[Engineering Feature] What's In Your Paycheck?
In this issue, the editors of Electronic Design once again present the results of our annual salary and opinion survey. Nearly 3000 of you answered our wide-ranging questions and shared your insights. Based on that research, this report provides a clear perspective on how you and your colleagues are doing and where salaries are headed. As in our previous surveys, we took a close look at how compensation (salaries, bonuses, and benefits) varies ...
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Jay McSherry
[Technology Report] Multicore Matters With Mechatronic Models
Whether it's single microcontrollers handling motor control or an automobile assembly line containing multiple robots, you can be sure mechatronics is in the mix. Simulating such complex systems allows developers to build without having the hardware in hand. This is critical when some or all of the hardware doesn’t exist, but becomes even more valuable when considering “what if ” scenarios. However, two major issues continue to crop up: speed and complexity....
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William Wong
[Technology Report] Products! Get Your Products Here!
It took many years for practical commercial Wi- Media Ultra-Wideband (UWB) products to appear in the marketplace. Like most technologies, the hype cycle stirs things up and the market wonders why products aren’t instantaneously on the shelves. Well, it’s not that easy. But today, many real UWB chip sets are available from multiple vendors. Most comply with the WiMedia standard, so they’re interoperable too. SOPHISTICATED...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] UWB Applications: Something For Everyone
When Ultra-Wideband (UWB) first came to market, it didn’t have a “killer app.” Everyone knew it was a high-speed wireless data option for short range, but that was about it. Moving video around wirelessly in consumer home entertainment centers was an early target, but that never got traction. Nowadays, though, that’s changing. Generally, you can think of UWB as a wire replacement. It all began when someone decided to make a wireless USB...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] UWB Gets Put To The Test
Testing any wireless system or device is a challenge, but Ultra-Wideband (UWB) offers more than the usual tribulations. The orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), low power, protocols, frequency hopping, and other physical- layer (PHY) and media access controller (MAC) conditions all add up to the need for a pretty sophisticated test setup. Furthermore, you have to be sure that your chip or box meets WiMedia certification standards. But despite the...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] Discover WiMedia UWB
With wireless everywhere, designers have incredible options, including high-end HSDPA/WCDMA cellular technology at one end of the spectrum and near-field communications and RFID on the other. Short-range wireless technologies abound, like the ever popular Wi-Fi, the ubiquitous Bluetooth, the commercial/industrial ZigBee, the emerging 60-GHz WirelessHD, and proprietary industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) designs. There’s something for...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Leapfrog: First Look] Improved Nano Materials Extend Li-ion Battery Life Five-Fold
Imagine using your laptop, non-stop, flying from New York to Los Angeles and back on a single battery charge. Or, picture using your digital camera or mobile phone for days on end without recharging. QuantumSphere has just filed a patent for a nanotechnology that extends the capacity of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries up to five times. “We’re working on the anode side of the battery and will then begin work on the cathode side soon, with the production...
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Roger Allan
[Design View / Design Solution] Build A Touch-Sensor Solution For Wet Environments
Capacitive touch sensors have made homes i n scores of MP3 players and mobile phones. Of course, the mobile arena is no longer the only bastion for these devices. Today, sensor technology has literally exploded, expanding into many other product categories. However, this expansion produces a new set of design challenges. White goods, such as electric ranges and dishwashers, is a product area that has spawned one of these new challenges:...
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Mark Lee
[Ideas For Design] "Greener" Rectifier Loses The Diodes, Adds Power MOSFETs, Efficiency
A major cause of losses in a conventional power supply using a 50/60-Hz transformer is the bridge rectifier. This article shows how to build a “greener” rectifier, substantially reducing losses by eliminating the diodes in the bridge rectifier and substituting modern low-RDS(ON) power MOSFETs. The MOSFETs used are typically employed in high-frequency switch-mode power supplies. Aside from the power MOSFETs, the circuit uses only two...
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Christian Rausch
[Ideas For Design] In-Circuit Programming Switch Simplifies Operation Of Programmable Devices
Many devices require programming through a serial bus, such as I2C. The programming can be done during final test, after the circuit board has been assembled. In many cases, the pins used for programming can then be utilized for something else during normal operation. In fact, the bus itself can also be used for another function. A simple analog multiplexer circuit facilitates this dualfunction operation (...
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Eric Schlaepfer
[POV: Point Of View] Assessing WiMedia UWB
Now that WiMedia Ultra-Wideband (UWB) products have been in the market for a year, it’s time to assess its progress and its future. Like most new technologies, there has been more hype than most people would like and some glitches upon introduction. On the positive side, the glitches are being fixed, product support by manufacturers is broad, and applications enabled by UWB’s unique combination of capabilities are emerging. TEETHING...
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Stephen Wood
[Editorial] In Troubled Economic Times, Our Salary Survey Provides Reassurance
I just finished listening to a webinar by Shawn DuBravac, economist and certified financial analyst (CFA) with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), entitled “Economy in Crisis: How We Got Here, Where Do We Go and What Does It Mean for Consumer Electronics and Your Business.” The presentation offered a wealth of historical economic information via charts and numbers showing how we arrived at today’s economic crisis. But when it came to the prospects ...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
BOB, You said, “I don’t recall if I’ve ever seen this circuit in print” (“What’s All This PNP Stuff, Anyhow?” Sept. 11, 2008, p. 80; www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 19605), regarding Figure 2. See: 1. P.J. Baxandall, E.W. Swallow, “Constant Current Source With Unusually High Internal Resistance And Good Temperature ...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Communications] 10-Gbit/s DPI Breaks 1-W Per Gbit/s Barrier
With the ever-increasing flow of data across the Internet and through our wireless carriers, there’s a growing need to be more aware of what type of data is being sent so it can be expedited, eliminated, or otherwise addressed. This requires deep packet inspection (DPI), which is the job of a content processor, usually a separate co-processor designed for the job. Looking at each and every packet is a huge task. If it is to be done properly, it needs to...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Communications] Unique Synthesized Clock IC Produces Less Than 100-fs Jitter
Jitter is the bane of all designers of buses and communications products where speeds exceed the 1-Gbit/s rate. Multigig’s latest clock ICs can give you more jitter headroom in your design (see the figure). Designated the QuietClock family, this selection of clock products limits rms jitter to typically less than 60 femtoseconds (fs). As high-speed communications protocols move to 10 Gbits/s, 40...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Communications] Network Processor Delivers 1 Gbit/s At Very Low Power
The 1-Gbit/s ML7240 network processor from OKI Electric Industry Co. targets network equipment like home and small office/home office (SOHO) routers and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway equipment. Its main claim to fame is its very low power consumption. The ML7240’s ARM926EJ-S RISC processor runs at 400 MHz. It also features a quality of service (QoS) accelerator and IPsec security processor for secure communication, a voice ...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Embedded] Compact COM Express Packs Core 2 Punch
Kontron’s ETXexpress-PC comes in a compact COM Express format. It houses a 2.26-GHz, 45-nm Intel Core 2 processor in a fanless design and supports up to 8 Gbytes of DDR3 SDRAM (see the figure). The low-voltage 1.86-GHz version uses less than 10 W. Peripheral interfaces include five PCI Express x1 lanes, four SATA ports, an IDE port, eight USB 2.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. Video...
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William Wong
[Engineering Essentials] Cooling Techniques Attack MPU Processing Heat
The continuing evolution toward higher-performance microprocessor units (MPUs) has revolutionized the design of computers large and small. This evolution has generally followed Moore’s law—the semiconductor industry doubles transistor density every two years while increasing performance with each new generation. Increased performance has contributed to a rise in microprocessor chip power dissipation and power density. An example of the...
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Sam Davis
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Unique Cabinet Solutions Fortify Small To Medium-Size Data Centers
The control of data communications for smaller entities and businesses continues to shift further away from external management to internal efforts. From hospitals and medical centers to schools and universities, from hotels and restaurants to banks and credit unions, and from law enforcement agencies to local municipalities, the movement toward in-house control of data flow is on the rise. There are several reasons for this shift, most of which tie back ...
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Richard Runnels
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Fasteners Take 30° Turn To Secure Cabinets And Contents
It’s generally seen as the least glamorous part of the design cycle. Developers of heavyduty data-center, industrial, commercial, and other critical equipment that resides in large cabinets and enclosures face the challenge of ensuring that these enclosures and their contents stay in place and in one piece under adverse conditions. Often having to work with soft materials such as copper, zinc, and plastics, the possibilities abound for screws stripping...
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Mat Dirjish
[Lab Bench] Open-Source Software Is Stealing Your Business
Hey. It got your attention. Actually, I think the opposite is occurring. Open-source software has changed the landscape for embedded software development. Major projects such as Linux, Apache, Firefox, and Eclipse are now utilized in a range of applications and available from a variety of vendors. In most cases you can roll your own as well, but embedded developers have long known that you get what you pay for. For many, the free route is a viable alternative...
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William Wong
[Power Design] The Dangers Of Counterfeit Battery Packs: Answers To Reader Questions
The continuing growth of portable handheld devices has spawned a healthy selection of aftermarket battery pack suppliers. Yet aftermarket vendors may resort to activities that compromise the end-user experience or safety to make the battery packs inexpensive and attractive to those placing purchase orders for replacements. An analysis of several counterfeit batteries revealed a variety of manufacturing and design problems, and we can use these examples to answer...
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Robin Tichy
