[Engineering Feature] Unmanned Military Vehicles: Robots On The Rise
Unmanned vehicles represent the new cornerstone of the military. The U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) augmented its latest manned ground vehicles (MGVs) with an array of unmanned air and ground vehicles. The U.S. Air Force and Navy also have a number of unmanned vehicles in the works and deployed around the world. Because of their lower cost, these vehicles are quickly finding their way into every military organization on the planet. The U.S. Army...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] Digital Video Processing IP
Along with the many digital video processing chips available to designers, intellectual- property (IP) options are available for those who need to design their own chips to meet highly customized requirements. These options include RTL cores for system-on-a-chip (SoC) design as well as soft IP for FPGA-based development. IP providers typically offer substantial software support, too. Hardware video-codec IP is available from companies such as On2 Technologies....
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Richard Quinnell
[Technology Report] Lights, Camera, Process!
After a decade of development and standardization efforts, digital video is now poised to take over broadcast television. With this transition, some digital video processor ICs are moving toward commodity status while others embrace innovation and diversification. The result of this shift is a growing range of product offerings as well as an open door to a host of new video applications. General-purpose DSPs from companies like Analog Devices and Texas...
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Richard Quinnell
[Leapfrog: First Look] USB 3.0 Protocol Analyzer Jumpstarts 4.8-Gbit/s I/O Projects
The USB 3.0 standard is almost upon us, and some of you are waiting to begin your new, faster I/O designs around it. Full ratification isn’t expected until later this year. When that happens, you’ll want to be the first in what appears to be some new markets for this ubiquitous I/O protocol. Online Poll Thanks to new processors, digital video is appearing...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Design View / Design Solution] UWB In The 6- To 10-GHz Spectrum Presents Opportunities And Challenges
Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio, originally blessed by the FCC in 2002, has since been implemented in several different forms. This wide-bandwidth wireless technology uses low power to transmit highspeed data to 480 Mbits/s over short distances in the 3.1- to 10.6-GHz range. The most common implementation uses the WiMedia Allianceâ??s Multiband Orthogonal Frequency- Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) standard. Commercial chips and products have been available for...
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Jim Lansford
[Ideas For Design] Switched-Capacitor-Based Bandpass Filter Boasts (Nearly) Rectangular Shape
The filter described below is useful for detecting a signal that’s closely surrounded by spurs, even when the task is complicated by the frequency of the signal of interest wandering by a few percent. For example, in telecom, a pilot signal can originate from sources scattered around the world. Assume a 10.0-kHz signal of choice. Due to variations in oscillators, temperature conditions, and aging, a frequency deviation of ±200 Hz can be...
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Samuel Kerem
[Ideas For Design] Optically Isolated 4- To 20-mA Current-Loop Transmitter Is Accurate, Inexpensive
Galvanically (that is, optically or electromagnetically) isolated 4- to 20-mA current loops offer robust noise immunity and tolerate long cable runs. These advantages, combined with simple unshielded two-wire cabling, make this mature signaling standard popular for transmitting analog data in noisy industrial and process control environments. Unfortunately, the conversion of an analog voltage output to an isolated current-loop signal is relatively complicated. In...
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W. Stephen Woodward
[Ideas For Design] Simple Ambient Light Sensor Controls White LED Driver
This idea describes a white- LED (WLED) driver circuit controlled by a simple ambient light sensor (ALS). A typical application would be a brightness control for cell-phone backlighting. On a very sunny day, the brightness will increase to improve the visibility. The circuit uses the IA2505 four-channel WLED (Fig. 1). Each LED can be driven up to 20 mA, with the drive current...
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Sundaresan Sundararaj
[POV: Point Of View] A New Era Dawns With The Rise Of The Embedded Hypervisor
Hypervisor and software virtualization is seen as a cure for the common IT problem of supporting multiple operating systems (OSs) and their applications running across the same hardware environments. This has fueled the widespread adoption of software virtualization across servers and datacenters worldwide. But what about the embedded world? There are two types of hypervisor. One runs on bare hardware, often forming a component part of a small microkernel. ...
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Robert Day
[Editorial] Is Your Personal Computer A CUDA-Enabled Speed Merchant?
Sometimes I don’t hear a rumble until it becomes a roar. I’m not sure if CUDA has become a roar yet, but my ears have perked up based on a bunch of announcements I’ve received over the past few months. If CUDA hasn’t registered on your radar yet, here’s a brief summary. CUDA, which stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture, is a C language environment developed by Nvidia Corp. (www.nvidia.com)...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
HI BOB, Thanks for the articles on output impedance. They reminded me of the time back in the early 1970s when I was working as a part-time engineering technician (while going to school) for a company that made professional audio tape recorders. I had been working part-time in production test until one fateful day when there was some sort of upheaval in the engineering department. The VP of engineering and senior engineer both quit. The junior engineer was...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Embedded] Lucid Pulls A PCI Express Graphics Switch
The Hydra 100 from Lucid Technologies turns two or more graphics adapters into a single, cooperative graphics compute engine. It starts as a basic PCI Express switch, allowing any kind of device to be plugged in downstream. But it shows its multifaceted personality when GPUs such as those from NVidia and AMD/ATI are downstream. Its RISC engine makes multiple graphics boards appear as a single, more powerful device, distributing graphics operations...
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William Wong
[TechView: Test] PXI Modules Provide Higher Frequencies, Speed, And Flexibility
At last month’s NIWeek conference in Austin, Texas, National Instruments introduced several RF products that are sure to be a hit with some engineers because of their higher frequency range, faster speeds, and lower costs. With RF testing becoming a larger part of the design and production testing of wireless technologies, these devices could yield faster time-to-market while decreasing test costs. NI also rolled out a line of Wi-FI testers...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: EDA] Tools Take On IC-Package And SiP Design Challenges
In surveying customers, Cadence found four key challenges facing designers of IC packages and systems-in-package (SiPs). Ambitiously, the company seeks to address them all in its SPB 16.2 release of the Allegro printed-circuit board (PCB) and IC packaging/SiP flows, which delivers advanced IC package/SiP miniaturization, design cycle reduction, and DFM-driven (design for manufacturing) design, along with a new power integrity modeling...
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David Maliniak
[Design FAQs] Short-Range Radios Enable Wireless Everything
Download the full article as a .PDF, sponsored by Analog What is a short-range radio? A short-range radio or short-range device (SRD) is a highly integrated transceiver usually on a single chip that’s used to implement a wide range of wireless data applications. What are the operating frequency ranges of these...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Engineering Essentials] Peer Through The High-Performance Kaleidoscope
Surveying the “high-performance” analog landscape is a lot like looking through a kaleidoscope. With each turn, you’ll see performance characteristics: precision, bandwidth, conversion rates, noise, power consumption, physical size, dynamic range, price, etc. Depending on the application, you may be happy to sacrifice some to optimize others. Turn the kaleidoscope a little, and you’ll see basic topologies or input/output configurations. Turn...
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Don Tuite
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Press-Fit Connectors Realize Breakthrough Performance
Thereâ??s good news for high-density applications. The latest compliant-pin connectors demonstrate BGA-class (ball-grid array) electrical performance with excellent mechanical design attributes. Recent advances in compliant-pin connector technology have led to a dramatic reduction in printed-circuit board (PCB) through-hole diameter requirements compared to previous press-fit designs. Next-generation devices retain the traditional assembly and operational...
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James Fedder
, et al.
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Sensors Work To Reduce Auto Emissions
Today, reducing carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions is one of the hottest automotive topics. The European Commission recently announced its roadmap for safer and greener cars by 2012. The strong shift in buying patterns also confirms that consumers want the most fuel-efficient vehicles that meet their personal and professional needs. Using advances such as hybrid technology, car manufacturers are working to introduce new models that reduce CO2 emissions. Other...
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Dieter Verstreken
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Researchers Open Windows Of Opportunity For Solar Power
Solar-power researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been very busy in their labs lately, and not without significant fruits for their labors. Two projects promise to elevate solar power from an expensive and cumbersome alternative to an affordable and unlimited energy source. SOLAR POWER GOES GREEN-LITERALLY! Relying on the process of photosynthesis occurring in plants for inspiration, MIT...
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Mat Dirjish
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Achieve Higher Backplane Density
Equipment designers, particularly those involved with communications and high-end data, face the constant challenges of increasing data rates and greater packaging densities. In turn, these requirements are driving development needs for compact, high-speed components, including connectors. DESIGN CHALLENGES High-speed computing and networking system designers have the benefit of choosing from cost-effective, high-speed ...
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John Burkett
, et al.
[Lab Bench] This Computer Thinks It's A Phone
The Neo FreeRunner looks like an innocuous device on par with a typical cell phone (see the figure). Yet this pocket package from OpenMoko is open to all comers—literally. Its software is all open-source, and even the CAD packages and schematics are available for download. Designers can also use them to create their own products, but why do so when OpenMoko is a source already? The phone...
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William Wong
