Analog Communications

"As the number of enhancements to various Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) has increased over the past year, so too has the complexity of determining which language is best for a particular design. Many designers and organizations are contemplating whether they should switch from one HDL to another. This paper compares the technical characteristics of three, general-purpose HDLs.

This paper looks at the issues, materials and current processes being researched to create this integrated Opto-Electronic Circuit Board by European, Japanese and North American organizations.

Join us at ESC Boston, September 21-24 at the Hynes Convention Center, in Boston, MA. Expo registration is FREE, and advanced registration pricing is still available for conference packages.

Reaching tight alignment with these objectives is not an easy task. Yet, we believe when a communication services provider integrates these customer-centric objectives into the design of its converged solution, its business customers will no longer ask if the solution will meet their objectives. Rather, the question becomes one of execution: how and when to move to a converged communication solution. converged solution. From these attributes, a framework to measure and compare providers' converged solutions emerges. We will conclude with a review of Sprint's approach to offering true convergence to business and government customers.

A powerful signal integrity analysis tool must be flexibility, easy to use and integrated into an existing EDA framework and design flow. In addition, it is important for the tool to be accurate enough. This report reviews a validation study for the Mentor Graphics HyperLynx 8.0 PI tool to establish confidence in using it for power integrity analysis.

For advanced signaling over high-loss channels, designs today are using equalization and several new measurement methods to evaluate the performance of the link. Both simulation and measurement tools support equalization and the new measurement methods, but correlation of results throughout the design flow is unclear. In this paper a high performance equalizing serial data link is measured and the performance is compared to that predicted by simulation. Then, the differences between simulation and measurements are discussed as well as methods to correlate the two.

High Density Interconnect (HDI) is being used more often to meet the growing need for more complex designs in smaller form factors. Beyond some of the more obvious electrical effects of using smaller vias, there is also an impact to the power integrity of a board using HDI. This includes different effects of mounted inductances of decoupling capacitors, changes in plane performance due to reduction in perforation from chip pinouts, and the inherent plane-capacitance changes from using dielectrics of various thicknesses. This paper will examine and quantify these effects, using numerous design examples, including a large conventional through-hole design board that was reduced using HDI.

The success of any consumer electronic device depends to a large extent on the appeal of the user interface (UI) and how easy the device is to use. Studies show that good cosmetic design can encourage users to explore the full range of features and often engenders the perception that a product is easier to use. So if the benefits of a great looking, easy-to-use UI are so clear, why are so many products still falling short of customer expectations? The solution lies in taking a fresh new approach a consumer electronic device UI plays. By identifying common UI functionality and implementing it in a reusable and customizable way, we can make it far easier for embedded engineers to deliver visually engaging and easy-to-use consumer electronic products.

Moving to C++ presents opportunities for higher programmer productivity. The requirements of embedded systems, however, demand that the adoption of C++ be carefully measured for the performance impact of run-time costs present in C++, but not in C. This talk suggests strategies for developers who are starting their acquaintance with C++.

Companies today are undergoing a significant transformation to a more global Anywhere Enterprise. Unified communications (UC) is a crucial component in this evolution and organizations look to collaborate better with an extended enterprise (see Exhibit 1 on the next page). UC has the power to help companies lower the overall cost of communications, bring worker productivity to new levels, enhance corporate green initiatives and completely redefine the way we work by becoming part of our application infrastructure.

Ultra High Speed Internet, TV and local/long distance phone services combined into 1 superior service.

Through a combination of integrated hardware and software components, ARM TrustZone* technology provides the basis for a highly-protected system architecture targeted specifically at securing consumer products such as mobile phones, PDAs, set-top boxes or other systems running open Operating Systems (OS), such as Symbian OS, Linux and Windows CE.

Embedded system designers have a variety of code execution methods to choose from: eXecute-In-Place (XIP), Fully Shadowed and Demand Paging. Using the best method is the key for a cost-effective solution. Each method has different implications in terms of RAM and Flash usage which directly affect the cost of the system.

Flash memory is a non-volatile memory, which allows the user to electrically program (write) and erase information. The exponential growth of flash memory has made this technology an indispensable part of billions of electronic devices.

Phase Change Memory (PCM) is a term used to describe a class of non-volatile memory devices that employ a reversible phase change in materials to store information. Matter can exist in various phases such as solid, liquid, gas, condensate and plasma.

Using digital control in power supplies is considerably more flexible than analog control in its ability to adapt to changes and digital control inside the power supply results in advantages to the system application such as improved efficiency, fewer external components and reduced overall cost.

“Medical grade DC/DC converters” is an often used, but more often abused, description of a class of converters that are increasingly in demand. What are actually the particular requirements that medical applications place on DC/DC converters?

The frequency of the local oscillator is set so that the difference between the local oscillator frequency and desired input signal (the radio station you want to receive) equals the IF.

A/D (analog-to-digital) converters, frequently abbreviated as ADC, accept an analog voltage at the input and produce a digital representation of that voltage at the output that’s called a “sample”.

FPGAs are becoming an increasingly important resource for software radio systems. This handbook introduces the basics of software radio followed by a brief review of the evolution of programmable logic technology which now offers significant advantages for implementing software radio functions.

Power distribution units (PDUs) are vital to the management of power to IT arrays and have evolved from a simple panel of switches and outlets to designs that can now be considered "intelligent" through the inclusion of internal processing capabilities.

Uninterruptible Power Solutions are often solved at the facility level with unnecessarily large, inefficient, expensive and complex AC UPS systems. While this provides an easy demarcation line between the facility and end equipment, with each focusing on a different part of the problem, it also results in overall operating efficiency and total cost of ownership being difficult to ascertain and optimize.

Modern Electronic Systems are quite often powered from a three-phase power source. While utilizing power modules that operate directly from three-phase power might seem to provide optimal simplicity and flexibility, the added complexity required to realize three-phase power factor corrected circuitry usually negates any potential savings.

National Instruments LabVIEW is a dataflow programming language, developers can write inherently parallel applications that can map to parallel hardware such as multicore processors and FPGAs for optimal performance. This white paper discusses dataflow programming and why NI LabVIEW is ideal for programming multicore systems.

Since the very first Digital Power Forum which took place in 2004, many articles have been written touting the general advantages of using digital control.  It was at this time that ROAL Electronics introduced into the marketplace the first digitally controlled DC-DC converter.