Don Tuite wrote his first technical article (on circular antenna polarization) in 1973 for Microwaves magazine, which is a sister publication of Electronic Design. He went on to author four books for electronics hobbyists. Since 1985, he has concentrated on semiconductors, working on his own as well as within chip manufacturers, for public relations agencies, and as a trade-press editor. He holds an MS degree in communications and technical writing from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) and a BS in electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Email address: dtuite@penton.com Web site: http://www.elecdesign.com/
437 results found for Don Tuite, displaying items 1 - 20
July 24, 2008[Design FAQs] Digital Potentiometers
Download the full article as a .PDF, sponsored by Analog What are digital potentiometers, and how are they used? Digital potentiometers are integrated circuits that implement a resistive ladder and a digital means of addressing a particular tap on the ladder that corresponds to the wiper position of a mechanical potentiometer. They’re used to...
July 24, 2008[Engineering Essentials] Beyond The $10 Million Light Bulb
Signed into law in January, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 directs the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to establish the “Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prizes” (L Prize) competition. This contest is designed to spur the development of ultra-efficient, solid-state lighting products to replace the common light bulb. Specifically, the DOE hopes to replace the 60-W incandescent lamp and the PAR 38 halogen lamp. It also calls for a...
July 24, 2008[Engineering Essentials] Secret Sauce And Sandpaper
Continually improving white LEDs depends to a great extent on proprietary improvements in the chemistry and art of phosphor deposition. Cree considers that part of its intellectual property very secret. However, McClear was willing to talk about a recent breakthrough in backend processing, one that he figures the competition will catch onto fairly quickly. In fact, the development has to do with the LED diodes themselves. In normal practice, when the diodes on a wafer are...
July 24, 2008[Leapfrog: First Look] Smart As A Brick—A New Approach Rejuvenates IBA
By moving digital feedback and PMBus control upstream from point-of-load (POL) dc-dc converters in intermediate-bus-architecture (IBA) power-distribution schemes, Ericsson Power Modules may have sidestepped a patent problem that has all but dried up new IBA developments. The brains are now in the formerly “dumb” bricks that step down 48 V dc to whatever the POLs need. In addition to jumpstarting a stalled digital IBA, Ericsson’s engineers have improved system...
July 21, 2008
[Web Exclusive] Still Working On My Solar-Panel ROI
“The meter’s running backwards!” I wrote that line in August 2006, quoting my wife Vicky, who was entranced by the most visible manifestation of what our just completed rooftop grid-connected solar system was achieving (“A Solar Story,” ED Online 13242). While that column covered the technical details of its installation, this story is about the economic advantages we’ve seen since then.
June 26, 2008[TechView: Analog & Power] Energy Harvesting Goes Commercial
Last June at Darnell’s Nanopower Forum, Face International demonstrated prototypes of its Lightning remote switching technology for home and business wiring (see “Zombies And Energy Harvesting” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 15788). At that conference, Lightning was essentially a charge stored in clouds of hope. By...
June 19, 2008[Technology Report] In Search Of The Next Disruptive Technology
Megatrends donâ??t simply happen on their own. They start with disruptive technologies that completely change the status quo, like gunpowder, the airplane, and the microprocessor. The trick lies in identifying potential disruptive technologies early on and then predicting where they might lead. Back in 1976, I was part of a group at Tektronix tasked with retraining oscilloscope sales and field engineers to sell microprocessor development...
June 11, 2008
[ED Bookstore] Linear Circuit Design Handbook
What Zumbahlen did here is basically give order to all those ADI app notes and technical articles. He also tagged related ideas to such content in a coherent sequence. If you need to know something with this kind of treeware, you can be your own search engine using the table of contents and index in the rear of the book. Or of course you can skim for the stuff you don’t already know.
June 12, 2008[Leapfrog: First Look] Charger Chip Supports Datacenter Memory System Backup Apps
How does a chip company maximize return on its non-recurring engineering investment? It could duplicate its intellectual property (IP) in a range of ICs aimed at similar applications, but with different feature sets tailored to those apps. Or, it can put the same IP into a narrower range of more versatile ICs. Linear Technology saw that a certain class of its customers had intrinsically similar needs, but a wide variety of what were essentially I/O...
June 12, 2008[Engineering Essentials] Bridge-Tied Load Amplifiers
It’s possible to build a push-pull amplifier using amplifier ICs, rather than discretes, as in the traditional class B amp (see the figure). A bridged-amplifier configuration effectively doubles the voltage swing at the load. It’s also possible to build a bridge amplifier in which one stage drives one side of the speaker and a second unity-gain inverting amplifier drives the other side of the speaker. However, the...
June 10, 2008
[Engineering Essentials] HVVFETs—New In Town
The HVVFET is the brainchild of HVVi chief technology officer Bob Davies, one of the key inventors of LDMOS 15 years ago. Devices utilize a vertical FET structure (something that’s been tried before) because it provides higher power density than lateral devices. The problem with those early efforts were the parasitics associated with silicon substrates. That limited operating frequencies. For HVVi, Davies came up with a novel edge termination structure and a unique gate-drain ...
June 12, 2008[Engineering Essentials] Back To Amp Camp
Amplifiers are fundamental circuit-design elements. They drive everything from earbuds to antennas. Placed ahead of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), they reshape signals from sources as diverse as strain-gauges to ultrasound probes. Through proper selection of feedback passives, they can be configured into high-pass, low-pass, band-pass, and band-elimination filters. Feed them with multiple signals, and they produce harmonic series of all the...
May 22, 2008[Design FAQs] Variable Gain Amplifiers Sponsored by: ANALOG DEVICES
Download the full article as a .PDF, sponsored by Analog What are VGAs? Variable gain amplifiers (VGAs) are signal-conditioning amplifiers with electronically settable voltage gain. There are analog VGAs and digital VGAs, or DVGAs. An analog voltage controls the gain in both, which differ in how it is applied. A digital-to-analog converter ...
May 22, 2008[Leapfrog: First Look] Sensor Detects Light And Proximity For Unique Mobile Applications
Suppose you were designing a digital camera, and you wanted to extend its battery life by turning off its big power-hungry display screen whenever its users have their eye up to the optical viewfinder. Or suppose you were designing a notebook and you wanted a feature that would turn the keyboard backlight on only when the user’s hands were near the keyboard. Or suppose you were designing a touchscreen phone and you wanted to deactivate the on-screen buttons when...
May 6, 2008
[TechView: Analog & Power] Higher-VBR MOSFETs Open New Design Opportunities
Several MOSFETs with higher breakdown voltages have hit the market. Some are rated for 40, 60, and 80 V, which is 10 V higher than existing devices in their respective classes, with significantly lower conduction losses. Others are rated for 900 V, again with improved conduction loss specs. At the high end of the breakdownvoltage range, Infineon Technologies is pushing the envelope with the industry’s first 900-V superjunction MOSFETs ...
April 24, 2008[Engineering Feature] Still Far To Go
Achieving the goals of P25 has been slow. Initially, the holdup was due to competition among stakeholders. The destruction of the World Trade Center and then of a good part of New Orleans finally focused public opinion and government attention on the problem of interoperability. Yet after nearly two decades, only the handheld radio interface standard is finished, though the RF Subsystem Interface (ISSI) is close to completion. An initial draft of the ISSI protocol was issued early in...
April 24, 2008[Engineering Feature] Radio Interoperability—It's Harder Than It Looks
Emergency management can be difficult enough. Designing the systems that provide seamless communication between personnel presents some equally tough challenges. Fire swept through the hills above the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, Calif., on Oct. 21, 1991. Known as the Tunnel Fire, it destroyed more than 2800 homes and damaged almost 700 more. It also burned some 1500 acres. And while it caused $1.5 billion in damage, its worst toll reverberated in...
April 24, 2008[TechView: Analog & Power] Single Chip Digitizes High-Side Power Measurements
Single Chip Digitizes High-Side Power Measurements In-circuit power measurements frequently involve a currentsense amplifier or a hot-swap controller and an analog-todigital converter (ADC). Optimally, the current sensing is done on the high side of the load to avoid false grounds. But one problem with that approach is the presence of a high common-mode voltage on the amplifier input. Another is the typical ADC’s limited input voltage range. In addition, the cost of...
April 24, 2008[TechView: Analog & Power] Monolithic Ultrasound AFEs Usurp Multiple Chips In New Designs
There are now two sources of analog front ends (AFEs) for ultrasound applications. Texas Instruments is sampling the AFE5805, the first member of a future family for portable to high-end ultrasound diagnostic equipment. Last year, Analog Devices introduced the AD9271 for the same market. Functionally similar, both are octal devices that incorporate a lownoise amplifier, variable gain amplifier (VGA), anti-aliasing filter, and 12-bit analog-to-digital...
April 10, 2008[Leapfrog: First Look] Power Over Ethernet-Plus PSE And PD Chips With Real Two-Event Classification Play Nicely Together
Last month, MicroSemi and Akros Silicon demonstrated the first compatibility between ICs for IEEE 802.11at Power over Ethernet Plus/HiPOE power source equipment (PSE) and powered devices (PDs). The PSE chip was MicroSemiâ??s PD64001, and the PD chip was Akros Siliconâ??s AS1135. Conducted by MicroSemi, the test predates the actual release of the final 802.11at standard. But the draft standard was released last fall, and an approved version is expected...
Don Tuite wrote his first technical article (on circular antenna polarization) in 1973 for Microwaves magazine, which is a sister publication of Electronic Design. He went on to author four books for electronics hobbyists. Since 1985, he has concentrated on semiconductors, working on his own as well as within chip manufacturers, for public relations agencies, and as a trade-press editor. He holds an MS degree in communications and technical writing from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) and a BS in electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
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