Electronic Everything!

By using a simple value process it is possible to speed up the analysis and help identify the best approach to take when developing a constant current regulation scheme for automotive interior LED lighting systems. Various approaches exist to address this particular design challenge that may result in a slowdown of the design process while engineering analysis can be performed to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the different options.

TTE Systems' RapidiTTy IDE provides a self-contained environment for developers who wish to create "time-triggered" microcontroller software in order to improve overall system reliability. RapidiTTy (Figure 1, below) is intended to address deeply-embedded applications including control and monitoring operations in medical, defence, automotive and industrial sectors, as well as in white and brown goods.

High Level Synthesis Architectural Optimization Basics In part 1 of this article we introduced basic filter bank theory and used the Synplify DSP High Level Synthesis (HLS) tool to implement an example filter bank into three alternative architectures. In part 2 we dive deeper into these three architectures to better understand how these filters work. We will also examine the HLS optimizations we applied and the resulting benefits. Example Filter Bank Review Before we proceed, let's quickly review our filter bank example. Our example, shown in Figure 1, is a size 16 DFT filter bank. The color scheme shows the sample rate change where a 16 MHz input sample rate (red) has been chosen and the output sample rate is downsampled by 16 (green).

Lattice Diamond design software offers leading-edge design and implementation tools optimized for cost sensitive, low-power Lattice FPGA architectures. Diamond is the next generation replacement for ispLEVER featuring design exploration, ease of use, improved design flow, and numerous other enhancements. The combination of new and enhanced features allows users to complete designs faster, easier, and with better results than ever before.

Simple mathematical analysis shows that the best answer to address this problem is to  select a CR ratio QGD/QGS1 that is less than 1. Other factors to consider for preventing C dv/dt induced turn-on include low driver-sinking impedance (<1 Ώ), a FET design with intrinsically low RG, an externally-applied G-S capacitor and Q2 packages that minimize parasitics and voltage ringing.

IBM's light-powered links overcome the greatest speed bump in supercomputing: interconnect bandwidth

When the Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller appeared in 2005, it featured a set of female pin headers exposing most of the pins of the ATmega168 for easy hacking and for connecting accessory boards known as 'Shields'. The purpose of a shield is to provide new plug-and-play functionality to the host microcontroller, such as circuit prototyping, motion control, sensor integration, network and radio communication, or gaming interfaces, without worrying too much about the hardware implementation details. Seven years after the birth of the original Arduino, new shields keep coming out and are being cataloged on http://shieldlist.org/, a testament to the versatility of the design. It is also simple to build a DIY shield when nothing out there will meet your needs or when you want to understand how the shield concept works from the ground up.

There are severe flaws within the Harmonic-Balance and SPICE programs now widely used. Mentioned as far back as within an abstract of Session WSO at the 2008 IEEE International Microwave Symposium: "Even though nonlinear circuit-analysis software has been in use for many years, users still have difficulty obtaining valid results with existing methods.  Recognized problems include poor accuracy, convergence difficulties, long simulation times, and unstable results (i.e., results that vary greatly with minor changes in parameters).  These problems are encountered in both harmonic-balance and time-domain simulations."

When Pantelis Georgiou and his fellow biomedical engineers at Imperial College London decided to design an intelligent insulin pump for diabetes patients, they started at the source. "We asked ourselves, what does a pancreas do to control blood glucose?" Georgiou recalls. The answer is pretty well known: The organ relies primarily on two populations of cells—beta cells, to secrete insulin when blood glucose is high, and alpha cells, which release a hormone called glucagon when glucose levels are low. "We simulated them both in microchip form," Georgiou says. This biomimetic approach diverges from today's dominant method of delivering only insulin using a relatively simple control system.

With all of the new competition in the consumer robotics field, it’s about time for iRobot to show that they’re still capable of innovating new and exciting things. AVA, their technology demonstrator, definitely fits into the new and exciting category. AVA is short for ‘Avatar,’ although iRobot was careful not to call it a telepresence robot so as not to restrict perceptions of what it’s capable of. AVA is capable of fully autonomous navigation, relying on a Kinect-style depth sensing camera, laser rangefinders, inertial movement sensors, ultrasonic sensors, and (as a last resort) bump sensors. We got a run-down a few days ago at CES, check it out:

Length-match your traces to within 100 mils. Or is it 10 mils? Or should you go down to 1 mil? Should you include the lengths of the vias? How about the lengths of resistors? Understanding the origin of length-matching requirements, coupled with some rudimentary signal integrity analysis, can help answer these questions.   Determining length requirements requires an understanding of flight time, electrical length vs. physical length, loading and signal quality. Those elements are vital in determining what the length really needs to be, as well as in determining the allowable trade-offs to meet system timing goals.

Harmonic balance (hB) analysis is a method used to calculate the nonlinear, steady-state frequency response of electrical circuits. It is extremely well-suited for designs in which transient simulation methods prove acceptable, such as dispersive transmission lines in which circuit time constants are large compared to the period of the simulation frequency, as well as for circuits that have a large number of reactive components. In particular, harmonic balance analysis works extremely well for microwave circuits that are excited with sinusoidal signals, such as mixers and power amplifiers...

In many instances, the way embedded software is structured and how it interacts with the hardware in a system can have a profound effect on the transient immunity performance of a system. It can be impractical and costly to completely eliminate transients at the hardware level, so the system and software designers should plan for the occasional erroneous signal or power glitch that could cause the software to perform erratically. Erratic actions on the part of the software can be classified into two different categories:

Events such as natural disasters, military actions, and public safety threats have led to an increased need for robust robots — especially ones that can travel across complex terrain in any dimension. The ability to scale vertical building surfaces or other structures offers unique capabilities in military applications such as urban reconnaissance, sensor deployment, and setting up urban network nodes. SRI's novel clamping technology, called compliant electroadhesion, has enabled the first application of this technology to wall-climbing robots that can help with these situations.  As the name implies, electroadhesion is an electrically controllable adhesion technology. It involves inducing electrostatic charges on a wall substrate using a power supply connected to compliant pads situated on the moving robot. SRI has demonstrated robust clamping to common building materials including glass, wood, metal, concrete, etc. with clamping pressures in the range of 0.5 to 1.5 N per square cm of clamp (0.8 to 2.3 pounds per square inch). The technology works on conductive and non-conductive substrates, smooth or rough materials, and through dust and debris. Unlike conventional adhesives or dry adhesives, the electroadhesion can be modulated or turned off for mobility or cleaning. The technology uses a very small amount of power (on the order of 20 microwatts/Newton weight held) and shows the ability to repeatably clamp to wall substrates that are heavily covered in dust or other debris.

Although signal processing is usually associated with digital signal processors, it is becoming increasingly evident that FPGAs are taking over as the platform of choice in the implementation of high-performance, high-precision signal processing. For many such applications, the choice generally boils down to using either a single FPGA, a FPGA with an associated DSP processor or a farm of DSP processors.

Researchers at CMU and Intel are attempting to map and understand human brain activity well enough that individual words can be detected. Currently, giant MRI machines are being used but the future holds smaller devices that can be worn like a helmet according to Dean Pomerleau, senior researcher at Intel. The efficiency and productivity of word detection will be superior to existing technology that allows an operator to simply control a cursor. This technology will no doubt make its way into robotic telepresence applications including remote surgery and construction in dangerous environments such as the ocean and space.

From multicore to many-core to hard-to-describe-in-a-single-word core

D-Wave Systems, which in 2009 partnered with Google to test a prototype quantum computer for detecting vehicles in images, announced that it has now sold the first commercial quantum computer. The D-Wave quantum computer, called Rainier, solves discrete optimization problems using quantum annealing. The computer was sold to Lockheed-Martin for an undisclosed price. It is supercooled, requires 15 kilowatts, and supports APIs in multiple programming environments including Python, Java, C++, SQL, and MATLAB.

With the introduction of the WEBENCH Online Design Environment in 1999, National Semiconductor made it possible for design engineers to create a reliable power supply circuit over the internet in minutes. The user specified the circuit performance and the WEBENCH Toolset delivered. Today, WEBENCH Designer creates and presents all of the possible power, lighting, or sensing circuits that meet a design requirement in seconds. This enables the user to make value based comparisons at a system and supply chain level before a design is committed. This expert analysis is not possible anywhere else.

A new form of propulsion that could allow microrobots to explore human bodies has been discovered. The technique would be used to power robots and other devices such as microfluidic pumps from a distance. Finding a propulsion mechanism that works on the microscopic scale is one of the key challenges for developing microrobots. Another is to find a way to supply such a device with energy because there is so little room to carry on-board fuel or batteries. Now a team lead by Orlin Velev at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, US, has found that a simple electronic diode could overcome both these problems. Velev and Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK, floated a diode in a tank of salt water and zapped the set-up with an alternating electric field.

A new form of propulsion that could allow microrobots to explore human bodies has been discovered. The technique would be used to power robots and other devices such as microfluidic pumps from a distance. Finding a propulsion mechanism that works on the microscopic scale is one of the key challenges for developing microrobots. Another is to find a way to supply such a device with energy because there is so little room to carry on-board fuel or batteries. Now a team lead by Orlin Velev at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, US, has found that a simple electronic diode could overcome both these problems. Velev and Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK, floated a diode in a tank of salt water and zapped the set-up with an alternating electric field.