Tech Articles

Computer piracy and identity theft have become increasing problems in both North America and around the world. In Point of Sale (PoS) applications in particular, printed circuit board components need added protection to defend against electrical probes used by those seeking to steal personal identification information.

The Local Interconnect Network (LIN) is well established as the solution of choice for low-cost in-vehicle networks, especially in body and comfort systems ranging from air conditioning to door-locks and mirror control. The simple structure and relatively low data rate of bus communication means that LIN functionality can be accommodated within the majority of vehicle modules with little space or cost penalty.

This article presents potential applications of the MID technology in the electrical connector market. Following a brief description of the technology itself, the article presents some applications which are suitable for this technology and benefit from the advantages it offers.

USB flash drives have become one of the most pervasive forms of low to medium density storage media in use today, far surpassing the floppy disk which is fast becoming obsolete. Advances in flash memory technology have seen a rapid increase in capacity of these drives, with 2GB and 4GB of storage readily available.

Armin Anders, and Frank Schmidt of EnOcean GmbH look at the established wireless technologies and their major performance parameters.

Fred Dart of Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) describes how a USB flash drive can be easily linked to a simple, low cost microcontroller in an embedded design

The global demand for high-capacity wireless broadband access networks is on the increase, with multiple signal formats competing for market share. These include WiMAX, HSPA, 3G-LTE, UMB and TD-SCDMA. But regardless of which is used, a new approach to network planning and optimisation is required to balance the technical and commercial constraints.

Have you found yourself in the all too familiar situation lately, where you have had to dig up some old code from the archives, just to find out that you do not understand a thing? There is no design documentation, no useful code comments and the code has a completely undecipherable structure. Perhaps it is even your own two year old code! If the program flow of the application resembles a state machine design, we could have helped you to avoid this situation.

Particularly in the field of delta sigma analog to digital converters (ADCs) , resolutions and speeds are increasing. These high resolution ADCs can now provide cost effective solutions in many applications. Often however, designers see the ’24 bit’ headline number on the datasheet and are lured into thinking that the ADC can provide better performance in terms of resolution and accuracy than it actually can. This article will look at the term resolution, what it really means and the various ways in which it is defined. It will then explore the term accuracy and show that a high degree of resolution doesn’t necessarily imply a similar degree of accuracy, a point often not well understood.

With mobile WiMAX now being widely recognized as the important first step in 4G communications, there is little doubt that cellular and WiMAX will be expected both to co exist and to work together within the same handsets. This has been affirmed by the convergence plans announced by major service providers for mobile WiMAX and cellular, and is a trend that will drive demand for flexible and future-proof architectures that are capable of supporting both standards. These architectures are expected to focus on enabling mobile Internet convergence through advanced baseband processors. Leading cellular operators Sprint, Korea Telecom and NTT DoCoMo have either committed to deploy or are conducting trials with WiMAX.

Supply-chain design and management is a critical element in the process to bring a new product to market yet it is often under-valued and badly implemented. Its is not just about having stock on the shelf when its needed, its more complex than that and getting the supply-chain right can make all the difference between the success and failure of a new product. More new products fail through poor supply chain design than through poor product design.

Switches are seemingly simple components, yet they have a dual role. Not only must they perform mechanically and electrically, they must also convey feedback to the user that the operation has been accomplished. Switches are now incorporating tactile, audible and increasingly visual indication - all in a tiny package. What’s more, as an interface component, this feedback must remain consistent over the lifetime of the device – or risk giving a poor impression of the overall end equipment quality. We all use probably hundreds of electronic switches every day. The keys on a keyboard, a mobile phone, home audio, iPod, car dash board – the list of applications goes on and on. We use switches so often that they seem simple, mundane components, yet it is the very fact that they are the main interface with a human operator that makes them more complicated.

Smaller, more powerful, better performance... these are the buzzwords in the area of DC/DC module power supplies. Good thermal management of the heat generated has become an important part of the design-process. But what needs to be done? An indisputable fact is that the efficiency of any energy conversion process is always less than 100%. That means that a part of the energy being changed goes astray, in other words, is converted into heat and that ultimately this waste heat must be removed. The laws of thermodynamics state that heat energy can only flow from a warmer to a colder environment. So, for DC/DC converters, this means that if the internal heat is to be dissipated out of the module, that the ambient temperature must always be lower than the maximum allowable internal temperature. The smaller this difference is, the less heat energy will be lost and thus the converter will warm up even more.

Although it now represents a massive opportunity, the medical market can present large barriers to entry for electronics companies. Beyond the regulatory requirements – which are, understandably, not insignificant – designers are faced with unique challenges that test their skill and ingenuity. The combination of harsh environments (both physical and electrical) and a need for extreme accuracy means meeting those challenges requires a level of design expertise that only comes with experience. ML Electronics has been active in the medical market for 12 years and for the last four years the design of medical devices has represented around 50% of its business. As a design and manufacturing company it is able to provide the level of service necessary to not only comply with the stringent regulatory demand but also the support needed, in a market where product lifecycles are measured in years instead of months. It is not unusual for some products to remain in the medical market for more than 10years and with continual development they can benefit from the latest in digital and analogue technology. It is also largely due to these technologies that new and exciting methodologies continue to emerge in the medical market, which someday may lead to faster and more accurate diagnosis of life threatening disease. One such methodology is electrical impedance tomography, an imaging technique now finding applications within many vertical sectors, including medical.

Almost as much of a lifestyle-accessory as a communication tool, mobile phone handsets are increasingly becoming differentiated in order to succeed in today’s competitive market. Vendors aim to create highly targeted new models that satisfy core requirements better than any competitor product aimed at the same market segment. A gaming phone, for example, must prioritise features that will deliver an outstanding experience for gamers. An MPEG4 video/camera phone, on the other hand, must provide a seamless image capture and audio playback capability for sharing. Users who enjoy listening to music may even wish to share music content with friends during telephone calls, creating yet another different set of usage scenarios.

With the ability to integrate MEMS with CMOS processes, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) are fast becoming a mainstream electronics technology. Consequently, electronics project teams are looking for design tools to help them take advantage of this high-potential technology. Few multidisciplinary tool suites exist to support both MEMS and microelectronics design, and certainly no single software package can offer all the necessary features. Most designers today use several different pieces of software to accomplish design tasks. The inherent multidisciplinary nature of MEMS, means that both mechanical and electronic design tools have been used. The dearth of appropriate layout tools have posed a particular challenge for MEMS designers.

Certified Wireless USB is being proposed as the wireless interconnect of choice for desktop and mobile PCs, and has much to offer in many other home and office technology applications. But will it excite embedded designers, and how does it compare with the more familiar wired and wireless protocols? Wired USB has been enormously successful, with well over 3.5 billion interfaces shipped to date. As a host-to-device interconnect, it has become the interconnect of choice for uploading photographs or video from a camera to a host PC, and for synchronising mobile devices such as PDAs. Modern PCs now pack multiple USB ports to connect to devices such as printers, scanners and wireless LAN adapters. But the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), it seems, will be content with nothing short of world domination. Having first introduced USB On-The-Go (USB OTG) – expanding USB’s appeal by enabling “dual-role” products that combine device properties with limited-host capabilities - it is now proposing Certified Wireless USB (CWUSB) to support solutions for the unwired generation.

Audio applications make specific demands on the capacitors selected for use. Total harmonic distortion (THD) must be kept low to ensure noiseless filtering performance and high fidelity in the passing of audio signals. The stability of electrical parameters over temperature and especially over time is required to assure an overall sound quality for a long lifetime. In many cases, portable audio devices demand miniature devices and often designers are constrained to choose smaller and lower profile capacitors. AVX Corp offers various different tantalum capacitor series for many different applications, but the company’s standard and low profile TAJ and low ESR TPS series are especially suitable for audio designs. Standard TAJ devices are available in capacitances from 0.1 to 2200mF and in voltages from 2.5 to 50V. Low profile versions are offered in heights down to 0.9mm. Low ESR TPS devices have similar voltage ranges, but are limited to a maximum capacitance of 1500mF.

The production of analog and digital ICs is essentially different. Digital ICs provide a functionality, which is tested with scan patterns, whilst analog ICs specify the performance of their functionality. Furthermore, this performance will drift over temperature and the test equipment has a limited accuracy and repeatability, which has to be controlled regularly. Several tools need to be defined to ensure a long-term and stable performance. At Texas Instruments, these tools are known as ‘Temperature Characterization’, ‘Lab-to-Final Correlation’, ‘Capability Study’, ‘Correlation Lockout’ and the ‘Quality Control Run’. This article describes these tools.

ITT’s VEAM Powerlock connectors, designed for field installation of power distribution systems, have been installed at the O2 Dome in London’s Docklands, making life simple for touring riggers and roadies as each new show rolls through.