhat weak 6% A steep decline 2% How's your project workload shaping up for the next quarter? Too much to manage 15% ...
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Lisa Maliniak
[TechView: Analog & Power] Fast High-Voltage Pin Driver Doubles ATE Throughput
Along the lines of "Who watches the watchmen?" one of the toughest jobs for analog electronics has always been driving the pins on automatic test equipment (ATE). In this case, we're talking about speed coupled with high drive for test during burn-in (TDBI) applications. Intersil's ISL55100A quad pin electronics driver/window comparator drives up to 18 V and runs up to 65 MHz (see the figure). The IC has twice the drive...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Quater-Brick Power Density Hits 380 W
In telecom and data-center applications, dc-dc brick converters' power density keeps going up to match the number of point-of load (POL) converters on the board. The latest in the quarter-brick format (57.9 by 36.8 by 12.7 mm) is Ericsson Power Modules' PKM4000BPI series, which delivers up to 380 W from a 36- to 75-V input range (see the figure). These converters particularly target designs based on the Advanced Telecom ...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Digital] Graphics Controller Takes Aim At Embedded Applications
The MB86276 graphics display controller targets 2D applications in the U.S. like mid-range car navigation systems and entertainment products—similar to products now being designed into high-end vehicles in Japan and Europe. Developed by Fujitsu Microelectronics, it's a streamlined version of the company's previous MC86296 3D device. Still, the MB86276 includes many of the MC86296's special features. These include dual display support, video capture, and...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: Test] Control, Analysis Software Connects Instruments To PCs Via USB
Specifically designed for the DPO4000 scopes and AFG3000 waveform generators, NI SignalExpress Tektronix Edition is an interactive software package that lets users acquire, analyze, and document measurements via their PCs without programming. The software permits direct plug-and-play connection of the PC to the Tektronix Instruments through USB. With one mouse click, users can configure the instrument communication and access a live view of the waveform data or...
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John Novellino
[TechView: Test] Small Scopes Deliver Big Debug Capability
The latest family of Tektronix digital phosphor oscilloscopes speeds up the debugging of new designs, especially embedded systems, by making it easier to view, navigate, and analyze large amounts of acquired waveform data. To do that, the four DPO4000 scopes feature serial triggering, protocol decode capability, USB plug-and-play PC connectivity, a 10.4-in. XGA display, and Wave Inspector, Tektronix's new front-panel control for intuitive zooming and panning of data. A standard...
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John Novellino
[TechView: EDA] Verification Methodology Spans Plan To Closure
Verification has always been hard, but it's growing exponentially more difficult with increasing system-on a-chip (SoC) complexity. It's tempting for verification teams to adopt new languages, methodologies, and technologies to turn up those corner-case bugs. Yet doing so can only increase the risk factors, unless the would-be adopters have solid support. To reduce those risks, Cadence's latest Web-based system gives verification teams a handle on the resources...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: Wireless] Low-Power Wi-Fi Breakthrough Offers Active RFID And Location Services
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is one of the fastest growing wireless technologies. It brings the benefits of both barcode and wireless technology to asset management, product tracking, shipping and transportation ID, inventory control, and location detection. According to G2 Microsystems' marketing data, based on estimates from of the major market research firms, the market for asset tracking by RFID is expected to grow from a little over $100 million in 2006...
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Louis E. Frenzel
