Squashed triangles: sines, but with teeth?
A while ago, I needed (or wanted) a pocket-sized audio sine-wave generator: simple, stable, repeatable, single-gang control pot, 9V battery-powered. A “squashed tri-wave” approach looked appropriate. While the principle is easy—make a…
Web tool to quantify environmental impact of IC manufacturing
Semiconductor manufacturing is a complex process with diverse environmental implications, ranging from high energy consumption to usage of scarce materials to greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, if the semiconductor industry wants to optimize…
Power Tips #123: Using a double-boost converter to extends the power range of high-conversion-ratio designs
Any boost-converter design will have a practical limit to how much it can step up a voltage from input to output. Pulse-width modulation (PWM) controllers have timing limits that restrict the minimum allowable on- and off-time of the field-effect…
A holiday shopping guide for engineers: 2023 edition
As of this year, EDN has consecutively published my odes to holiday-excused consumerism for a half-decade straight: here are the 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 editions (I skipped a few years between the 2014 edition and its successors). As in the…
Partners craft 5G vehicle OTA test system
RanLOS and Anritsu announced the availability of a 5G antenna over-the-air (OTA) measurement system for 5G connected vehicles. The platform teams Anritsu’s MT8000A 5G radio communication test station with the RanLOS OTA test system and integrates…
Wi-Fi 7 chips target mainstream devices
MediaTek’s Filogic 860 and Filogic 360 connectivity chips deliver Wi-Fi 7 speeds and always-on reliability for mainstream routers and clients. The Filogic 860 provides a physical layer rate of up to 7.2 Gbps (BE7200) for routers and gateways,…
Multilayer ceramic capacitors are safety-certified
Kyocera AVX has released the KGK series of Class X1/Y2-compliant capacitors and the KGH series of Class X2-compliant capacitors, both rated at 250 VAC. The multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) in both series meet EN 60384-14, IEC 60384-14,…
Capacitive-sensing MCUs improve SNR
Microcontrollers in Infineon’s PSoC 4000T family offer capacitive sensing with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of >5:1 and strong liquid tolerance. According to Infineon, its fifth-generation Capsense technology provides ten times higher…
Wireless MCUs enable smart metering and monitoring
STM32WL3 long-range wireless MCUs from ST extend battery life beyond 10 years for use in smart buildings, smart factories, and smart cities. The devices employ a power-efficient, multiprotocol radio for long-range communication using license-free…
Vehicle emissions: Issues and workarounds for various monitoring conditions
In March 2022, within a broader-treatment post on automobile owners’ rights to repair their own vehicles, I briefly introduced the topic of the on-board diagnostics (OBD) port, used to monitor (and in some cases, as you’ll soon see, manipulate)…
Three key trends for EDA in the cloud in 2024
No longer a curiosity or even a fad, cloud is now deeply entrenched into the operations for an array of industries. With its scalability, flexibility, and elasticity, it simply makes good business sense to embrace cloud computing—especially…
Leaf-inspired photovoltaic cell is efficient and provides “free” water, too
Photovoltaic (PV) cells—often referred to as “solar cells”—have a hard life. They are exposed to the weather and the sun’s energy that they capture to generate electricity which also causes them to heat up. According to some tests,…
