[Engineering Feature] CMOS And CCD Image Sensor Breakthroughs Promise A "Bright" Future
The latest generation of CMOS and charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors features wider spectral bandwidths, higher sensitivity levels, lower noise operation, and smaller form factors. Better fabrication processes help lower costs. And, novel architectures are injecting greater flexibility and versatility into circuit designs. As a result, imaging sensors now find homes in mobile phones, notebook and laptop PCs, digital still cameras, video games, toys, medical...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Smaller, Power-Packed Hi-Def Designs Rule This Year's ESC
It's tough to be optimistic these days. But based on some of the new products appearing at next week’s Embedded Systems Conference, it should be a good year for developers. The latest tools, chips, and platforms will roll out at the San Jose Convention Center, including Texas Instruments’ newest DaVinci microcontroller, which targets mobile hi-def presentation. A few companies showed us their releases early, though a few surprises will likely pop up at the...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] Fujitsu Takes Digital Approach To Capacitive Touch Sensing
Capacitive touch systems typically operate using analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to indirectly measure changes via voltage. Fujitsu’s FMA1127 touch sensor controller uses a more digital approach to detecting fingers, measuring the difference of the change of state of the RC portion of a pair of monostable, multivibrator flip-flops (see the figure). The chip uses a common counter/timer mechanism...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Improve Integrated SRAM Reliability With Hamming Error-Correction Code
Many error-correcting codes (ECCs) are proposed in the industry’s literature for correcting bit errors present in the received data. We will discuss Hamming codes that are used to correct singlebit errors and detect all double-bit errors that could occur during data transmission or residing in the memory. How much improvement we can get in the bit-errorrate (BER) performance curves using onebit error correction depends on the raw BER (RBER) without error...
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Hazarathaiah Malepati
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Precise Current-Transmitter/Source-Sink Calibrator Has Wide Compliance Range
Many industrial and control applications use analog current loops as the physical link for measurements and actuator control. Although several ranges are used, the most popular is still the 4- to 20-mA standard. Loop accuracy depends on the transmitter’s ability to transform the sensor signal to a current. It also depends on the stability of the current-transfer function (measured at the receiver) with respect to temperature, physical length of...
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Alfredo Saab
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Oscillator Delivers Four Multi-Phased, Equal-Amplitude Sine Waves
One application I recently dealt with needed multiple phases of sine waves, all of equal amplitude. I considered 45°, 60°, and 90° differences, but decided 60° was the best solution. I scoured the Internet for a circuit. Unfortunately, while multiple phases exist, and the topologies are legion, no topology offered sine waves of equal amplitude with a 60° phase shift. I thought the solution would look like a common three-op-amp phase-shift oscillator, so that was...
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John Guy
[Ideas For Design] Alarm Sounds When Refrigerator Door Remains Open Too Long
Not properly closing a refrigerator door will no doubt invite huge electricity bills. This gadget is an alert device that beeps if you leave the refrigerator door open for more than 20 seconds. When the door opens, the lamp illuminates and the IC (a 4060B counter/oscillator) starts counting down. After a preset delay of 20 seconds, the piezoelectric buzzer beeps intermittently for 20 seconds and then stops for the same amount of time. This cycle...
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T.A. Babu
[Editorial] It Looks Like HD Video Is Moving Into Smaller Quarters
High definition is all the rage on big-screen TVs. But now, smaller devices will be empowered with this crisp video content. Recent announcements should give designers a lift for creating small devices with big ideas for HD playback and recording. HD FOR $99 At the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Nvidia introduced a platform based on its Tegra 600 series computer-on-a-chip. Reportedly, the platform will...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
DEAR MR. PEASE, The “Financial Floobydust” section of your latest piece is, I think, anything but floobydust (Jan. 15; ED Online 20410). I believe you have touched upon a fundamental weakness at the core of so much financial and macroeconomic modeling, black-box investing, and other quantitative aspects of high finance. As you...
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Bob Pease
[Engineering Essentials] High-Brightness White LEDs Light The Way To Greener Illumination
LED illumination for building interiors and outdoor public spaces continues to gain serious traction, opening up new opportunities for electronic designers. For example, National Semiconductor’s LM3445 and NXP’s SSL2101 monolithic controllers for high-brightness (HB) white LED (WLED) building lighting accommodate legacy triac dimmers while providing wide-range dimming and power factor correction (PFC). Meanwhile, Texas Instruments and Microchip...
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Don Tuite
[Electronic Design Products] Technology Shrinks PCB Motors While Boosting Accuracy
The march for miniaturization never stops as evidenced by portable products the size of a credit card that outperform some laptop and even desktop computers. Probably one of the most challenging markets in this quest for tinier gadgets is motors and motion control. Though still daunting, shrinking a semiconductor should be less of a burden because there are no moving parts to consider. But squeezing a motor and related control circuitry onto the head of a pin is...
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Mat Dirjish
[Lab Bench] Stripping Down Java
As expected, my article on “Embedded C Bashing” generated some discussion. So, I thought I better call in some experts to provide advice when it comes to safety and performance. The performance of compilers for languages like Java and C# has improved to where code generated for adding a pair of integers winds up being a single instruction. Features such as...
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William Wong
[Testing the Limits] Innovating Through Tough Times
What do Hewlett-Packard, FedEx, and CNN have in common? Believe it or not, these companies were founded during difficult economic times (1939, 1973, and 1980, respectively). What about product innovations like Nylon and the iPod? You guessed it. They were also developed and released in weak economies (1935 and 2001). It turns out that these examples aren’t anomalies. Adversity can help spur innovation. I’ve been researching this...
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Eric Starkloff
