[Engineering Feature] The Pulse Quickens For Cutting-Edge Medical Electronics Advances
Picture this: A heart patient is experiencing fluid buildup in the lungs—an early sign of heart failure. But, an implantable sensory medical device in the patient emits a signal to both the patient and his physician via a Bluetooth-equipped mobile phone, warning them of impending danger. Wishful thinking? Not really. The technology is already here and is continuously being refined. All that’s missing is the supporting infrastructure. Mir Imran, an inventor and...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Algorithmic Design Starts At The Top
Design work can be approached in a number of different ways. But when it comes to standards-based designs for systems centering on wireless connectivity or multimedia, it makes more sense than ever to consider starting at least some parts of the process from the algorithmic level. With most communications protocols embodied largely in algorithmic functions, this is the ideal place from which to begin defining system implementation and partitioning. Indeed, EDA...
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David Maliniak
[Leapfrog: First Look] 3M Film For Viewing 3D Films
Auto-stereoscopic displays forego the need for special viewing glasses to present true 3D. Now, 3M and Toshiba Matsushita Display have teamed up to deliver handheld, 3D, auto-stereoscopic LCDs for cell phones, mobile Internet devices, and other consumer products. 3M provides the film that is used in the construction of these backlit LCDs. The display can deliver 2D, 3D, or a mix of 2D and 3D images. The display’s construction doesn’t require any...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Get The Jump On Next-Gen Enterprise-Class Wireless Access Points
The higher data rates and advanced services expected of next-generation 802.11n (Wi-Fi) and WiMAX-based wireless enterprise access points (APs) will require engineers to carefully balance the need for higher performance with cost and power consumption. This presents a difficult challenge for the approach they take in system design. In access points designed to utilize the emerging generation of 802.11n radios, which currently achieve up to 300...
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Dan Bouvier
[Ideas For Design] Calibrated Noise Test Setup Increases Measurement Repeatability
Noise measurements can be problematic. They often yield a different result with every measurement, even when nothing in the circuit is changing. The test circuit in the figure minimizes this uncertainty in equipment performance (but not, of course, in the device under test). The circuit does this by providing reference points in the noise-versus-frequency output generated by the network analyzer. The usual setup for noise testing consists of the...
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Roger Griswold
[Ideas For Design] Power Control Circuit Limits On Time To Prevent MOSFET Burnout
A power control device that protects against MOSFET burnout was designed using a well-known gated-oscillator circuit. The circuit prevents excessive On time for the MOSFETs beyond a permitted limit. The R1-C1 time constant forms a timing circuit that limits the On-time pulse period and automatically generates its own maximum permitted On/Off duty cycle (Fig. 1). Without this timing circuit, if the input...
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Shyam Sunder Tiwari
[Ideas For Design] Build A Device Emulator Around An Off-The-Shelf Universal Serial Bus Bridge
From its introduction in 1995, the Universal Serial Bus (USB) quickly gained widespread acceptance for connecting peripherals to personal computers. More recently, its ease of use, expandability, high bandwidth, and low cost have suited it quite well for data transfer in embedded consumer electronic and mobile devices. Thus, product developers are increasingly being asked to design and implement a wide range of USB I/O devices. This idea describes a technique for...
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Eli Flaxer
[Editorial] Standards Groups Showcase Developments In Consumer Electronics
As you might expect, industry standards that pertain to consumer electronics continue to evolve. The word “standard” seems to imply something that comes into being and then remains the same for many years. Although there is some truth in this, one would never expect a fast-moving industry like consumer electronics to have standards set in stone. At the 2009 International CES, held last month in Las Vegas, I had a chance to visit ...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Time-Domain Stuff, Anyhow?
Last night, I was attacking a thorny problem and thought about the time domain. I think about circuits, as an engineer, in the time domain. When something happens, or changes, then something else can happen—or may start to happen. Is that something that I like? Or is it something I don’t like? I have used this analysis many times, as in “What’s All This Fuzzy-Logic Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 4)” (Nov. 6, 2000; ...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Analog & Power] Low-Power, Dual 8-Bit ADCs Regulate Their Own Operating Voltage
The MAX19505, MAX19506, and MAX19507 8-bit, dual-channel analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) from Maxim Integrated Products provide a 49.8-dBFS signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and 69-dBc spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) at 70 MHz (see the figure). Available in speed ranges from 65 to 130 Msamples/s, they target cellular basestations and point-to-point microwave receivers, set-top boxes, or...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Communications] The DTV Transition: Will It Happen? What Can We Expect?
Since 2005, we have been hearing that analog TV will go off the air on February 17 and that high-definition digital television (DTV) will replace it. The government and the television stations have been preparing since then, and everything is in place. But will it happen? President Obama has asked Congress to postpone the switch to give consumers more time to get a converter or a DTV set. The Federal Communications Commission also...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Embedded in Electronic Design] FPGAs Move To 40 nm
New FPGAs from Altera and Xilinx have hit 40 nm and continue to push the performance envelope. The stratix Iv line from Altera comes in enhanced (E) and transceiver-based (GX) versions. the top end of the GX version supports 48 channels operating at speeds up to 8.5 Gbits/s. the chips incorporate four hard cores that support up to x8 PCI Express Gen 2 in addition to other standard interfaces such as serial RapidIo and Gigabit...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Ethernet And PCI Express: A Match Made In...
Ethernet remains the network of choice, but now there are alternatives to running it on the backplane. PLX Technology looks to tunnel Ethernet via PCI Express (PCIe), allowing both protocols to run over a single PCI Express backplane. This should reduce the number of connections, cut down on power requirements, and simplify backplane switching. The tunneling approach isn’t a general specification yet, but it works with the Reduced Gigabit Media Independent...
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William Wong
[Engineering Essentials] Step Up To DDR3 Memory
With its 2007 release of the DDR3 SDRAM standard, JEDEC promised dramatic performance improvements at reduced power. The key to gaining those benefits lies in a complex physical-layer (PHY) interface that incorporates automatic calibration of both timing and impedances. By understanding the main features of the DDR3 interface, designers will be well positioned to make good use of the interface designâ??s intellectual property (IP) thatâ??s now...
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Richard Quinnell
[Lab Bench] See CES From Another Point Of View
I definitely should have started at the Sands when I was at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last month. It would have given me a chance to have taken Anybot’s QA telepresence robot for a spin and save some shoe leather, since it could have roamed the aisles for me while I took in everything it encountered from the comfort of my own computer desk (Fig. 1). ...
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William Wong
[From Systems to Silicon] Is ESL Adoption Really All That Difficult?
The debate about design at the electronic system level (ESL) seems to be in full swing again. Some claim there is too much “stuff” in ESL and basically suggest incremental approaches. Others say that today’s approaches aren’t visionary enough and are calling for the “real ESL to please stand up.” I was just handed video footage of some ESL tools that were presented at the 2001 Design Automation Conference (DAC), now almost eight years ago. At that...
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Frank Schirrmeister
