NXP Semiconductors N.V. (Nasdaq: NXPI), unveiled new plug-and play evaluation tools designed to enable fast and easy testing of new RF energy applications. Applications range from solid-state cooking, RF sparkplugs, RF plasma lighting to RF heating/drying, medical therapy and more. The evaluation tools will be demonstrated alongside NXP’s new RF energy power amplifier in copper […]
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NXP Introduces World’s First RAIN RFID Tag
NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI) announced the introduction of its latest UCODE product, UCODE DNA, the world’s first UHF (ultra-high frequency) RAIN RFID tag IC to combine long-range read performance with cryptographic authentication. With this new tag IC developers no longer have to choose between contactless performance and the need for security in their applications; […]
New Age Engineers Tearing Down Walls
Chi-Ping Hsu, Cadence In a recent Design World article titled, “What Will 2015 Bring? A New Electronics System Design Imperative,” we talked about the astonishing technological changes we’re undergoing in electronics system design. But there’s another transformation happening before our eyes. It’s akin to the masses tearing down the Berlin Wall: Organizations are starting to dismantle […]
Level shifting digital logic signals
In the past digital systems were 5V and analog ones +/-15V or +/-12V. Nowadays analog systems are more likely to be single supply 5V, 3.3V or lower and digital circuitry is likely to be 3.3V, 2.5V, 1.8V, 1.2V or something in between. You might also have LVDS, DDR or other differential or single ended standards […]
Choosing, using and designing oscillators
Most electronics today have oscillators in them. Digital circuitry needs a clock. Radio frequency signals require an oscillator or clock. Some analog circuitry also needs a clock or oscillating signal source. If you are using a microcontroller then it might have a built-in clock, although it may not be accurate enough, depending on your application, […]
Low Power Conversion for Energy Harvesting
by Tony Armstrong, Director of Product Marketing, Linear Technology Corporation There is plenty of ambient energy in the world around us and the conventional approach for energy harvesting has been through solar panels and wind generators. However, new harvesting tools allow us to produce electrical energy from a wide variety of ambient sources. Furthermore, it is not the […]
How to reduce noise in an electrical circuit
“Noise” can mean different things to different people. In general it is associated with something unwanted. It could be acoustic noise – background noise. In electronic terms it will generally be an unwanted electrical signal. That may be random or systematic. Either way, it would be a nuisance if the level is high enough to […]
How not to design analog filters
I thought I would share some of the crimes against filters that I have seen people commit over the years. 2+2=4? So, you have designed a 2 pole Butterworth filter for example and want a 4 pole one so you put two of them together. You have a four pole filter? Yes, but not a […]
Using LTspice for power supply design
Simulation using a SPICE simulator (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) is handy for checking out designs before building them as well as helping to understand designs and circuit problems. You can experiment without blowing anything up! LTspice from Linear Technology is particularly useful as it is free and available to download from their web […]
Analog filters
Filters are an important part of analog design. Even circuits that you don’t think of as filters are actually filters. For example, a simple amplifier will have a bandwidth and so above its upper 3dB point it is a low pass filter. Whole books have been written on filters and filter design, both analog and […]