Analogue and Discretes

Toshiba has extended its range of low-capacitance ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection devices with the DF4D6.8UG in a 4-pin Wafer-Level-Chip-Scale Package (WCSP4B). A big application for the protection device, because of its small footprint, will be in microUSB 2.0 interfaces in smartphones. It is important to minimise the load that is added to the data line with any kind of ESD ...

For battery-powered wireless loudspeakers, HiWave Audio has launched a low power stereo amplifier module with a Bluetooth interface. The firm’s intellectual property, which it has built into a chip, is a digital audio modulation technique that cuts music playback power significantly, at the expense a comparatively small increase in distortion. “At the heart of the module is the HiAS2002 boost ...

Linear Technology has announced what it claims is the most accurate ADC, with INL errors of 2ppm maximum over temperature. “LTC2378-20 is the first 20bit SAR ADC on the market offering ±0.5ppm typical integral nonlinearity [INL] error with a guaranteed specification of 2ppm maximum over temperature, making it the most accurate ADC in the industry. With 104dB SNR it has ...

STMicroelectronics has launched the 2013 iNEMO Design Contest in Taiwan. It is the third time ST is running the competition for students and young engineers in Taiwan to design new applications built around ST’s iNEMO MEMS-based multi-sensor technology. This year’s contest encourages contestants to use sensing technologies to create new ways of interaction among technology, life and environment. “With over ...

Next generation smartphones are likely to have 40 radios in each handset to support the plethora of mobile standards and the need for multiple radio front-end circuits will have an impact on others parts of the design. One example is the design of the digital pre-distortion receiver which is shared by multiple power amplifiers (PAs) in 4G LTE systems. There ...

“The server world is changing,” says Lou di Nardo, CEO of Exar, “the customers are defining the system they want. There’s a focus on low-power servers which is creating a discontinuity – programmability is one feature of that.”

Dubbed "RF to Bits", the supplier's radio platform is designed to allow the implementation of baseband processing using off-the-shelf DSPs

Roland Einspieler from magnetic position sensor supplier ams describes the measures it has taken to support the ISO26262 compliance programmes of automotive customers

MEMS based real-time clocks are rugged, accurate both over time and temperature, and significantly smaller than clocks built using standard cylindrical crystal technology

Glasgow fabless chip firm FTDI has revealed a video controller for LCDs that allows an 8bit microcontroller to produce an animated user interface. Called the FTDI800 and branded EVE (embedded...