[Technology Report] Location Awareness—Boon Or Privacy Bane?
Location, location, location. It's a crucial factor, whether it involves real estate or simply where you're standing. Using technology to determine a location isn't all that new a concept. For years, people have used multiple receivers with directional antennas and triangulation—or radiolocation—to track down anything that emits a radio wave. And since World War II, radar has been indispensable within military operations. Now, turn things around. What happens when your technology...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] Megatrends: The Global Factor
The word megatrends isn't listed in most dictionaries. But we usually know them when we see them, especially in the electronics industry. Predicting what technologies and issues are most likely to dominate the industry is a trick business. But it's the stuff CEOs, magazine editors, and market research organizations think about every day, particularly when it comes to the market and developing new products. Or Anything Wireless "Over the next...
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Ron Schneiderman
[Technology Report] Fully Smart Buildings Still In The Blueprint Stage
It began with the thermostat—the first electric building control device. "People used to bang on the pipe to alert the superintendent to send up more heat," says Kenneth Wacks, a building automation management and engineering consultant based in Stoneham, Mass. "That led to the development of the thermostat, a signaling device from the tenant space to the basement where the boilers were." Today, control and communications technologies are converging to create the "intelligent...
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John Edwards
[Technology Report] Alternative Fuels Look To Solve Petro's Plunder
Beyond mere self-interest, there are at least two reasons EEs might want to keep an eye on developments in alternative fuels for transportation. For power engineers, the odds are strong that most future vehicles will use electric motors, either exclusively or in some kind of hybrid arrangement. For the digiterati among us, there will be control and monitoring opportunities in the vehicle and up and down the distribution chain. That sounds suspiciously like jobs and opportunity. Welcome to...
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Don Tuite
[Technology Report] Telemedicine: A Shot In The Arm For Healthcare
Advances in wireless video technology and Internet communications are just what the doctor ordered for telemedicine's leap toward ubiquity. Higher image quality, shorter latency times, faster transmission speeds, and improvements in information-technology medical databases now make it practical to administer long-distance clinical healthcare, patient and professional education, and health administration. With telemedicine, doctors can provide diagnostic and therapeutic services to...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] New Technologies Make Roads Safer... One Smart Car At A Time
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...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Wireless, Homeland Security, And Don't Forget About Cars
Is anything hotter than wireless? Maybe consumer electronics. Both are pervasive markets. But wireless is everywhere and constantly finding new applications, even where wired solutions didn't exist. There's GSM, CDMA, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Bluetooth, ISM, RFID, and ZigBee, which together represent a market in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Cell-phone penetration in the U.S. will increase from 66% in 2005 to 88% in 2009, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association's (TIA)...
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Ron Schneiderman
[Technology Report] Breaking Barriers With Mobile Media
We've always wanted to take our electronics with us. It started with vacuum tube radios. Even if they used three heavy batteries and the housing was a big suitcase, they had a handle, and that made them portable. Then came radios in cars, handheld transistor radios, and the Sony Walkman. Today we have the iPod, Game Boys, and the RAZR. More music players, game systems, and cell phones are on the way with features and forms for every taste. These advances are possible now that everything has...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] Digital Entertainment Takes Center Stage
The VCR changed the way people watched TV when it hit the market in the 1970s. No longer tethered to their television sets, consumers could record their favorite TV shows to watch at their own convenience. Consumers now have even more options for recording, storing, and viewing content. Timeshifting devices like TiVo and placeshifting devices like the Slingbox have found favor with from all walks of life (Fig. 1). This creates a...
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Christine Hintze
[Technology Report] Global Competition Eclipses America's Edge
Once famous for its endless creativity and ability to invent superior high-technology products, the United States is falling behind the rest of the world. Thanks to the growing globalization of the world's economy and improvements in China, India, and Russia, the U.S. is gradually losing its lead in creating innovative new products and services. Maybe the other countries are just catching up. Regardless, they're breathing down our necks, and it won't be long before we fall to second...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] This Little Nano Went To Market... Eventually
Is nanotechnology a myth borne of hype and marketing, or is it reality? The answer depends on your perspective. The general public may think that expectations are ridiculously high and the technology won't be viable. Not so, though, for many of the world's top scientists and engineers, who are still feverishly at work on furthering this technology. Still, it will take some time before products are realized. The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) conducted a survey...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Attack Of The Humanoid Robots
Robotics is a lot harder than it looks. But that's what makes it so challenging. Rolling, flying, and walking robots are hard enough to build. Now try creating a robot in human form. Yet the state of the art continues to improve by leaps and bounds, including a few robots that are starting to do just that. The problems associated with humanoid robots are varied and many. That's why so many projects tackle only a subset of these functions without attempting anything as complex as the...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] Homeland Security's Techno War On Terror
Dangerous times call for high-tech answers. Today's detection and neutralization systems help guard our borders against people, cargo, and vehicles that may be carrying explosives, arms, and contraband that could include pathogenic and even nuclear material. All these perils make for a lucrative industry, as analysts say the homeland security market could total tens of billions of dollars. Just look at the technologies in the mix: X-ray, ultrasonic, neutron-bombardment, gravity gradient,...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Seek And Ye Shall Find
Is engineering going to be a good career move over the next several years? It's a mixed picture at the moment, especially if you're still in school. The U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the demand for EEs to be up 9.7% between 2004 and 2014. A 10% increase over 10 years may not seem like much. But engineers looking for a new job can expect to find openings in the not too distant future, especially management positions, as baby boomers retire and begin to...
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Ron Schneiderman
[Technology Report] Smaller Servers, Larger Performance
It all began in 1952, when the ILLIAC I (Illinois Automatic Computer) graced the stage at the University of Illinois. By 1956, this machine had more compute power than all of Bell Labs— not bad for a 4.5-ton, 10- by 2- by 8.5-ft box filled with more than 2800 vacuum tubes and 64-kword drum storage. Eventually, the infamous ILLIAC IV vector processor incorporated 256 processors in its design. The latest single-chip, multicore processors run rings around these dinosaurs. But the...
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William Wong
[Editorial] Competitiveness Initiative: A Plan For You And The U.S.
Things are looking brighter for EEs these days. Judging from our most recent Barometer Poll, in which we ask Electronic Design readers how you're feeling about your current job stability and the prospects for work in the pipeline, it seems that these are good times. More than 65% of you see your workload rising, 28% see things holding steady, and just 7% see fewer projects coming down the pike. Furthermore, the poll also asked which one professional interest is of greatest...
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Mark David
[Design FAQs] Voltage Reference ICs
What is a voltage reference IC? A voltage reference IC is an accurate, temperature-compensated voltage source that provides specific output voltage values, such as 1.225, 4.096, or 10.000 V. What are the two basic topologies for voltage reference ICs? Voltage reference ICs may be either shunt (twoterminal) or series (three-terminal) types. How is a shunt reference IC configured? The shunt reference IC employs an external series...
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Sam Davis
