[Engineering Feature] The Line Between Telematics And Infotainment Blurs Even Further
TTelematics and infotainment appear to be on a collision course within the automobile. The terms themselves have caused some confusion. Telematics refers to the combination of telecommunications and informatics, basically wireless communication. Infotainment indicates the combination of information and entertainment. Even the analysts can’t agree on what differentiates telematics and infotainment. “You call five different people, you are going...
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Randy Frank
[Technology Report] Connect The Dots Toward Efficient Serial-To-Ethernet Adapter Design
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the RS-232 serial protocol was being adapted to the address the demands of electronic terminals and personal computers, few could have imagined that it would become such a standard feature. Thousands of industrial devices were developed based on the RS-232 interface. But for electronic communications, the evolutionary process was already kicking into a higher gear. Today, Ethernet is a well-defined standard for local and...
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Paolo Alcantara
, et al.
[Leapfrog: First Look] 1-GHz Cortex A8 Uses 3/4 W
Start with a standard processor core design. Highlight performance and power bottlenecks. Replace key logic with advanced clock gated logic. Significantly cut power requirements. Incorporate into popular multimedia devices. Profit. That’s Intrinsity’s plan. The company started with ARM’s Cortex A8 architecture with a 13-stage, in-order, dual-issue, superscalar microprocessor core and a global history-based branch prediction system (...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Avoid The Pitfalls Of Inaccurate EDID
Whatever its relative merits and demerits may be, HDMI is here to stay as the audio/video (A/V) interface of the foreseeable future. As the number of consumer and professional devices using HDMI to deliver audio and HD video grows, the pressure mounts on A/V manufacturers to ensure that their devices’ Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) is accurate (Fig. 1). The idea of EDID is a powerful...
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Thomas Kite
[Design View / Design Solution] Blocking Out The Noise Means Selecting The Right Filter
Noise is a common and pervasive problem in electronics design and debug. At one time or another, almost every designer and debugger of electrical circuits will spend some time dealing with noise—either finding its source to fix it or reducing its impact on measurements. Noise can come from countless internal or external sources, often obscuring signals of interest. Noise can make it difficult to perform measurements on a millivolt-range signal,...
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Randy White
[Ideas For Design] Low-Cost F-to-V Converter Delivers Robust, Accurate Performance
Although special-purpose frequency-to-voltage chips help you to create an F-to-V circuit block easily, they suffer from a major drawback. For given external components, their gainconstant, and hence voltage output, can vary more than ±5% from piece to piece (e.g, the LM331 and the LM2917). Their currentsource value also varies piece to piece by a similar amount, thus causing piece-to-piece variations in the maximum voltage-output beyond which F-to-V goes into...
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Vishwas Vaidya
[Ideas For Design] Create A Smart Cable To Ensure Quality Control And Authentication
A quick search of the Internet reveals that cloned or knockoff cables are a growing problem. Common complaints from cable users documenting this problem include intermittent signals, poor long-term reliability, and complete malfunctions. These complaints are the result of cheap wire, improper contact plating, incorrect wiring, and poor quality control. Electronic instruments alone provide no easy way to tell the difference between a genuine cable and an inferior...
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Bernhard Linke
[Ideas For Design] Battery Simulators Check Out Chargers, Over-Discharged Batteries
The two battery-simulator circuits described here can help you quickly test a battery charger under a normal battery condition and an over-discharged battery condition. The circuits let you set any voltage to see how the device under test works. As shunt regulators, the circuits provide what is referred to, in expensive active power-supply loads, as constant voltage mode. Best of all, the regulators were thrown together with parts lying around my lab. The...
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Alan Adamsky
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
HI BOB, Quite some time ago, I sent you a circuit similar to this file (see the figure). You were very kind and answered all of my questions. However, one thing you said was that the noise gain of this circuit is 1. How did you arrive at that value? (If the VOS of the op amp changes by 1 mV, the voltage across the load R will be ...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Communications] RF Front-End Modules For Bluetooth And ZigBee Simplify Layout And Cut Costs
Front-end modules are becoming hot wireless products because of the great benefits that they bring. The â??front endâ?? is usually considered the receiver low-noise amplifier (LNA), the transmitter power amplifier (PA), and the transmit/ receive (Tx/Rx) switch, as well as any additional impedance matching or filter components. In past designs, all of these components were individual parts that required extra design attention not to mention...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Engineering Essentials] The "Keys" To Securing A System
The standalone system has turned into an endangered species, making security an even more pressing issue among developers. This includes cell phones, Wi- Fi-enabled digital picture frames, and just about everything else. And when it comes to security, it helps to start with the basics. For starters, information can be exchanged as cleartext, authenticated, or encrypted (Fig. 1). Cleartext...
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William Wong
[Electronic Design Products] Use Capacitive And Proximity Sensing In Your Digital Photo Frames
Digital photo frames (DPFs) are starting to appear in many places where traditional photo albums and frames have been used for decades. The growth and proliferation of digital cameras has rendered hard-copy photos from analog cameras all but obsolete. On top of displaying the photos, DPFs can transfer them to printers and other devices, play videos, and offer remote control over all these functions without a computer. The basic DPF uses a multimedia...
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Ben Kropf
, et al.
