Designing power supplies for industrial functional safety, Part 1
A power supply unit is one of the most crucial components in an electronics system, as its operation can affect the entire system’s functionality. In the context of industrial functional safety, as in IEC 61508, power supplies are considered…
Dry film photoresist enables fine circuit formation
Asahi Kasei has developed the Sunfort TA series of dry film photoresist for next-generation semiconductor packages requiring circuit patterns with line/space widths of 2/2 µm or less. The film offers high resolution with conventional stepper…
Power doublers enable smooth DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades
Qorvo’s QPA3311 and QPA3316 hybrid power doubler amplifiers are optimized for DOCSIS 4.0 downstream operations up to 1.8 GHz. They support the transition to Unified DOCSIS and smart amplifier architectures that enhance visibility, efficiency,…
IC safeguards NFC communication
The NTAG X DNA from NXP is an ISO/IEC 14443-4 Type 4 NFC tag that enables secure authentication of NFC-enabled mobile devices. It features 16 kB of memory, high-speed data transfer, and Secure Unique NFC (SUN) authentication to protect devices…
Antenna-matching ICs cut RF design complexity
ST offers three antenna-matching companion chips for STM32WL33 wireless MCUs to help streamline the development of IoT, smart metering, and remote monitoring systems. The MLPF-WL-01D3, MLPF-WL-02D3, and MLPF-WL-04D3 integrate impedance matching…
Wireless SoCs drive IoT efficiency
Built on a 22-nm process, Silicon Labs’ SiXG301 and SiXG302 wireless SoCs deliver improved compute performance and energy efficiency. As the first members of the Series 3 portfolio, they target both line- and battery-powered IoT devices.
Designed…
Revisited: Three discretes suffice to interface PWM to switching regulators
The typical regulator output network
Many voltage regulator chips, both linear and switching, use the same basic two-resistor network for output voltage programming. Figure 1 illustrates this feature in a typical switching (buck type) regulator,…
Accelerating silicon carbide (SiC) manufacturing with big data platforms
For decades, we heard silicon was the only answer. However, while the world’s largest fabs were busy taping out silicon, the communities of engineers and scientists working on non-silicon technologies continued pushing forward. Compound semiconductors—semiconductors…
Basic considerations for electronic impulse relay DIY
Interested in DIY a simple electronic impulse relay module? T. K. Hareendran designs an impulse relay circuit that mimics the functions of a conventional electromechanical impulse relay. This module switches the same load from several switching…
Microsoft Build 2025: Arm (and AI, of course) thrive
Last week was a biggie for those of you into tech conferences. First and foremost, of course, there was the 2025 iteration of the Silicon Valley-located Embedded Vision Summit, for which I have both personal interest and professional association.…
A single op-amp solution to stabilize laser output
Semiconductor laser diodes (SLDs) are often packaged with a photodiode. The output current from this photodiode can be monitored to regulate the output power intensity of the laser diode. SLDs, however, are prone to pathological drifts, such…
How reverse polarity protection works to safeguard car battery
Reverse polarity protection is essential in battery-connected automotive systems. So, while reverse polarity is a risky, how do we prevent it? This article delves into reverse polarity protection circuits built around standard and Schottky diodes,…
