EP&Dee no 1

JANUARY, 2014 足 ISSUE NO. 1, VOL. 12

DESIGN & MANUFACTURING

EP&Dee ELECTRONICS

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EASTERN

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JANUARY 2014 Table of Contents DESIGN FEATURES 8 Aurocon COMPEC prezents RS Toolbox 10 Review of 2013 and a glimpse of 2014 The electronics distribution industry has always been one of high competition, executed with an unrelenting pace. That’s not changed, and neither has the traditional bias towards business models designed around the three key areas of availability, speed and price. But faced with increasing pressures, we’re seeing engineers demanding more, and our industry has to respond.

12 How the Internet of Things Is Revolutionizing Healthcare In the Internet of Things (IoT), devices gather and share information directly with each other and the cloud, making it possible to collect, record and analyze new data streams faster and more accurately.

That suggests all sorts of interesting possibilities across a range of industries: cars that sense wear and tear and self-schedule maintenance or trains that dynamically calculate and report projected arrival times to waiting passengers.

18 Power Interface Module Saves Valuable Board Space and Reduces Time-to-Market A comparison of alternative on-board power solutions is rarely at the top of the agenda for a board designer. Often designers will use a previous solution because all available resources and time must be spent on the functionality of the system design

22 New Trends in Medical Portable Systems and Telehealth With an aging population, the rise of chronic diseases and the need to develop a healthcare infrastructure in emerging countries, there is a strong need to transform the care that we receive today.

26 An Analog Front-End for Blood Pressure Monitors Blood pressure monitors are no longer medical tools found only in hospitals and doctor’s offices.

Automatic blood pressure monitoring is increasingly used at home. Home units are used not only by people who suffer from hypertension and need to track their blood pressure but also by people who want to monitor their health and get readings that are not affected by the anxiety or stress of a doctor or hospital visit.

Win a Microchip Accessory Development Starter Kit for Android EP&Dee is offering you the chance to win a Microchip Accessory Development Starter Kit for Android™, enabling accessory development for Google’s Android platform.

The Microchip PIC24F Accessory Development Start Kit for Android™ is a standalone board used for evaluating and developing electronic accessories for Google’s Android operating system for smartphones and tablets.

Specifically, Android versions 2.3.4 and 3.1 and later include a new framework that allows apps to communicate directly with an accessory connected to a smartphone or tablet, via USB. The kits consist of a development board and a software library, available via free download from http://www.microchip.com/get/522D, which enable the fast and easy development of Android smartphone and tablet accessories based on Microchip’s large portfolio of 16-bit and 32-bit PIC® microcontrollers.

28 The C8051 Core: A Compute Engine with an Embedded Mixed-Signal Twist A multitude of architectural variations exist today including the Silicon Labs MCU version, which has evolved into a pipelined complex instruction set computing (CISC) device with Fetch/Decode/Execute pipe stages. This core is known as the CIP-51 as developed by Silicon Labs and sits at the heart of all its 8-bit mixed-signal MCUs.

32 Phase Noise Performance in Crystal Oscillators 38 Contrinex - Full-metal sensors, now also in the BASIC range PRODUCT NEWS 4

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Embedded Systems (p 4 - 7) (p 15, 25, 31, 35) Active Components (p 40)

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This starter kit bundles five major components including 16-bit PIC24F Development Board, PICkit 3 In-Circuit Debugger (PG164130), RJ-11 to ICSP Adapter (AC164110), 9V Power Supply (AC002014) and Royalty Free, No Fee Licensed Software Library.

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For your chance to win a Microchip Accessory Development Starter Kit for Android, visit : http://www.microchip-comps.com/epdee-android14 and enter your details in the entry form.

Passive Components (p 41 - 43)

Group Publisher Director Gabriel Neagu Managing Director Ionela Ganea Accounting Ioana Paraschiv Advertisement Irina Ganea WEB Eugen Vărzaru © 2014 by Eurostandard Press 2000

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Contributing editors Radu Andrei Ross Bannatyne Consulting Marian Blejan Bogdan Grămescu Mihai Savu Asian Reprezentative Taiwan Charles Yang Tel: +886­4­3223633 charles@medianet.com.tw

EP&Dee Web page: www.epd­ee.eu EP&Dee Subscriptions: office@epd­ee.eu

EUROSTANDARD PRESS 2000 Tel.: +40 31 805 9955 Tel: +40 31 805 9887 office@esp2000.ro www.esp2000.ro VAT Registration: RO3998003 Company number: J03/1371/1993

EP&Dee (Electronics Products & Design ­ Eastern Europe) is published 11 times per year in 2014 by Euro Standard Press 2000 s.r.l.

It is a free to qualified electronics engineers and managers involved in engineering decisions. Starting on 2010, this magazine is published only in digital format.

Copyright 2014 by Euro Standard Press 2000 s.r.l. All rights reserved.

INDUSTRY NEWS Microchip’s low-power sensor hub makes sensor fusion easy Partnered with leading sensor manufacturers for maximum flexibility Microchip announces the SSC7102, a lowpower, flexible and turnkey sensor hub that makes implementing sensor fusion easy and provides an extremely large selection of supported sensors. Microchip has partnered directly with multiple industry-leading sensor manufacturers and sensor-fusion specialists to create this solution, enabling faster time to market without the need for sensor-fusion expertise. The SSC7102 is also extremely efficient. It consumes ~4 mA while running complex sensor-fusion algorithms, resulting in longer battery life for Windows® 8.1 tablets, laptops, ultrabooks and smart phones.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS Second UK MVNO launches 4G coverage checker powered by SpatialBuzz SpatialBuzz, an innovative cloud-based customer experience analytics and service monitoring platform for network operators, has announced that a second UK Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) has launched its online coverage checker, a component of SpatialBuzz’s cloud-based customer experience management (CEM) software solution. This is the third UK deployment for SpatialBuzz – the solution is already being used successfully by both Telefónica O2 and Tesco Mobile.

SpatialBuzz software provides customers with real-time access to detailed coverage maps for both 2G and 3G as well as for 4G, meaning that they will be able to check whether 4G coverage is adequate in their area before making a decision to purchase or upgrade to the new 4G service.

SpatialBuzz harnesses the power of customer experience analytics to

enable operators to better understand service issues, by analysing in real time where customers and agents are performing network status checks.

SPATIALBUZZ www.spatialbuzz.com

Silicon Labs Giant Gecko MCU Enables Echo Smart Sports watch to Go the Distance Sensors can now be added to virtually anything, due to their small cost and size. IHS iSuppli predicts that more than 6 billion motion sensors are expected to ship in mobile handsets and tablets by 2016. As sensors continue to surround us, system requirements are moving from simple monitoring to providing complex information about our environment and activities. Data from multiple sensors, which sense motion via accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes, as well as environmental factors such as light, temperature, humidity and pressure, needs to be incorporated or “fused” in the system.

Microchip’s low-power SSC7102 sensor hub runs these complex sensor-fusion algorithms, while providing maximum flexibility in an easyto-implement solution.

In developing the SSC7102 Microchip partnered with industry-leading companies, such as Bosch and Movea, to deliver an easy-to-use, Windows 8.1-certified HID-over-I2C™ solution with exceptionally low power consumption.

Microchip’s SSC7102 sensor hub is available in a 6mm x 6mm body, BGA package. Samples are available now and volume production is expected by the end of this quarter.

MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY www.microchip.com/get/9821

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Silicon Labs announced that Magellan, a leader of innovative GPS devices for vehicles, fitness, outdoor and mobile navigation, has chosen Silicon Labs’ EFM32™ Giant Gecko microcontroller (MCU) as the energy-friendly processing platform for the Magellan Echo smart sports watch. Named as a CES Innovations 2014 Design and Engineering Award Honoree, the Echo is the first “open” smart sports watch platform that enables application developers to augment their apps to be viewed on and controlled from the wrist.

In the emerging market of wearables and appcessories, the award-winning Magellan Echo stands out for its innovative design. Its display and watch face can be customized to reflect various sports and fitness activities from running, biking, hiking to golfing while offering additional features such as the ability to remotely control music and sports apps from a smartphone. Unlike other smartwatches, the Echo leverages the smartphone’s integrated GPS and communicates directly with Bluetooth Smart-enabled iPhone and Android smartphones. This streamlined design results in a lightweight

sports watch with exceptionally long battery life that is far superior to competing devices.

The 32-bit Giant Gecko MCU, based on the ARM® Cortex®-M3 core, also plays a key role in the sport watch’s energy efficiency, enabling the Echo to operate for up to 11 months on a single CR2032 coin-cell battery.

The Magellan Echo design team achieved their ultra-low energy goals by optimizing

the Giant Gecko MCU’s five different energy modes and leveraging the MCU’s low-energy sensor interface (LESENSE) and peripheral reflex system (PRS). These features enable energy-friendly and autonomous peripherals to handle timing and sensor control without involving the CPU. SILICON LABS www.silabs.com

INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

XJTAG returns for Embedded World 2014 Visitors to stand 4-603 at this year’s Embedded World exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, can win a Raspberry Pi by guessing the code to the XJTAG safe.

XJTAG returns to Embedded World this year with its popular ‘Crack the Safe’ competition. Visitors can arrange a free trial and demonstration of the XJTAG boundary scan system, as well as finding out why world leading companies select XJTAG. In an age where chip and board geometries continue to shrink, working at higher speeds and greater densities, traditional test technology often falls short. XJTAG boundary scan provides a cost-effective, non-intrusive test solution that pushes beyond these limitations to improve test coverage. The popular Raspberry Pi exemplifies many of the issues faced in electronics testing today. Its BGA packaging is akin to that used in an increasing number of modern boards that make most pins unreachable through physical

access. But the industry is far from blind to this problem, with JTAG Boundary Scan technology granting the engineer enhanced digital access to these difficult to reach

pins. XJTAG uses a simple 4-5 wire hardware interface to control and monitor JTAG enabled devices.

Combined with XJTAG’s user friendly software, every feature is designed to make testing easier and faster. The revolutionary system saves you time and money during board development by allowing early creation of reconfigurable test scripts that can be used throughout the whole of production.

XJTAG www.xjtag.com

FTDI Embedded Video Engine (EVE) Now In Stock At Mouser Mouser Electronics, Inc. is now stocking FDTI’s FT800 Embedded Video Engine (EVE) integrated circuit, which addresses the need for easy-to-design, advanced forms of human-machine interaction.

The FTDI FT800 Embedded Video Engine (EVE) available at Mouser Electronics is a high quality graphics chip with 3-in-1 functionality for graphical user interface (GUI) development. The FT800 combines display, audio, and touch operations into a single chip, providing an optimized solution that reduces power, board area, bill of material (BOM) costs, and much more. With these advantages, engineers now have a complete solution to easily create state-of-the-art interactive displays. Targeting intelligent QVGA and WQVGA TFT display panels, EVE's object-oriented approach renders display images in a line-by-line manner with resolution of 1/16th of a pixel,

eliminating the expense of traditional frame buffer memory.

The FT800 interfaces to the system microcontroller by a low bandwidth serial interface, allowing for lower cost microcontrollers to be used in the design. The con-

troller's functionality sets new industry benchmarks, supporting 4-wire resistive touch sensing with built-in intelligent touch detection and an embedded audio processor that allows midi-like sounds, combined with pulse code modulation (PCM) for audio playback.

MOUSER www.mouser.com FTDI www.ftdichip.com

Embedded World: Rutronik shows Bluetooth Low Energy capable miniature computer At embedded world, Rutronik (Hall 1, booth 310 and 249), presents RFduino from RFdigital. This smallest stand-alone computer with integrated Bluetooth Low Energy, AD-converter and GPIO's is based on the nRF51822 Bluetooth system-chip from Nordic Semiconcductor. RFduino can be equipped with various shields and is available at distributor Rutronik as of now.

RFduino is the first Arduinocompatible board that can communicate wirelessly with Bluetooth v4.0 compatible smartphones and tablets. The board includes a 2,4GHz Bluetooth module, the RFD22301, which could also be used for big production series after the prototyping with RFduino.

The board contains a 2,4GHz transceiver, which can change over Bluetooth Low Energy, Gazell and ShockBurst, as well as a 256kB Flash, a 32-bit CortexMO core and I/O periphery.

Rutronik exclusively offers a series of differently extensive RFduino Development Kits in various price categories.

As operating system and radio stuck, a model of Arduino can be flashed or software from Nordic Semiconductor can be used. Thanks to a broad range of shields (plug-in function expansion) a prototype can quickly be put together, which can be transformed with little effort for large scale production.

RUTRONIK

www.rutronik.com/2610138a.l

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INDUSTRY NEWS Mouser Supplies New Maxim Integrated MAX17503 DC-DC Converter Mouser Electronics, Inc. delivers the Maxim MAX17503 Step-Down DC-DC converter, with a 60 volt maximum input voltage, and up to 2.5 amps of output current. The Maxim MAX17503 available from Mouser Electronics is extremely flexible, operating over an input voltage range of 4.5V to 60V and delivering output voltages from 0.92V to a maximum of 90% of the input voltage. These wide ranges allow designers to reduce the number of DCDC regulators in stock. Peak efficiency is greater than 90%. A detailed datasheet provides directions for choosing the proper external components for an application circuit's requirements. Operational temperature is from -40°C to +125°C, with thermal shutdown kicking in at 165°C.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Silicon Labs Targets Internet of Things with Lowest Power and Smallest Form Factor Wireless MCUs Silicon Labs announced that it has expanded its family of 8-bit Si10xx wireless microcontrollers (MCUs) with two new options optimized for both cost-sensitive and performance-intensive designs. By combining its ultra-low-power MCU technology with its sub-GHz EZRadio® and EZRadioPRO® transceivers in a single-chip solution, Silicon Labs has created new energy-friendly wireless MCUs that achieve industryleading RF performance with the lowest overall power consumption in their class. Supporting worldwide frequency bands from 142 to 1050 MHz with low-power sleep and active modes for extended battery life, the Si106x and Si108x wireless MCUs address the low energy and RF connectivity requirements of home automation, security and access control, sensor networks, asset tracking and long-range control applications for the

Internet of Things. The highest performance and smallest wireless MCU solutions on the market, the Si106x and Si108x devices integrate an energy-efficient 8051 MCU and a

sub-GHz RF transceiver into a 5 mm x 6 mm QFN package. This compact footprint makes the Si106x/8x wireless MCUs an ideal fit for space-constrained applications that require wireless connectivity as well as ultra-low power for long battery life.

SILICON LABS www.silabs.com/wirelessmcu

Rutronik at embedded world: Hall 1, stands 1-310 and 249 Complete component portfolio offers maximum depth of integration for embedded systems

A robust internal protection mechanism protects the device from high input voltages and short-circuit conditions. Hiccup-mode protection drops the output voltage to zero for a short time and then resumes normal voltage output, useful for circuit protection from current spikes that can occur when fans or motors are suddenly powered on.

This DC-DC converter is ideal for applications such as industrial power supplies, distributed supply regulation, base station power supplies, wall transformer regulation, high-voltage single-board systems, and general purpose pointof-load solutions. The MAX17503 needs only eight external components, reducing the total cost of design.

With its broad product line and unsurpassed customer service, Mouser caters to design engineers and buyers by delivering What’s Next in advanced technologies. Mouser offers customers 20 global support locations and stocks the world’s widest selection of the latest semiconductors and electronic components for the newest design projects.

MOUSER ELECTRONICS MAXIM INTEGRATED

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www.mouser.com www.maximintegrated.com

EP&Dee | January, 2014 | www.epd-ee.eu

Rutronik Elektronische Bauelemente GmbH is presenting its portfolio of embedded computing boards, displays, memory components, auto ID, wireless modules and intelligent sensors with maximum depth of integration for the embedded systems of the future (stands 1310 und 1-249). For this reason, Rutronik is today responding to the requirements for the future project Industrie 4.0 and the integrated approach for all networked applications.

At its trade fairs stands, Rutronik is exhibiting the technological foundation for the Internet of Things and Services in all functional and practical details. These include a comprehensive portfolio of RISCbased board solutions with module solutions as well as single-board computers from various manufacturers. Highlights of the x86 segment are the industrial AMD embedded G-series 'eKabini', Intel's new Atom platform 'Bay Trail' and the 4th generation Intel Core i technology. In the storage

area, Rutronik is exhibiting the new EMMLC (Endurance Managed - Multi Level Cell) SD, microSD and SSD Flash memory cards, some with Lifetime monitoring tools, as well as MLC SSDs for the expanded tem-

perature range. Rutronik is introducing TFT displays with integrated projected-capacitive and resistive touchscreen technology as well as without touchscreens in sizes up to 19" from its new franchise partner DLC Display. Experienced product and application engineers will be available to provide fair visitors with expert advice.

RUTRONIK www.rutronik.com

INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Ericsson third-generation 25A digital point-ofload regulator embeds dynamic loop compensation The new Ericsson 3E series BMR463-25A is a third-generation digital point-of-load (POL) regulator that features Dynamic Loop Compensation (DLC) and delivers a 25 percent increase in output current over the second-generation BMR46320A, yet comes in a fully compatible footprint. The product features a full set of PMBus commands enabling systems architects to fully monitor and dynamically control the energy delivered to strategic components, such as processors, FPGAs, ASICs and others, down to a very low and highly economical level.

Embedding the latest technology in terms of Dynamic Loop Compensation, the BMR463-25A runs the DLC algorithm as default each time the output is enabled.

However, three more settings are also available via the PMBus for systems architects to choose the most appropriate method for their application with the DLC

algorithm run every second or every minute or simply disabled.

In addition to standard methods, designers can also use the Loop Compensation Tool featured in

the latest Ericsson Power Designer software to set their own loop compensation profile to match specific application requirements.

In addition, developed with high efficiency in mind, the BMR46325A powertrain is composed of the latest MOSFET technology to deliver up to 95.2 percent efficiency at 3.3V output and up to 89.4% at 1.0V when the output load is at 50 percent.

ERICSSON POWER MODULES www.ericsson.com/powermodules

Starter Kit for nanoRISC Processor Modules with TI AM335x For evaluation and test of the MSC NANORISC-AM335x family of processor modules with Texas Instruments AM335x ARM processor, MSC Vertriebs GmbH offers the ready-to-use MSC NANORISC-SK-MB2 starter kit. The kit consists of the versatile MSC nanoRISCMB2 baseboard with power supply, a 7” WVGA TFT display and a 7” PCT touch panel. A Debian Linux operating system installation on a bootable SD card or downloadable or free is ensuring immediate operation of the starter kit.

Even though the carrier board MSC nanoRISC-MB2 used for the starter kit provides an input for resistive 4wire touch panels, a controller for projected capacitive touch (PCT) panels was added to the most

recent board revision. Therefore the new version of the nanoRISC® starter kit comes with such a touch function for the 7-inch display, enabling the user to follow the general trend to userfriendly iPhonestyle user interfaces which are increasingly found in industrial applications. Along with the starter kit, the user can choose the 70 x 50mm nanoRISC® module from the MSC NANORISC-AM335x family from MSC. These boards are based on the Texas Instruments AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor. The nanoRISC® module with AM3352 clocked at 300MHz offers a 1.7W low power consumption.

MSC VERTRIEBS www.mscembedded.com

Microchip updates MPLAB® Device Blocks for Simulink® with multirate and interrupt capabilities Microchip announces Version 3.30 of its MPLAB® Device Blocks for Simulink®, which makes it easy to develop complex designs using Microchip’s dsPIC30 and dsPIC33 digital signal controllers (DSCs). This software provides a set of user interfaces to MathWorks’ Simulink graphical environment for simulation and model-based design, where code for the application is generated, compiled and loaded onto a target dsPIC® DSC in a single, one-click step. Updates to this version include multi-rate and interrupt-capable device blocks, as well as a Free edition for up to seven I/O ports that eliminates the compile wait time found on prior Free editions. Existing users can upgrade to the new PRO edition for free.

The need for energy efficiency is driving complex motor-control designs that utilize sensorless control technology and closedloop algorithms. These sophisticated signal-processing applications require both high-level maths abstraction and low-level programming knowledge. The ability to easily design complex algorithms using tools such as Simulink, instead of hand coding, speeds time to market. Microchip’s MPLAB Device Blocks for Simulink enable designers to go back and forth from simulation to real hardware test quickly, without the burden of low-level programming tasks.

Microchip’s Device Blocks provide complete, model-based control of most dsPIC DSC on-chip peripherals for greater flexibility and higher utilization, including digital I/Os, ADCs, PWMs, change notifications, output compares, input captures, quadrature encoder interfaces, interrupts and resets, as well as communication interfaces such as I2C™, SPI and UARTs. Additionally, designers can monitor, tune and log their algorithms and applications in real time, via a GUI. The Device Blocks are also simple to set-up and one configuration can be used across all dsPIC DSCs, which enables easy inprocess design changes and seamless migration. Target configuration blocks include Master Block, Simulink Reset Config, Compiler Option and Data Sheet. The Device Blocks’ facility to invoke dsPIC3X dedicated functions written in C, via a C function-call block, allows designers to write less code by utilizing many of Microchip’s numerous application, algorithm and operation libraries directly from a Simulink model.

The PRO edition (SW007023) is priced at $1495, and existing users can upgrade for free.

MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY

www.microchip.com/get/W15M

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INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Aurocon COMPEC prezents RS Toolbox RS believe that engineers should be able to access design reference any time and anywhere. That's why we've created the FREE Toolbox App – so you can have the handy tools you need, right in your pocket. Started with a set of useful ‘minitools’ in the app and will be regularly adding more tools based on your feedback. The possibilities are endless so try RS Toolbox and let us know what you think! Download RS Toolbox (for customers in all markets apart of North America, this App is related to the RS Components product offer. You need to select your country before you can see the download page).

RS TOOLBOX: FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS

Benefits

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With this easy-to-use app you can:

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The Toolbox App provides a set of electronics reference material and calculation tools.

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Greater reliability with all the design lookup tables and calculation tools you need in one place Calculation tools: include filter circuits, OpAmp, Ohm’s Law, voltage regulator and unit conversion formulae.

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Lookup tables: include batteries, cable colours, conductor properties, IP ratings, SI units and more.

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Group into projects: pull in group designs and calculations from multiple tools into one project

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Colour codes: include resistor, capacitor and inductor codes

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Design anytime and anywhere: access your calculations, references and documents on the move

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Achieve greater accuracy with all the lookup tables and calculation tools.

Design anytime and anywhere: perform complex calculations on your smartphone.

Group into project: pull in calculation results, documents, and parts from multiple tools into a project.

Aurocon Compec www.compec.ro Get the latest news and exclusive promotions from RS Electronics.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Review of 2013 and a glimpse of 2014 The electronics distribution industry has always been one of high competition, executed with an unrelenting pace. That’s not changed, and neither has the traditional bias towards business models designed around the three key areas of availability, speed and price. But faced with increasing pressures, we’re seeing engineers demanding more, and our industry has to respond.

Author: Elaine Barnes,

One of those demands comes in the shape of transparency. Across Farnell element 14 we’ve been able to meet this through introducing date and lot codes. These give customers the assurance of complete traceability. For the industry I think 2013 has been one of listening and responding, and those that do that well, will come out stronger. For Farnell element14, that’s about making sure we continue to place the customer at the heart of our proposition. On top of the core offering, new services have been developed including, packaging options for volume production, price breaks for CEM customers and guarantees for moisture sensitive parts.

Products can now be searched for and found online by architecture, technology type, application or end market.

In any highly competitive market the leaders succeed through differentiation. And ours is no different. For us, that means making our customers lives easier, such as our new Parts Finder Tool that allows customers to find our parts on any website and compare pricing and availability instantly. While through Embest, our design company based in 10

EP&Dee | January, 2014 | www.epd-ee.eu

Head of Commercial Centres and Quoting Europe at Farnell element14

China, we are able to provide a range of exclusive products such as development kits and accessories. Additionally, through continued investment this year we have expanded our range of development kits into one of the most comprehensive in the industry.

Software leads The way the market now approaches design has also changed, we’re now seeing more and more designs initiated by software decisions with the hardware requirement built around it. Anticipating the importance software would have in the design cycle we have expanded availability to a significant number of design tools from our Semiconductor partners.

Adding the ARM franchise to our proposition in 2013 was a critical development to allow us to continue to meet our customers’ needs as well as our continued investment in

CadSoft which celebrated its 25th birthday this year.

Customer Loyalty – does it exist?

Knowing your customers and getting repeat orders from them is no guarantee you’ve truly won the customer. It is just one of the hard lessons in business, and one that is reinforced even more within our industry.

As customers shop around more it’s important for businesses like ours to remain agile, adapting to change and ensuring our proposition differentiates us from the competition.

That’s why this year we have continued to invest heavily in our drive to put the customer right at the heart of the organisation.

INDUSTRY NEWS

Our loyalty programme – The Power Circuit – has been tailored based on our customers’ feedback so it rewards them in the way they want. We have spent time listening to our customers to improve all our touch points.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

had manufactured our one millionth Pi in the UK, a fantastic testament to both the product and UK manufacturing. We’ve also been working closely with PiFace and Gert Van Loo to bring to market some new accessory boards that open up even more potential for the device. Through Embest we continue to build strategic partnerships to develop other exciting accessories.

A future of consolidation Next year I predict that we’ll start to see further consolidation in the distribution space,

as designers and engineers look to just one company to support them at every stage of the design process.

Whether that’s by providing the right range of development kits and software or meeting the differing needs of volume production, the challenge for us and our competitors is continuing to deliver the high-service people have come to expect, while also understanding the challenges faced as designs progress through to manufacture. n www.farnell.com

By listening we’ve got a program that truly delivers, supporting our customers and their organisations to do better business.

Online Communities and the Power of Pi In a recent survey commissioned by CadSoft it was revealed that Peer-to-peer communities are a key enabler of modern PCB design and in 2013 our Community element14.com grew to over 200,000 members, showing the continued value that engineers see in being able to share advice and experiences.

The Raspberry Pi phenomenon has moved on, from an exciting new product to a successful one with the sales figures to back it up – earlier this year we announced that we

www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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DESIGN

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

How the Internet of Things Is Revolutionizing Healthcare

In the Internet of Things (IoT), devices gather and share information directly with each other and the cloud, making it possible to collect, record and analyze new data streams faster and more accurately.

That suggests all sorts of interesting possibilities across a range of industries: cars that sense wear and tear and self-schedule maintenance or trains that

Author: David Niewolny,

Healthcare Segment Manager at Freescale Semiconductor

dynamically calculate and report projected arrival times to waiting passengers.

But nowhere does the IoT offer greater promise than in the field of healthcare, where its principles are already being applied to improve access to care, increase the quality of care and most importantly reduce the cost of care.

At Freescale, we’re excited to see our embedded technologies being used in applications like telehealth systems that deliver care to people in remote locations and monitoring systems that provide a continuous stream of accurate data for better care decisions.

As the technology for collecting, analyzing and transmitting data in the IoT continues to mature, we’ll see more and more exciting new IoT-driven healthcare applications and systems emerge.

Read on to learn what’s happening 12

EP&Dee | January, 2014 | www.epd-ee.eu

now—and what’s on the horizon—for healthcare in the age of the IoT. There’s no shortage of predictions about how the Internet of Things (IoT) is going to revolutionize healthcare by dramatically lowering costs and improving quality. But what we’re seeing at Freescale is that it’s already doing that.

Wireless sensor-based systems are at work today, gathering patient medical data that was never before available for analysis and delivering care to people for whom care wasn’t previously accessible. In these ways, IoT-driven systems are making it possible to radically reduce costs and improve health by increasing the availability and quality of care.

DESIGN

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

In this paper, we’ll explore in greater depth the role of the IoT in healthcare delivery, take a close look at the technological aspects that make it a reality and examine the opportunities and challenges the IoT poses for healthcare today.

We’ll start with an introduction to the IoT— still a relatively new concept—but one with a growing number of practical applications across many industries.

These topics are of vital interest to Freescale, where we develop and manufacture embedded technologies for use throughout IoT-driven healthcare systems, including: • Sensors that collect patient data • Microcontrollers that process, analyze and wirelessly communicate the data • Microprocessors that enable rich graphical user interfaces • Healthcare-specific gateways through which sensor data is further analyzed and sent to the cloud

First Things First: Understanding the IoT IoT-related healthcare systems today are based on the essential definition of the IoT as a network of devices that connect directly with each other to capture and share vital data through a secure service layer (SSL) that connects to a central command and control server in the cloud. Let’s begin with a closer look at what that entails and what it suggests for the way people collect, record and analyze data—not just in healthcare, but in virtually every industry today.

The idea of devices connecting directly with each other is, as the man who coined the term Internet of Things puts it, “a big deal.”1 As Kevin Ashton explained a decade after first using the phrase at a business presentation in 1999, “Today computers—and therefore, the Internet—are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. The problem is, people have limited, time, attention and accuracy—all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world.”1 The solution, he has always believed, is empowering devices to gather information on their

own, without human intervention.

The emergence of the IoT, in which devices connect directly to data and to each other, is important for two reasons: 1. Advances in sensor and connectivity technology are allowing devices to collect, record and analyze data that was not accessible before. In healthcare, this means being able to collect patient data over time that can be used to help enable preventive care, allow prompt diagnosis of acute complications and promote understanding of how a therapy (usually pharmacological) is helping improve a patient’s parameters.

2. The ability of devices to gather data on their own removes the limitations of humanentered data—automatically obtaining the data doctors need, at the time and in the way they need it.

The automation reduces the risk of error.

Fewer errors can mean increased efficiency, lower costs and improvements in quality in just about any industry. But it’s of particular interest/need in healthcare, where human error can literally be the difference between life and death.

Re m o t e Pat i e nt M o n i t o r i n g

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IoT Building Blocks Emerging Everywhere Even though only “1 percent of things are connected today,”2 according to Joseph Bradley, general manager of Cisco Consulting Services, businesses across a variety of industries are establishing the building blocks of the IoT infrastructure. Here are a few examples: • Home and building automation: Digital marketer Lauren Fisher points to the Nest Learning Thermostat, which takes data about the home environment and owners’ temperature preferences and programs itself to operate efficiently within the context of that information.3 This technical framework provides energy providers with the connectivity to better manage the energy grid.

• Automotive design and manufacturing: Mobile virtual network operator Alex Brisbourne describes how the automotive industry is increasingly designing automated applications into vehicles to provide maintenance monitoring, fuel and mileage management, driver security and other capabili-

ties that cost little to integrate but have significant earning potential.4 The addition of a cloud-based server to analyze the data and automatically act on it—automatically scheduling a maintenance appointment at the appropriate time, for example—would move this further in the direction of the IoT. • Public transportation/smart cities: Technology writer Martyn Casserly cites the London iBus system, which “…works with information from over 8,000 buses that are fitted with GPS capabilities alongside various other sensors which relay data about the vehicle’s location and current progress,”5 so bus stop signposts can display details of a bus’s impending arrival.

IoT concepts have already been adopted in areas such as energy (e.g., smart lighting, smart grid) and industrial automation.

According to a report in eWeek2 about a Cisco conference call with journalists, “…as more connections are made, the value to businesses and the global economy will only go up.” The eWeek story describes a Cisco vision that goes beyond the IoT to IoE, or

the Internet of Everything. This is what Cisco sees as a system of connections that includes not only devices, but also people, data and processes—“…essentially whatever is connected to or crosses over the Internet.”

Cisco expects the IoE to be worth $14.4 trillion to the global economy by 2020.

But, that’s another story. Let’s get back to the IoT to take a look at how it’s being used in healthcare today and explore how it’s changing healthcare for the better.

IoT in Action in Healthcare The IoT plays a significant role in a broad range of healthcare applications, from managing chronic diseases at one end of the spectrum to preventing disease at the other.

Here are some examples of how its potential is already playing out: • Clinical care: Hospitalized patients whose physiological status requires close attention can be constantly monitored using IoT-driven, noninvasive monitoring. This type of solution employs sensors to collect comprehensive physiological information and uses gateways and the cloud to analyze and store the information and then send the analyzed

H o m e H e a l t h H u b Re f e r e n c e P l atf o r m

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data wirelessly to caregivers for further analysis and review. It replaces the process of having a health professional come by at regular intervals to check the patient’s vital signs, instead providing a continuous automated flow of information. In this way, it simultaneously improves the quality of care through constant attention and lowers the cost of care by eliminating the need for a caregiver to actively engage in data collection and analysis.

An example of this type of system is the Masimo Radical-7®, a health monitor for clinical environments that collects patient data and wirelessly transmits for ongoing display or for notification purposes. The results provide a complete, detailed picture of patient status for clinicians to review wherever they may be. The monitor incorporates Freescale technology in the form of an i.MX applications processor with enhanced graphics capabilities that enables the extremely high-resolution display of information, as well as a touch-based user interface that makes the technology easy to use.

• Remote monitoring: There are people all over the world whose health may suffer because they don’t have ready access to effective health monitoring. But small, powerful wireless solutions connected through the IoT are now making it possible for monitoring to come to these patients instead of vice-versa. These solutions can be used to securely capture patient health data from a variety of sensors, apply complex algorithms to analyze the data and then share it through wireless connectivity with medical professionals who can make appropriate health recommendations.

As a result, patients with chronic diseases may be less likely to develop complications, and acute complications may be diagnosed earlier than they would be otherwise. For example, patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases who are being treated with digitalis could be monitored around the clock to prevent drug intoxication.

Arrhythmias that are randomly seen on an EKG could be easily detected, and EKG data indicating heart hypoxemia could lead to faster detection of cardiac issues. The data collected may also enable a more preventive approach to healthcare by providing information for people to make healthier choices.

An example of an enabling technology for remote monitoring is the Freescale Home Health Hub reference platform, which is

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built on Freescale i.MX applications processing technology and tightly integrates key capabilities—such as wireless connectivity and power management—in the telehealth gateway that enables collection and sharing of physiological information. The hub captures patient data from a variety of sensors and securely stores it in the cloud, where it can be accessed by those engaged in the patient’s care. Data aggregation devices like this will soon become commonplace and will not only collect healthcare data but also manage other sensor networks within the home. Freescale’s second-generation gateway manages data from smart energy, consumer electronics, home automation and security systems—in addition to healthcare.

• Early intervention/prevention: Healthy, active people can also benefit from IoT-driven monitoring of their daily activities and well-being. A senior living alone, for example, may want to have a monitoring device that can detect a fall or other interruption in everyday activity and report it to emergency responders or family members. For that matter, an active athlete such as a hiker or biker could benefit from such a solution at any age, particularly if it’s available as a piece of wearable technology.

Freescale technology has been incorporated into some solutions of this type. The Sonamba daily monitoring solution, aimed at the senior population, uses strategically placed sensors to monitor daily activities and report anomalies to care providers or family members via cell phone. Freescale provides applications processing and ZigBee®-based wireless connectivity for Sonamba. Freescale technology is also embedded in the Numera Libris mobile personal health gateway, which is designed to detect falls and provide the ability to manage one’s health at home or away.

These are just a few examples of IoT-based healthcare solutions, and many more are emerging. But as one reporter has noted, “The real vision for the future is that these various smaller applications will converge to form a whole … Imagine if you are a relative of [a] patient who forgot their medicine. You receive the alert, are able to know their location, check their vital signs remotely to see if they are falling ill, then be informed by your car’s navigation system which hospital has the most free beds, the clearest traffic route to get there and even where you can park.” 5

Freescale Presents ARM Powered® Kinetis Miniature MCUs to Drive Innovation for Next Generation IoT Devices Freescale Semiconductor is extending its Kinetis portfolio of microcontrollers to include Kinetis miniature (mini) MCUs, which offer massive design potential in a tiny industry leading package. Intelligent devices, especially in the Internet of Things (IoT) era where connectivity and portability is crucial, continue to grow in complexity while shrinking in physical size. Starting at 1.9 mm x 2 mm, Kinetis mini MCUs use wafer-level chipscale packaging (WL-CSP packaging) and maintain the scalability and feature rich IP available across the entire Kinetis portfolio.

Freescale’s widely popular Kinetis KL02, the world’s smallest ARM Powered MCU, is included in this category. With over 10 million units of Kinetis mini MCUs already shipped, customers have even more Kinetis devices to choose from depending on their design needs. Leveraging WL-CSP packaging, Kinetis mini MCUs allow designers to dramatically reduce the size of their boards and products, while retaining the performance and features of their end devices. In addition, space-constrained applications that previously couldn’t incorporate an MCU now can be upgraded to become smart applications, adding a new tier of devices to the IoT ecosystem.

Learn more about Kinetis mini MCUs at www.freescale.com/KinetisMinis www.freescale.com FREESCALE www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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Enabling Technologies: Making the IoT in Healthcare Possible The successful use of the IoT in the preceding healthcare examples relies on several enabling technologies.

Without these, it would be impossible to achieve the usability, connectivity and capabilities required for applications in areas such as health monitoring.

Smart sensors, which combine a sensor and a microcontroller, make it possible to harness the power of the IoT for healthcare by accurately measuring, monitoring and analyzing a variety of health status indicators.

These can include basic vital signs such as heart rate and blood pressure, as well as levels of glucose or oxygen saturation in the blood. Smart sensors can even be incorporated into pill bottles and connected to the network to indicate whether a patient has taken a scheduled dose of medication. For smart sensors to work effectively, the microcontroller components must incorporate several essential capabilities: • Low-power operation is essential to keeping device footprint small and extending battery life, characteristics that help make IoT devices as usable as possible.

Freescale, which has long offered low-power processing, is working now to enable completely battery-free devices that utilize energy harvesting techniques through the use of ultra-low-power DC-DC converters.

• Integrated precision-analog capabilities make it possible for sensors to achieve high accuracy at a low cost. Freescale offers this enabling technology within microcontrollers which contain analog components, such as high-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and low-power op-amps.

• Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) improve usability by enabling display devices to deliver a great deal of information in vivid detail and by making it easy to access that information. Freescale’s i.MX applications processors with high graphics-processing performance support advanced GUI development.

Gateways are the information hubs that collect sensor data, analyze it and then communicate it to the cloud via wide area network (WAN) technologies. Gateways can be designed for clinical or home settings; in the latter, they may be part of larger connectivity resource that also manages energy, entertainment and other systems in the home.

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The Freescale Home Health Hub reference platform includes a gateway component.

Medical device designers can also use the platform to create remote-access devices for remote monitoring.

Wireless networking removes the physical limitations on networking imposed by traditional wired solutions like Ethernet and USB. Freescale offers microcontrollers that support wireless connectivity for devices based on popular wireless standards such as Bluetooth® and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for personal area networks (PAN) used with personal devices and Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth for local area networks (LAN) in clinics or hospitals. That leads us to a key challenge for the IoT in healthcare: standards.

Connectivity Standards: Enabling IoT Devices to Work Together Standards represent an inherent challenge for any environment in which a large number of complex devices need to communicate with each other—which is exactly the case for the IoT in healthcare. One analyst has described the “…greater standardization of communications protocols…”6 as critical to advancing the adoption of the IoT. Fortunately, standards organizations are working now to create guidelines for wireless communications between monitoring devices and with care providers. The Continua Health Alliance, of which Freescale is a member, is a coalition of healthcare and technology companies that was founded in 2006 to establish guidelines for interoperable personal health solutions.

The organization has already published a set of specifications to help ensure interoperability. In the future, organizations that buy a Continua-certified device will have the assurance that it will connect with other certified devices in IoT-driven applications.

Continua’s device standards are part of a larger standards environment that includes information technology standards established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and engineering standards set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE®).

In wireless technology, IEEE standards for LANs define Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) and ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) networks. Standards for PANs include Bluetooth and BLE, as well as

IEEE 802.15.4j and IEEE 802.15.6, which are the IEEE standards associated with the body area network (BAN). Standards for cellular networks include GSM/UMTS and CDMA. Proprietary wireless networks still play something of a role in healthcare environments in general and IoT applications in particular, but that role seems to be shrinking as the industry continues to move toward standards-based architectures.

IoT in Healthcare: The Time Is Now The long-predicted IoT revolution in healthcare is already underway, as the examples in this paper make clear. And, those are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as new use cases continue to emerge to address the urgent need for affordable, accessible care.

Meanwhile, we are seeing the IoT building blocks of automation and machine-tomachine communication continue to be established, with the addition of the service layer completing the infrastructure.

Freescale is excited to be a part of this revolution by providing end-to-end processing and connectivity solutions for IoT-driven healthcare solutions, working toward establishing standards for these solutions and accelerating innovation for organizations eager to realize the benefits of the IoT in healthcare. n References 1. Kevin Ashton, www.rfidjournal.com, June 22, 2009 2. Quoted by Jeffrey Burt, “Cisco: Internet of Everything Already Worth Billions in Profits,” www.eweek.com, June 23, 2013 3. Lauren Fisher, “The Internet of Things: In Action,” thenextweb.com, May 19, 2013 4. Alex Brisbourne, “The Internet of Things Isn’t as New as It Seems,” www.forbes.com, February 8, 2013.

5. Martyn Casserly, “What Is ‘The Internet of Things’? How Connected Devices Are Set to Change Our Lives,” www.pcadvisor.co.uk, May 29, 2013 6. Michael Chui, Markus Loffler and Roger Roberts, “The Internet of Things,” McKinsey Quarterly, March 2010 www.freescale.com

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Power Interface Module Saves Valuable Board Space and Reduces Time-to-Market A comparison of alternative on-board power solutions is rarely at the top of the agenda for a board designer. Often designers will use a previous solution because all available resources and time must be spent on the functionality of the system design. However, time spent on the power solution will affect the cost, procurement and sourcing, and will reduce the technical risks and redesign cost. Most importantly it will also have a huge impact and pay-off in terms of reduced time-to-market and increased system packaging density. The main alternatives are standard power modules and discrete power components. Decisions are often based only upon the hardware cost, neglecting many of the other cost elements.

Author: Patrick Le Fèvre,

Marketing and Communication Director at Ericsson Power Modules

A standard power module is a componentlike device produced in large quantities, 100% tested and guaranteed to meet the specification in the datasheet. A discrete power circuit consists of many components mounted on the printed circuit board (PCB) together with the main system electronics.

There is no testing other than on the finished assembled board.

A recent addition to the power module offerings on the market is the PIM (Power Interface Module). An example PIM is shown in figure 1.

A PIM typically contains input filtering and transient suppression, inrush current protection and hot swap functionality, hold-up and under voltage shutdown, dual power feeds, monitoring, alarm and power management based on PMBus or I2C. The first release of a PIM was tailored for ATCA (Advanced 18

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Figure 1 Ericsson’s Quarter-Brick PIM4328PD with the PMBus digital interface used in ATCA and embedded computing applications.

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Telecommunications Computing Architecture) standard based open platforms to reduce time-to-market and save valuable board space; but the PIM concept and functionality are actually a suitable fit for most boards in information and communications technology (ICT) equipment.

Today this functionality is often provided by discrete solutions, but this situation may change due to the shift from proprietary platforms to more flexible and standardbased open platforms.

There are a large variety of board-input power interface solutions. Some of them are very simple and contain just a fuse and EMI filtering. Others are more complex and sophisticated, while also including inrush current protection and hot swap functionality, hold-up and under voltage shutdown, dual power feeds, monitoring, alarm, and power management.

The power interface circuitry built with discrete components on the board is often a proprietary solution that is adapted for different power system distribution architectures from ICT equipment manufacturers.

There are standardization initiatives going on, such as the ATCA, but proprietary solutions are the most common.

There are several significant benefits of using a PIM instead of a discrete circuit solution, including reduction of design time and cost, reduction procurement and sourcing cost, reduction of time-to market and reduced board space for the power interface functionality.

Circuit and System Design Cost This cost applies only to the discrete power interface circuit; as clearly internal circuit design is not required for the user of standard power modules. The circuit design cost consists of the following items:

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the discrete power interface circuit. The result is also dependant on the skill of the electrical designer.

In fact, a skilled power design engineer is required to design a robust and cost-effective power interface circuit.

However, there will be a power system design cost for both the discrete power interface circuit and for the standard PIM solution. The power system design cost consists of the resources needed and costs for the design of: • • • •

DC distribution and decoupling Thermal analysis and cooling Safety and fusing Controls and diagnostics

The power system design will be significantly simpler and faster when using the standard PIM alternative, as there are much more advanced built-in functions and support literature available.

Procurement and Sourcing Cost This is the resources and direct cost for procuring all of the components required

Time-To-Market Cost This extremely important item addresses the technical risk and the fact that the first design is not always the final one.

Engineering changes and redesigns are sometimes needed when the solution does not perform as expected.

New microprocessors and ASICs are often developed in parallel with the board design with some uncertainty about the final circuit power and supply voltage requirement for the overall system.

Figure 2 System board with a conventional power interface circuit built from discrete components.

• Circuit design and layout • Determine component ratings • Specify component part numbers and alternates • Build and test prototypes, including thermal and EMC • Modify circuits as required • Documentation The time and cost will of course differ depending on whether a basic design is already available, or there is a requirement for a completely new design. Design hours spent and hardware cost is a function of the number of components and complexity of

interface module.

Also, in this case the hours spent and direct cost is a function of the number of components and complexity of the discrete power interface circuit.

The discrete power components, as with any other power components, are typically not part of the system board manufacturers’ system-functionality electronics bill-ofmaterials (BOM), and therefore require specific skills and engineers to evaluate, qualify and approve the components and the solution in the specific application.

Figure 3 Using a micro-PIM module to save space on the system board. for either solution, including vendor selection and qualification, price negotiation, quality assurance, inventory control, etc. For the standard PIM alternative, there is usually only one component to source, the power

As the focus is on the performance and functionality of the primary application electronics, the final board power design cannot be finalized until testing and verification of the main system circuitry. www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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This means that there is an apparent risk that the board power and interface circuitry must be re-designed very late in the project, multiplying the design cost and time, causing unexpected delays in the launch and delivery of the new system board.

Obviously, there is a larger risk for severe delays when using a discrete power interface solution, as the design is not as well defined or proven and there are dependencies upon several components and vendors.

Using a standard PIM solution can make the power system available earlier and thus capture additional sales.

The time-to-market cost accounts for the lost revenue (and profit) due to the loss of early product sales if the product introduction is delayed, impacted by the development schedule for the power solution. Not only it is a loss on the number of sold product – but also being early or even better the first on the market may account for a large part of the total revenue and profit as there is less competition and thus a significant higher market price. The time-to-market cost can be a very appreciable number compared with some of the other costs under consideration. With the very short product lifecycles today, this could very well be the determining factor for making a profit or not.

PCB Cost The cost of the area on the circuit board occupied by the PIM or the discrete power interface circuit consists of: • Material cost for the PCB itself • Value of the PCB area to the system designer The value to the system board designer will be quite variable. For some systems, with less crowded boards, this cost could be relatively low. For high-density systems with very tight packaging, the system designer may want to minimize the amount of area occupied by power and power interface functions to include additional system application circuitry.

In this case, the system board designer and the system manufacturer can assign a higher number to this value, which will serve to impose a cost penalty to the power solutions that have a lower area density.

In practice this has become one of the biggest challenges for ICT system manufacturers and system providers. Available space is very limited in all locations and come at a very high cost. Indoor and outdoor applications require minimal floor 20

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space and smallest possible equipment dimensions. Another constraint is that modern high-speed electronics require very small distances to minimize distortion by lead inductance and board capacitance.

Certain functionality must therefore be built into the same PCB. PCBs are manufactured in certain standardized sizes and the equipment cabinet and shelves are designed for specific board sizes. It is therefore not possible to increase the board size in a given system or equipment building practice. The only solution is to minimize the size and number of components on the PCB. This drives higher integration and smaller and smaller device packages, but at the same time higher functionality requirements result in higher pin count on each microprocessor or ASIC package. The result is very expensive board assemblies, not only because of expensive system electronics, but also due to the extremely high number of board layers required for the functionality. It is not unusual to find up to 30-40 layers in advanced ICT boards. All together this means that board space is very expensive in modern ICT equipment and everything that is not part of the main system electronics needed for the required functionality must be limited to an absolute minimum in terms of board space.

Application Examples The first example is a board with conventional power interface circuitry (see figure 2).

The power interface was designed a long time ago and has been used on many different boards for many years because it works, and besides there is no skilled power design engineer available to improve it.

Components are old and costly, and the circuitry occupies a rather large area on the board. There are also increased demands on system availability and requirements for hotswap and the power interface must therefore be redesigned and include alarm and power management. A PIM will solve all these issues at lower cost and significantly reduced board space. The second example (see figure 3) illustrates the board space that can be saved using the newly designed sixteenth-brick-for-

mat PIM4006 micro-power-interface-module (see figure 4), which in addition to conventional input circuitry includes an I2C interface.

This module has been developed to meet the highest demands in system availability and robustness and also includes a digital communication interface for system architects to monitor the status of the application via software. The use of the latest technology to decrease the amount of filtering has resulted in significant board-space saving (on both sides of the board). The result is a PIM that occupies only one-third maximum of the area taken by the discrete design.

Figure 4 PIM4006 sixteenth-brick-format PIM with digital communication bus.

This space can be used for additional system processing capability while also simplifying power management and shortening time-to-market.

The examples show that a PIM can save valuable board space and cost. This is possible due to an optimized design made by skilled and experienced power design engineers.

The PIM utilizes smaller component packaging and advanced solutions, but still with a reduced bill-of-materials. Power management and internal communication makes it possible to reduce the hold-up time requirement and thereby minimize the required amount of capacitance.

Standardization in power distribution for ICT equipment will continue to meet demands from telecom and datacom operators for second sourcing and decreased cost. New PIMs are being developed for different power distribution standards and power levels, as well as proprietary solutions, making them a viable choice in most applications. n www.ericsson.com

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New Trends in Medical Portable Systems and Telehealth With an aging population, the rise of chronic diseases and the need to develop a healthcare infrastructure in emerging countries, there is a strong need to transform the care that we receive today.

Authors: Adi Shieber, Yan Vainter, Freescale Semiconductor

Moving from a treatment based system to a prevention approach.

In our current healthcare system the patient is not asked to take an active role. Most of us have no knowledge about the human body or about the early signs of a disease. Take for example, you can ask people about the balance of their bank account but most of them will not be able to tell you what their blood pressure or heart rate is. The outcome is that people usually react too late and when they finally go to their doctor and have a diagnosis and potentially the prescribed treatment is more expensive and has more physiological impact than if the disease had been detected earlier.

The first step toward a prevention based system is to educate people about their own health and to provide them with the tools which allow them to take ownership of their health such as measurement devices to simply assess their vital signs and thus detect the early signs of a disease or use treatment devices like auto-injectors to self-administrate their drugs. To make this possible, medical device manufacturers need to bring professional equipment into peoples’ houses and this brings with it several challenges.

Such devices would have to be cost effec22

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tive to make them accessible to the broadest audience possible plus these devices will also have to be portable which dictates that they are battery operated and naturally they will have to communicate via wireless.

These devices must also be easy to use as the target audience will no longer be the professionals so development of advanced user interfaces, safety, security and high levels of automated operation will be the key to success.

New technology for cost effective, portable and connected medical devices Those new requirements for medical device designers, cost effective, easy to use, portable and wireless connectivity were until recently unattainable goals due to many technological challenges, but recent advances from semiconductors suppliers like Freescale using ARM® low power processors to design advanced Kinetis® MCUs that use Cortex™-M4 and M0+

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processor cores are making this a reality today. The performances that these systems can deliver make the requirements discussed above achievable.

A perfect example is the blood glucose monitor. This device usually has 5 or 6 different modes of operation: standby while in your pocket/bag, wake-up and wait for a blood drop to be applied on the test strip, measurement of the electrochemical reaction, processing of the samples, logging of the results, display of the data.

To run all of these steps older processor technology would have to be working at its maximum performance operating point for the entire measurement cycle, except when in standby, which would be a massive drain on a battery and therefore would not have met the requirements for a portable device.

Today however with the latest microcontroller devices that integrates that processing system on a single chip resulting in low power systems can more than half the energy used by the device and therefore can double the period of time between battery replacements or recharge cycles.

Helping to ensure a high level of safety and making the certification process easier are also key advantages of an integrated solution as the number of components in the system is reduced and the interaction between the different features are clearly documented.

One of the one the biggest concerns for medical device companies is the product certification process and to ensure that a component selected, used and certified in a product does not cease to be manufactured during the product lifetime. Freescale offers a formal 15 year longevity program to its medical customers, preventing an expensive re-certification of the product if a component goes out of production by a supplier.

For Terms and Conditions and to obtain a list of available products please see: www.Freescale.com/productlongevity.

Case Study A current and impressive example of what this advanced technology is enabling is the OmnipodÂŽ from Insulet, a revolutionary

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tubeless insulin pump. Conventional pump therapy includes an insulin pump, reservoir, an infusion set and tubing that connect the insulin pump to the infusion set—keeping the patient tethered to the pump 24/7. The revolutionary OmniPodŽ design has only two parts: a wearable pod that delivers the

Freescale worked with Insulet to design a custom ASIC through a close collaboration. The customized microcontroller design consumes very little power and enables communication between the PDM and the pod using an integrated 13.56 MHz radio. Through this technology alliance, a product was developed

insulin and a PDA-type device called a Personal Diabetes Manager (PDM).

The pod is worn for three days and then replaced with another pod. It holds 200 units of rapid-acting insulin, which covers the requirements of almost 95% of Type 1 diabetes patients.

that meets the cost and reimbursement structure for the marketplace, in a small, wireless full-featured device.

When it came time to find a silicon provider for their design, Insulet searched for a partner who could do a custom chip. Insulet saw that Freescale had the right microcontrollers to control size and cost for the disposable pods, and RF connectivity for the PDM and pod to communicate wirelessly.

The next phase in utilising technology to reduce healthcare costs is to move from a hospital/doctor centric system to a decentralized approach in which people measure their vital signs by themselves.

To address this issue we must first get all these medical devices, both measurement and treatment, connected so the information can reach the doctor through secured databases without the need for the patient to be physically present. www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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Smart connected homes are the basis of this future decentralized system where patients can transmit vital health data from their home to the physician’s office and in turn receive personalized health coaching tips from the practitioner or smart knowledge based information systems based in server hubs that are collectively referred to as ‘the cloud.’ Furthermore, in smart connected homes networked devices and Telehealth systems can act in pre-programmed ways if a medical problem were to occur within the home of a patient, for example a family member or the care centre, depending preset automatic alert levels will automatically be alerted should the situation warrant it.

Home Telehealth systems are expected to become ubiquitous in smart connected homes and will generally consist of a central health hub managing multiple biometrics devices as well as security and assisted living sensors. This will allow people with illnesses or disabilities to live within the comfort of their homes while retaining a high quality of life. There is compelling evidence to support the value of remote monitoring for individuals with chronic conditions, including: • 35-56% reduction in mortality • 47% reduction in risk of hospitalization • 6 days reduction in length of hospital admission • 65% reduction in office visits • 40-64% reduction in physician time for checks and • 63% reduction in transport costs (Cleland et al 2005; Lee R, Goldberg et al, 2003; Scalvini S et al., 2001; Elsner et al, 2006; Van Ginneken et al 2006) The next phase in introducing Telehealth is effective delivery of a careplan to patients suffering from chronic disease, home Telehealth devices should focus on users and services and make the underlying electronic technology used in patient centred devices as unobtrusive as possible. Patients have to be comfortable and confident that they can trust the devices delivering their healthcare. The platform technologies should be flexible enough to accommodate for device personalization based on diagnosis and patient-led requirements and have a user interface that is simple and understandable. The technology described above allows device manufacturers to develop such user interfaces and make their final products as user friendly as possible using a 24

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reference platform. For connectivity the platform features ethernet and WiFi™ to ease internet connectivity to the cloud and USB, Bluetooth® and ZigBee® to guarantee interoperability with biometric device connectivity that is compliant to the Continua alliance guidelines.

pregnancy tests. The second is changing the life of millions of diabetics: the blood glucose monitor. What’s coming next? The Freescale medical team driven by Dr.Fernandez (neurosurgeon and EE) is working on a new generation of biochemical sensors. This technology is based on Ion

Advanced security features are also provided by the reference platform like authenticated startup, and hardware-based encryption that will allow designers to implement data privacy schemes and governed levels of medical data access. These embedded security features will also allow for simplified integration of Telehealth platforms into medical health networks. For example the Home Health Hub Reference Platform is being preintegrated with Microsoft’s Healthvault cloud service where authenticated and encrypted home based medical measurement results can be transmitted and then monitored by a triage centre that would be alerted in realtime if a vital statistic moves outside previously set limits.

Future areas for improvements that can help deliver an efficient and cost effective healthcare is the diagnosis of the patient’s illness.

Today this process has already changed in some hospitals where nurses can use instruments to perform diagnostic analysis at the bed side saving time, money and making the patient’s life more comfortable. The next step will be to deploy those devices at local clinics and the finally in people’s homes so they can do a self-screening. The first of its kind in homes has been around for years:

Sensitive Field Effect Transistors (IsFETs) and these sensors are then used to create Immunological sensitive FETs ImFETs, which can be used to detect not only pH, but also to detect antigens and antibodies of specific pathogens that cause a wide array of infectious diseases.

Future Possibilities Wearable devices like smart plasters to collect body temperature, respiration, ECG, are getting really close but their size, weight, power consumption and price still need to be lowered to bring more comfort to the patients at an acceptable price. The latest advances with highly integrated system on a chip microcontroller and many types of connectivity are moving medical electronics forward at a rapid pace. Another exciting innovation is in energy harvesting from the heat of the body or from movement to deliver the power needed to run these portable healthcare devices continuously without any need for bulky batteries and this will move the size and weight of such products into unobtrusive, wearable accessories.

The industry we anticipate will be able to deliver such solutions in the next 5 years. n www.freescale.com

INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Silicon Labs Rounds Out Smart Interface Portfolio with USB-to-SPI Bridge Chip Silicon Labs introduced a highperformance bridge controller that offers a turnkey solution for bridging a universal serial bus (USB) host and a serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus with driver support for Windows®, OS X and Linux operating systems. Silicon Labs’ new CP2130 USB-to-SPI bridge controller provides industry-leading data throughput, exceptional configurability and a high level of mixed-signal integration in a space-saving 4 mm x 4 mm package. The CP2130 bridge controller is ideal for new designs or upgrading legacy designs to include USB for a wide range of embedded applications including USB dongles, tablets, handheld controllers and testers, blood glucose monitors, docking stations, point-of-sale products, data logging modules and card readers.

With the proliferation of USB in the embedded world, developers

are looking for cost-effective solutions to help speed time to market, and Silicon Labs developed the CP21xx bridge family with this goal in mind. The CP2130 bridge controller enables developers to

add USB functionality to their applications without requiring USB software, firmware or hardware domain expertise typically required with more complex alternatives. The CP2130 bridge controller rounds out Silicon Labs’ popular CP21xx Smart Interface portfolio, adding SPI to the roster of USB-to-UART, I2C/SMBus and I2S interface solutions.

SILICON LABS www.silabs.com/USB-Bridge

Sundance launches SMT166 dualFPGA development platform; powers EU’s FP7 FlexTiles 3D SoC project Sundance Multiprocessor Technology, a pioneer in scalable and modular computing modules for embedded solutions, has launched the SMT166 dual-FPGA platform for R&D into the use of large FPGAs for high-performance reconfigurable computing and large-scale embedded systems applications as well as system-on-chip (SoC) simulation. At the same time, Sundance has announced that the SMT166 has been chosen as the prototyping platform for the European Union’s FP7 FlexTiles 3D SoC project, placing it at the heart of leading research into selfadaptive, high-performance computing.

Headed by Thales Research & Technology, The EU FP7 FlexTiles project is focused on the challenge of leveraging multicore technology to develop energy-efficient, high-performance compute systems. The project will define and develop a programmable, heterogeneous, manycore 3D SoC architecture. The many-core Sundance SMT166 dual-FPGA platform layer, which will inte-

Intel 20nm High Performance SolidState Drives Now Available At Mouser Mouser Electronics, Inc. is now stocking Intel’s high performance solid state drives (SSDs) offering improved performance, increased reliability, and lower operating costs over conventional hard drives. Intel® Solid-State Drives (SSDs) available from Mouser Electronics are a high performance hard drive alternative for boosting laptop and desktop PCs to the next level in performance and reliability. Intel SSDs are 50% faster, 60% more durable, and use 20% less power compared to conventional computer hard drives.

Improved performance, reliability, and battery life are only the start of the benefits of Intel SSDs. The 530 Series SSDs target consumer desktops and laptops, provide a small form factor, low cost of operation, and low idle power. These SSDs continue to evolve as new consumer platforms

emerge, not just for traditional desktops and laptops but also for Ultrabooks™, tablets, and tomorrow's small form factor mobile systems. Intel's DC S3500 Series are the next generation of SSDs, targeting data centers and combining consistently fast read/write per-

Sundance SMT166 block diagram

formance with the strong data protection of leading edge 20nm Flash memory technology.

MOUSER ELECTRONICS www.mouser.com

grate GPP and DSP cores, will be associated with an innovative, reconfigurable virtualization layer, featuring a self-adaptive FPGA fabric in an interchangeable tiles concept; and a dedicated tool-flow to improve programming efficiency, reduce the impact on time-to-market and reduce the development costs by 20% to 50%. Sundance’s SMT166 will be used initially to develop, validate and verify the tools to create the FlexTiles 3D SoC. Subsequently, users will be able to utilize the SMT166 as an R&D platform to innovate and prototype products based on the FlexTiles 3D SoC. The SMT166, which can be integrated into a standard 19 inch rack, is designed around two Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs. SUNDANCE MULTIPROCESSOR TECHNOLOGY www.sundance.com

www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

An Analog Front-End for Blood Pressure Monitors Blood pressure monitors are no longer medical tools found only in hospitals and doctor’s offices. Automatic blood pressure monitoring is increasingly used at home. Home units are used not only by people who suffer from hypertension and need to track their blood pressure but also by people who want to monitor their health and get readings that are not affected by the anxiety or stress of a doctor or hospital visit. In order to keep units affordable for home use, system designers are looking for ways to maintain performance under stringent budgets.

Author: Debbie Brandenburg,

Product Marketing Manager, High Performance Analog Products at Exar Corporation

How they work Blood pressure monitors use an inflatable air-bladder cuff and a pressure sensor to measure the air pressure in the cuff from which the blood pressure in the artery can be inferred. There are two numbers in a blood pressure reading, systolic and diastolic. A typical reading is 120/80 (systolic reading/diastolic reading). Many of today’s automatic blood pressure monitors work by first inflating the cuff with enough pressure to prevent blood flow. The pressure is gradually released until the blood begins to flow making the artery pulsate - this is detected as a small amplitude oscillation, at the heart rate, superimposed on the pressure reading.

The measurement when the blood starts flowing is the measure of the maximum output pressure of the heart, the systolic reading. As pressure in the cuff is further reduced the amplitude of this oscillation reaches a maximum at the mean arterial pressure (MAP), which is when most blood pressure monitors also measure heart rate.

After this the amplitude of this oscillation reduces as the pressure continues to be released until the cuff no longer restricts the artery. The pressure at this point is the diastolic reading, when the heart is relaxed.

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Basic solution A typical block diagram overview of a blood pressure monitor is shown below and a key element is the pressure sensor used to convert the pressure variations into an electrical signal. This is commonly achieved with a transducer formed from metal foil strain gauges bonded to a diaphragm. Pressure applied to the diaphragm causes it to

deflect, which in turn physically deforms the foil of the strain gauge and results in a proportional change in its resistance. A Wheatstone bridge circuit converts this resistance change to a differential voltage for capture by the blood pressure monitor’s processor, via an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). As the output from the bridge is a small differential signal riding on top of a big

DESIGN

common mode signal, an instrumentation amplifier is used to isolate and amplify the signal acquired from the sensor. A second amplifier provides additional gain along with band-pass filtering to remove any unwanted signals, such as slow varying AC components (due to movement of the cuff) and high frequency noise.

The processor at the heart of consumer blood pressure monitors is likely to be a relatively simple, low-cost microcontroller.

More sophisticated units intended for professional use might employ a digital signal processor (DSP) and perhaps provide datalogging capabilities for longer term patient monitoring. As a minimum, the processor will need to provide the means for initiating the measurement process, acquiring the sensor data and converting this to meaningful blood pressure and heart rate readings that can be output to a display. These functions include controlling the pump that pressurizes the cuff and the valve that regulates the gradual release of pressure.

The user interface might comprise pushbutton switches and a simple liquid crystal display (LCD) although touchscreen displays are becoming more commonplace even in low-cost equipment. Audio output is not an essential feature for most blood pressure monitors but may provide a simple annunciator function to confirm correct operation and provide user feedback on the monitoring process. Data logging might be provided via serial I/O ports such as RS-232 or USB but could be enabled wirelessly using protocols such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or ZigBee. Front-end implementation Even the most basic of blood pressure monitors needs to deliver performance that meets recognized standards. The nature of the product also means that home users expect quality and reliability in an instrument that they can trust. But this doesn’t mean that designers have to cut corners or compromise on requirement specifications to achieve an affordable solution.

As discussed earlier, it is the design of the front end that determines correct operation of a blood pressure monitor, detecting the right moment to perform the measurements and capturing the pressure readings accurately. Clearly the specification of the pressure sensor is important but readily available, low-cost strain gauges, with precisely defined characteristics, can be matched with equally precise resistors to form the

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Wheatstone bridge circuit. With appropriate care this can be designed to balance out the effects of temperature variation and calibrated for initial accuracy What then becomes important is the specification of the amplifiers and data converter that follow. Exar’s high performance analog product line offers a number of products that are ideally suited to the requirements of blood pressure monitors and offer a costeffective solution. Firstly, its CLC1200 instrumentation amplifier is perfect for picking up the small signal generated when the balance of the Wheatstone bridge is disturbed by the slightest pressure variation sensed by the strain gauge.

The CLC1200 architecture uses three operational amplifiers arranged in two stages: the differential amplifier stage provides a high input impedance, which avoids loading the Wheatstone bridge, while also rejecting the large common mode signal from the bridge’s DC bias circuit; the difference amplifier stage nulls the common mode signal and converts the differential signal to a single-ended output.

Exar’s CLC1003 single channel, voltage feedback amplifier provides all the necessary features of high gain-bandwidth, high slew rate, low noise and low distortion, to implement any band-pass filtering and addi-

tional gain that might be required in buffering the signal from the instrumentation amplifier and driving an ADC. It offers railto-rail I/O operation and extremely low THD (total harmonic distortion) of 0.00005%.

The final front-end component is the analog to digital converter itself. Here the key requirement is providing sufficient resolution to both detect the low amplitude oscillations from the pressure sensor that denote the systolic and diastolic measurement points, and to capture the mean pressure reading with the necessary accuracy. The actual ADC resolution required for a given design of blood pressure monitor will depend on a number of other design factors. This ADC is typically a 16 to 24-bit 100KSPS to 200KSPS Sigma Delta ADC. The design of the analog front-end circuit used in blood pressure monitors and other medical diagnostic instruments is critical and plays a major role in the instruments’ accuracy and reliability. Exar offers several instrumentation and precision amplifiers to help system designers develop high-end hospital grade equipment as well as more cost sensitive home use models. n www.exar.com

The CLC1200 converts the differential signal from the pressure sensor and produces a single-ended output. It offers a gain range of 1 to 10,000, which is accurately adjusted using one external resistor. The CLC1200 offers a low input offset voltage of ±125μV that only varies 0.1μV/°C and features a gain error of 0.1% at gains of 100. Its performance helps system designers of medical devices, like blood pressure monitors, maintain accuracy and minimize costs.

www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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MCUs

The C8051 Core: A Compute Engine with an Embedded Mixed-Signal Twist The venerable Intel 8051 device is still alive and well today. The architecture has been modernized to suit today’s process technologies and computational needs.

These modern 8051-based microcontroller (MCU) architectures still manage to maintain code compatibility with the original Intel devices, but to improve performance, they have long sacrificed cycle accuracy.

A multitude of architectural variations exist today including the Silicon Labs MCU version, which has evolved into a pipelined complex instruction set computing (CISC) device with Fetch/Decode/Execute pipe stages. This core is known as the CIP-51 as developed by Silicon Labs and sits at the heart of all its 8-bit mixed-signal MCUs.

Author: Tom David,

Benefits of the 8051 Architecture The 8051 architecture is well suited as a CPU for today’s small-form-factor, featurerich MCUs. This architecture enables the easy addition of on-chip peripherals as well as flexible I/O, thus enabling an easily extensible portfolio of 8-bit devices. A few capabilities have been added to the 8051 architecture that impact backward compatibility; but backward compatibility will only be affected if these capabilities are enabled.

(Figure 1 shows the CIP-51 architecture.)

Figure 1 shows that the base architecture is almost identical to the original 8051, thus 28

EP&Dee | January, 2014 | www.epd-ee.eu

Principal Design Engineer, Microcontroller Products at Silicon Labs

maintaining instruction-level compatibility.

This controller can perform its computational function quite well even when compared with some of today’s more advanced CPU architectures. For example, most RISC machines that are register-based will only allow arithmetic logic unit (ALU) operations on values stored in the register file. Thus, to “AND” two values together, the values first have to be moved to the register file before they can be operated on.

However, in the 8051 architecture, this operation can be performed on values stored in some of these peripheral registers

directly. This approach enables the controller to perform fast control functions.

If the application needed to turn around an I/O port based on the polarity of another I/O pin or pins, this task could be performed with a simple test or logical operation of the controlling I/O pin/bus and then a “write” to the relevant port control logic to turn the port around.

With the 8051 architecture, these functions can be done in two cycles, thus enabling fast control response time. This kind of speed can only be dreamed of in modern 16-bit and even 32-bit architectures with their mul-

DESIGN

titude of bus hierarchies and non-deterministic event generation logic.

Another common misconception of an 8-bit controller such as the 8051 is that its code density is poor in comparison to more modern 16- and 32-bit architectures. There are of course some functions that don’t implement well on 8-bit architectures such as a 16-bit by 16-bit multiply. Operations like this do expand on an 8-bit machine. The code density for this kind of operation can be mitigated through the implementation of a 16 by 16 hardware multiplier, for example.

In general, control type applications that deal in byte-sized data do not suffer this consequence. In addition, because 8-bit machines have very little overhead code, overall code density for control type functions are lower than equivalent functions implemented on non-8-bit machines.

MCUs

An additional misconception of the 8051 architecture is that interrupt servicing can be slow and the need to store and restore state can take time. The 8051 handles multiple threads via its 32-register banked register file. When an interrupt is taken and the state of the register file has to be preserved, simply switching to a different bank enables fast context switching. Of course, this approach does not preclude having to save off the accumulator and a few other relevant registers.

The original 8051 architecture only supported two interrupt priorities. This definition worked well on devices with small peripheral sets, but as peripherals sets have grown, so has the need for a finer granularity in interrupt handling.

The newer 8051 devices from Silicon Labs

support up to four interrupt priorities.

Having a finer interrupt granularity allows more predictable real-time functioning in a peripheral-rich environment.

Another limitation of the 8051 core (and other 8-bit architectures) is that the total code space available is limited to 64Kbytes.

Some of these 8-bit devices with a rich set of peripherals will potentially use code stacks far greater than the available 64K byte address map. To accommodate this need, Silicon Labs implemented an innovative code banking technique in its 8051-based MCUS that enables expansion of this space.

This technique, when coupled with a “C” compiler that comprehends the feature, makes this space look seamless to the software writer, thus imposing no burden.

The 8051 architecture natively supports only 256 Special Function Registers (SFRs).

This restriction imposes quite a burden on resource-rich devices. To alleviate this limitation, Silicon Labs introduced a paging capability to the SFR map. This feature supports the use of much larger register spaces.

Some of the larger 8-bit devices released by Silicon Labs use up to five pages.

Most of these devices have at least two pages where one page is dedicated to debug control logic and cannot be accessed by the developer.

In a modern fetch, decode and execute machine, there is a great dependence on having a fast memory interface. This capability enables instruction fetches on every cycle. When implemented with flash memory, this approach becomes challenging since flash access speeds generally can’t keep up with the speed of the CPU. To alleviate this situation, most 8-bit MCU vendors add instruction prefetch buffers and/or caches.

Prefetch buffers enable defined execution during straight line code execution, and when branching the only cycle penalty paid is equal to the depth of the prefetch buffer, which in most cases is just 2 bytes wide except in the case of Silicon Labs’ ultra-highspeed 100 MHz 8051-based MCUs where the buffers are four bytes wide.

Figure 1 CIP-51 Architecture.

A cache will create no looping penalty as long as the loop fits in the cache, but if it misses the cache, the miss penalty can inject a lot of indeterminism into the instruction stream. www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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Thus, real-time responses could suffer.

Instead of implementing a cache, Silicon Labs has implemented branch target buffers and prefetch buffers on some of its faster 8bit devices.

Flash or non-volatile memory (NVM) security is another issue that arises with 8-bit MCUs. To address this issue, Silicon Labs has implemented multiple flash regions in its 8-bit MCUs that offer varying levels of protection.

This technique allows MCU vendors to ship MCU products to their customers who might need to program their software IP into the MCUs while using the vendor’s software drivers and APIs. State-of-the-Art 8051-Based MCU Example Figure 2 shows the C8051F850 MCU from Silicon Labs, which is an example of a modern MCU that uses the CIP-51 as its core.

This 8-bit device is available in industrystandard small-footprint 16-, 20- and 24-pin packages.

The integration level available in the 8-bit MCU shown in Figure 2 is second to none

Figure 2 C8051F850 MCU. 30

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MCUs

for its size and cost. The SAR-ADC is 10bit/800 ks or 12bit/200 ks capable. The mixed-signal peripheral integration with this degree of performance is not found anywhere else in the MCU market at this size and cost.

This functionality is enabled because the high-speed CIP-51 core can support the throughput of these peripherals.

Also note that since this is a peripheral-rich but pin-limited device, Silicon Labs implemented a priority crossbar encoder that allows any peripheral to access any pin.

This crossbar architecture provides flexibility and ease of use and allows simpler PCB implementations.

The heart of any system-on-chip (SoC) device is its CPU. If the CPU is inadequate, then the entire SoC performance suffers.

Thus, building a compelling SoC with an abundance of high-performance peripherals requires using a CPU capable of operating on all the data generated by these peripherals. This level of performance is not

commonly found in the 8-bit market.

However, this is where the CIP-51 architecture outshines all other 8-bit cores.

Since this CIP-51 core is still 8051 instruction compliant, the ecosystem for development tools, software and drivers is very rich and diverse, thus driving down development cost while keeping the quality of the embedded design relatively high.

Conclusion In today’s ARM-oriented MCU development environment, 8-bit devices might look old and a bit long in the tooth, but looks are deceiving. When coupled with modern process technologies and advanced mixedsignal peripherals, 8-bit performance on most control tasks can match or exceed many other CPU architectures.

Coupled with modern, more capable peripherals, these 8-bit machines can offer a cost-effective solution that might preclude the need to move to a higher bus-width device, thus saving development time and money. n www.silabs.com

INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Exar Releases World’s Lowest Voltage Single Supply LDOs With 140mV Dropout Exar Corporation announced two ground breaking low-dropout (LDO) regulators that support 2A and 3A loads from a single low voltage supply with a maximum dropout voltage of 140mV. The XRP6274 and XRP6275 ultra low dropout voltage regulators can operate with industry standard low voltage rails of 1.1V to 2.5V providing a unique single supply solution for convenient pointof-load voltage regulation. The new LDOs are targeted at a wide range of markets including communications, enterprise solutions, industrial systems and space constrained consumer devices.

Exar achieves the ultra low dropout performance of its XRP6274 and XRP6275 regulators without requiring either an external bias voltage or an internal charge pump, which can often generate unwanted noise and affect system operation. The new ultra LDO’s use a single supply and reduce

board layout complexity by avoiding the need to route a secondary bias rail to the LDO. The start up is guaranteed from an input voltage as low as 1.045V. The XRP6274/75 devices provide output voltages down to 0.6V with an accuracy of 0.5% using ceramic capacitors. In

Murata announced the D1U86G series of 86 mm wide, 460 Watt front end power supplies from Murata Power Solutions.

The D1U86G can achieve a high minimum conversion efficiency of 92 percent at 50 percent full load. With 1U form factor, these units measure only 86.0 x 196.9 x 39.9 mm, ideal for length-limited applications and mid-plane design architectures.

The unit’s high efficiency significantly lowers the host system cooling requirements and also contributes to power savings in customer applications.

addition, precision enable and power good functions allow for easy sequencing and control of these LDOs. The XRP6274 and XRP6275 are available now in RoHS compliant, green/halogen free space-saving 10-pin 3x3mm DFN packages and are priced from $3.20 and $3.60 respectively in 1000 piece quantities.

EXAR www.exar.com

Exar Enters Power Module Market With Breakthrough Devices Exar Corporation introduced the XRP9710 and XRP9711 multi-output, synchronous step-down, programmable power modules that offer the industry’s highest power density and lowest profile at 2.75mm with 5V-22V inputs. Both devices provide two fully integrated regulators with MOSFETs, inductors, and internal input and output capacitors in a compact 12x12x2.75mm package that support loads up to 6Amps each. The revolutionary XRP9711 also offers two controller outputs that are each capable of driving loads up to 30Amps, making it the industry’s first module to offer two fully integrated channels and two controller outputs. The XRP9710 and XRP9711 are complete system power solutions that enable telemetry, reconfiguration and fast

Murata D1U86G AC-DC power supply achieves 92% efficiency at 50 percent full load

time to market in a small footprint without sacrificing performance.

The XRP9710 and XRP9711 join Exar’s PowerXR programmable power management family utilizing award winning digital power technology and design tools. These new power modules offer full control via a SMBus compliant I2C interface allowing for advanced local-

and remote-reconfiguration, full performance monitoring and reporting, as well as fault handling.

EXAR www.exar.com

The D1U86G series comprises two models, both providing a + 12 VDC 460 Watt output with either “back to front” or “front to back” direction of airflow. The power factor corrected D1U86G series accommodates the universal AC input range from 90 to 264 VAC. Forced air cooling is provided by an internal variable speed fan. The series features a 0 to 50 degrees C operating temperature range, without any derating due to line input or temperature.

The D1U86G series features hot-swapping and hot plug capability and droop current sharing for up to 8 supplies to be connected together.

Safety features include output overvoltage, output overcurrent, and self-resetting overtemperature protection. PMBus™ management and I2C interface with status indicators and boot loading are also available. An LED on the front panel indicates the operational status of the power supply. The D1U86G series design utilizes a low component count resulting in high reliability (MTBF 635K hours).

Typical applications for the D1U86G series include servers, storage sub-systems and data communications infrastructure equipment, workstations, storage devices, and other distributed power systems.

The D1U86G series complies with international safety standards IEC/EN/CSA/UL/CB. MURATA EUROPE

www.murata.eu

www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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OSCILLATORS

Phase Noise Performance in Crystal Oscillators Many modern electronic systems rely on accurate timing in applications such as telecommunications base stations (both fixed as well as mobile) and ground based and airborne based radar stations. Such applications require not only highly stable frequencies but also a very low phase noise performance.

The definition of stability is fairly selfexplanatory being the shift of frequency over the operating temperature range. For example Âą50ppm over -40 to +85C in the case of a clock oscillator or Âą50ppb in the case of an OCXO (Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator). The phase noise performance (from which the jitter performance can be defined) is the short term variation or fluctuation of the oscillator frequency within the frequency domain. (See figure 1) Effectively the lower the phase noise figure the higher the performance of the oscillator.

For example a figure of -170dBc/Hz at 10kHz offset is a worse measurement than 175dBc/Hz at 10kHz offset.

In terms of oscillator performance generally the performance is defined by the families in which they are located and start with Clock Oscillators (SPXOs), Voltage Controlled Crystal Oscillators (VCXOs), through Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillators (TCXOs) and then onto Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillators (OCXOs) which are the best in terms of overall performance including phase noise. We shall now look at some aspects of OCXO design considerations which are particularly important when it comes down to achieving a low phase noise performance.

The basic design of the OCXO can be broken down into a number of building blocks (see figure 2).

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Figure 1

Figure 2

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We shall therefore look at each of these blocks in sequence and give some idea of their effect on the phase noise performance of the oscillator. As is to be expected the most important component within the OCXO is of course the crystal.

Generally speaking, the crystal has the most effect close into the carrier that is up to an offset of 10kHz. To take as an example IQD’s recently released IQOV-200F series (see figure 3) of OCXO this has typical phase noise figures at a nominal operating frequency of 100MHz of -95dBc/Hz at 10Hz offset, 130dBc/Hz at 100Hz and -175dBc/Hz at 10kHz offset. These figures are achieved by the use of a 5th Overtone 100MHz crystal housed in a HC43 style holder. As is now usual in very high specification oscillators an SC-cut crystal (stress compensated) is used with a turnover temperature of around 87 degrees C. Normally the crystal will be held under vacuum which has the effect of improving the long term ageing performance of the unit, and as we shall see later on in this article the exact turnover temperature of each individual crystal is catered for at the alignment stage. It should be noted that by their very nature SC-cut crystals are relatively thin in profile (only a few microns) and therefore need very careful handling prior to being encapsulated since they are very easy to break.

The method of mounting the crystal within the enclosure also needs to be considered by the manufacturer since its mechanical movement can also have an adverse effect on phase noise performance. Do you for example choose a two point mount or a four point? Do you use a flexible or a non-flexible adhesive to hold the crystal in place?

These are all things that the manufacturer needs to consider and most often need to be thought about whilst taking into consideration the customer’s application.

It is well worth emphasising time and again that high performance OCXO’s are most often a key component within a customer’s system so it is useful to establish a good working relationship with the manufacturer you intend to use in order for you to both understand which parameters need the most careful consideration in the design and which do not. It helps to get the best performance out of your product after all!

It is also helpful to use an oscillator manufacturer who designs and manufacturers their

OSCILLATORS

own crystal units since then of course the crystal and its drive circuitry can be closely matched for optimum performance.

It is important that all frequency dependant components are located as close as physically possible to the crystal and its heating element in order to maintain a tight frequency stability and phase noise performance. This will of course include the tuning capacitors and any overtone selection circuit. It is also important to ensure that the holder of the

dures involved in every device. This of course takes some time to enact since the oscillator has to be allowed a finite time in order to stabilize its frequency.

The circuit of the supply used to provide the power to all aspects of the oscillator must of course use low noise components (as of course must the rest of the circuit) in order to achieve optimal phase noise performance.

Figure 3

crystal is bonded to the actual substrate or printed circuit board used so that the thermal management of the device is tightly controlled. This can be achieved by the use of a thermally conductive adhesive.

In respect of the heating element this will normally comprise an operational amplifier driving a power transistor. The input to the amplifier consists of a selective thermistor/ resistor network, the values of which are chosen individually so that the precise turnover temperature of each crystal is set. The power transistor should be located as close as possible to the crystal and located in such a way as to minimise any temperature gradients across the crystal since this will give rise to poor stability and phase noise if it is not so.

This part of the circuit can, as intimated earlier be used to set the individual turnover temperature of the particular crystal employed. Very simply every crystal has to be matched to the drive circuit so as a consequence there is a series of “set up” proce-

It is sensible to use a voltage regulator with a low drop out and one that you can adjust in order to make maximum use of the input voltage available. In effect by driving the oscillator part of the circuit as hard as possible you can keep help to maximise the phase noise performance. This regulation part of the circuit should, in the best designs be followed by a filter circuit in order again, to minimise the potential for noise to find its way through to the more sensitive parts of the circuit i.e. that of the oscillator circuit itself! It goes without saying that in order to achieve maximum performance from the packaged oscillator the input voltage supplied must ideally be as clean and as regulated as possible. That effectively means as stable as possible and with as minimal a voltage ripple as can be achieved.

In terms of the output the best possible output design to go for from a low phase noise perspective is for a high power Sine wave output into 50 Ohms. www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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This of course provides for a much cleaner output than say a HCMOS logic output which, by its very nature inherently has many harmonics and therefore much “noise” contained within it.

The final aspect of the circuit within the OCXO to be considered is the voltage adjustment circuitry. This is to allow for the frequency shift of primarily, the crystal over time. We mentioned earlier that the crystal unit is sealed under vacuum during the course of its manufacture. It is most important that extreme care is taken during the process of its manufacture since contamination is its most problematic aspect. This is of course mainly contamination from the atmosphere where it can deposit itself on the crystal blank and affect the actual frequency of oscillation. Since it adds an extra mass which slows the frequency down. Poor construction can also have an effect since any material left within the crystal can which should not be present will have a similar degrading effect.

A typical phase noise performance plot achievable from a high performance modern OCXO design is shown in figure 4. This level of performance illustrates again the need for a close relationship between manufacturer and customer.

No matter how much care is taken during the course of the manufacture of the crystal

OSCILLATORS

there will always be an element of “ageing”.

In order to minimise the effect, a quality oscillator manufacturer will always carry out an element of pre-aging on the crystal prior to its fitment within the oscillator. This will often involve an element of “passive ageing” whereby the crystal is stored at an elevated temperature (say 85 degrees C or 105 degrees C) during the course of its construction. It may also involve, powering the crystal up with an oscillator circuit before fitting into the final OCXO since active ageing is always preferable to passive but anything is better than nothing!

Once the crystal has been fitted to the final oscillator and the unit fully aligned and tested it will normally be placed in an ageing rack for a period of say 30 days during which time its ageing or frequency performance is monitored probably on an hourly basis. This information will enable the manufacturer to predict its performance over a period of many years, it also enables the manufacturer to weed out any devices that have an early life mortality rate which is not normally a big issue.

In the past, frequency adjustment was normally carried out by mechanical means that is by an internal capacitive or resistive trimmer accessible through an access hole in the can. This has the detrimental effect that the external enclosure is not able to be hermetically sealed. The usual method of frequen-

cy adjustment these days is by electronic means, that is by the use of applying an external voltage through a least one Varactor diode. It is more usual, however to use two Varactors in order to achieve a high level of linearity. Care must again be taken in their selection since a lot of these devices are very “noisy” and can therefore have detrimental effect on the ultimate high phase noise performance we are looking to achieve.

Finally, consideration should be given to the insulation used within the enclosure although as with the crystal element, the device itself is backfilled with dry nitrogen during hermetically sealing it does appear that the use of an internal insulation blanket can have a positive influence on improving the phase noise performance of the oscillator, although there is a lot more investigative work to be carried out in order to confirm this!

As can be appreciated the design of a high end OCXO is very involved and consideration has to be given to many factors, all of which are interlinked when it comes to looking to achieve the minimum possible levels of phase noise from the oscillator. The end result of course, represents many years of research and development into achieving the best possible performance in order to meet with the customer’s requirement. n www.iqdfrequencyproducts.com Figure 4

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INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Amplicon introduces a small portable and feature rich oscilloscope, the new WaveAce 2000 A good oscilloscope should simplify how you work and shorten the time it takes to find and debug problems. The new WaveAce 2000 series combines long memory, a colour display, and extensive measurement capabilities, advanced triggering and excellent connectivity all features that greatly improve troubleshooting.

The WaveAce 2000 series exceeds all the usual expectations of a small affordable oscilloscope. It offers up to 1 Mpts/Ch (2 Mpts interleaved) memory; more memory results in longer capture times showing more waveform detail with each trigger. Saving and recalling waveforms and setups from internal memory will save valuable time during test and debug. The WaveAce can save up to 20 waveforms, 20 setups and two reference waveforms to the internal memory. The WaveAce also provides a USB host port on the front panel for saving screen images,

waveforms and setups to a memory stick. A rear panel USB device port allows for connection to a PC or PictBridge printer.

With 32 automatic measurement parameters, the WaveAce simpli-

Murata announced the latest addition to the OKLP range of “Power Block” products from Murata Power Solutions. In addition to the recently introduced 25A, Murata now offers the OKLP-X/35-W12-C, a 35A Power Block solution. This Power Block concept sits between a discrete Point-of-Load (PoL) design and that of a complete non-isolated buck converter module. The Power Block is essentially a non-isolated buck converter without the PWM controller. The OKLP-X/35-W12-C power block measures 25.4 x 12.7 x 11.1 mm and has a typical efficiency rating of 94%. Input voltage is a nominal 12 VDC and can accommodate the range of 7 to 13.2 VDC.

fies how measurements are made; the large 7” widescreen colour display can show up to five measurements without crowding the waveform display or show all 32 at once with the measurement dashboard.

A wide range of advanced timing parameters provide insight to the relationship between signals on two different channels.

AMPLICON www.amplicon.com

Murata MEF1 regulated DC-DC converter provides 3 kVDC isolation suits industrial automation applications Murata announced the MEF1 series of 1 Watt regulated DC-DC converters from Murata Power Solutions. Suitable for use in industrial, automation and instrumentation applications, these tightly regulated single output converters, rated to better than 1% of nominal output voltage, are packaged in a fully encapsulated single-inline through-hole format occupying less than 1.17 cm squared footprint. The MEF1 converters are available with either 1kVDC or 3kVDC input to output isolation, the latter model having an enhanced immunity to voltage transients. Output voltage options are 3.3 or 5.0 VDC, with input voltages covering the popular nominal

Murata launches 35A “Power Block” DC-DC converter module for FPGA and embedded applications

inputs from 3.3 to 24 VDC. Compared to previously available models, the MEF1 offers a 13% improvement in energy efficiency.

Both the 3.3 VDC input and 3.3 VDC output options can operate

over the full industrial temperature range of -40 to +85 degrees C without derating. Certification to the internationally recognized safety standard UL60950 is pending.

MURATA EUROPE www.murata.eu

The Power Block design approach allows the power engineer to achieve the highest efficiency and maximum possible power and current density while maintaining a high performance system at a lower cost when compared to a complete module design approach. Murata’s Power Block provides a single package solution that incorporates all of the power handling components, fully tested and characterized for thermal and dynamic performance. The Power Block design approach is ideal for today’s power-hungry FPGAs, ASICs, computing and IBA architectures. Most analogue or digital PWM controllers can be used with the Power Block; however, the maximum benefits are achieved when coupled with ZMDI’s ZSPM1035 single-phase digital PWM IC controller family.

The combination of ZMDI’s ZSPM1035 and the 35A Murata Power Block provides a ready, tested, and optimally preconfigured 35A point-of-load solution. Designers have access to a full downloadable construction kit that includes step-by-step instructions and a software wizard. ZMDI’s Pink Power Designer™ GUI allows fast module configuration that speeds time-to-market. The digital control loop provides ultra-fast transient response, steadystate performance, stability, and design flexibility. Up to four different output capacitor ranges can be supported by selecting the preconfigured ZMDI controller. To support customers during the initial introduction of this product, Mouser Electronics as an authorized distributor for both ZMDI and Murata Power Solutions will be able to provide the ZMDI controllers, GUI interface, Murata’s OKLP and Evaluation Boards.

MURATA EUROPE

www.murata.eu

www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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Tel. +40 256-201346 • Mail office@oboyle.ro • Web www.oboyle.ro

Leuze n n n

Optical sensors Sensors for logistic applications Safety at work

Contrinex n n

Optical Sensors Inductive Sensors

ASM n n n

Linear Sensors Angle Sensors Tilt Sensors

Selec n n n

PLCs Temperature Controller Timer

Harting n n

HTP n n n n

Sensor Instruments n n n

Color Sensors True Color Sensors, Spectrometers Gloss Sensors

Kobold n n n

Flowmeters Level Indicators and Switches Pressure Sensors and Switches

Heavy Duty Industrial Connectors Power and Data Transmission Connectors

Circular connectors M8; M12; M23 Cable and Connectors for Sensors Valve Connectors Distribution Blocks

Visit our online shop www.oboyle.ro

Intertec n n

Linear Solenoids Permanent Electromagnets

AUTOMATION Honeywell Launches High Sensitivity Latching Digital Hall-Effect Sensor Integrated Circuits Honeywell Sensing and Control’s new SS360PT and SS460P High Sensitivity Latching Hall-Effect Sensor ICs with Built-in Pull-up Resistors are high performance yet economical sensor ICs well-suited for demanding, cost-sensitive high-volume applications, such as commuting brushless DC motors used for medical equipment and appliances as well as for flow-rate sensing, speed and RPM sensing, tachometers, counter pickups, motor and fan controls.

The SS360PT/SS460P Hall-Effect sensors provide reliable switching points with a high magnetic sensitivity of 30 Gauss typical, at 25°C [77°F], and 55 Gauss maximum over the full -40°C to 125°C [-40°F to 257°F] temperature range, allowing for the use of smaller magnets or a wider air gap. These sensor ICs do not use chopper stabilization

on the Hall element, providing a cleaner output signal and a faster latch response time when compared to competitive, chopper-stabilized, high sensitivity Hall-effect

bipolar latching sensor ICs. Latching magnetics make these sensors well-suited for accurate speed sensing and RPM (revolutions per minute) measurement.

The sub-miniature, SOT-23 surface mount package (SS360PT) allows for compact design with automated component placement. The small, leaded, flat TO-92-style package (SS460P) allows for a compact PC board layout design. Wide operating voltage range of 3 Vdc to 24 Vdc provides for potential use in a wide range of applications. Built-in reverse voltage capability enhances the protection of the sensor and the circuits, and the robust design allows operation up to 125°C [257°F].

HONEYWELL www.honeywellnow.com www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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DURABLE AND COSTEFFECTIVE

FULL INOX BASIC

Full-metal sensors, now also in the BASIC range BASIC – Robust inductive sensors for the entry level

Advantages of the Contrinex ASIC

The Full Inox BASIC family closes the gap for applications that cannot dispense with a full-metal housing, but still need a cost-effective solution. The BASIC line combines the robustness and long life of the Full Inox family with the sensor properties of standard technology to offer a cost-effective entry into the world of full-metal sensors.

n Guaranteed operating distances n Quick installation: lower tolerance values, easy setup with or without

− Mechanically and chemically extremely robust − High quality ASIC sensor − Factor 1 on steel and aluminum − Corrosion resistant − IP68 and IP69K − Excellent temperature compensation − Vibration and shock-resistant

IO-Link n Excellent temperature compensation n Long life especially in environments with temperature changes and

vibrations n Extended operating distances

Machine building

Mobile equipment

Machine tools impose harsh operating conditions on the sensors needed to control cutting, forming and joining processes that run continuously in many metalworking factories. Common hazards include cutting fluid, cooling sprays, swarf particles and electromagnetic interference, making sensor selection particularly difficult where world-class performance is essential. − Extreme robustness − No false switching caused by metal dust or chips − Cost-optimized solution

Repairing and servicing equipment on site can be difficult and costly at best, and sometimes impossible. In these circumstances, robust, highly reliable sensors are vital for continuous operation in environments that may be challenging in the extreme. Exposure to dirt and dust, impact, vibration, seawater, corrosive chemicals and extremes of temperature and pressure are all part of a regular day’s work. − Mechanically and chemically extremely robust − Very long lifetime in applications subject to vibration and temperature changes

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EP&Dee | January, 2014 | www.epd-ee.eu

Automotive manufacturing industry Today, sensors of all types are common in automotive factories around the globe. Highly automated plants with demanding conformity requirements rely heavily on sensor technology to maintain world-class quality standards, particularly where harsh processes such as welding, metal finishing and high-temperature coating are required.

Manufacturing engineers working for automotive manufacturers and for first- and second tier suppliers expect robust, reliable sensors that deliver accurate, repeatable results with minimal downtime. − Cost-optimized solution for the toughest applications − Same operating distance on steel and aluminum − No false switching caused by metal dust or chips

WELD-IMMUNE, SMALL AND ROBUST

FULL INOX WELD -IMMUNE M8

Full metal sensors in space-saving M8 size Save space, increase performance with new weld- immune sensors in M8 size The one-piece stainless steel construction (V2A/AISI 304) of Contrinex Weld-Immune sensors is the most robust on the market. The new M8 housing size, in the same fullmetal construction, provides a logical extension of the Weld-Immune range. For tasks within welding cells, Full Inox sensors are now available in the most frequently demanded sizes: M8, M12 and M18. Virtually indestructible, the sensors permanently withstand harsh welding environments that include electromagnetic fields, weld spatter, rough cleaning and knocks - now also in confined spaces.

Strong in welding cells − Resistant to electromagnetic fields of up to 40 millitesla − Extremely robust - downtime is minimized − Easy cleaning - even with harsh methods − No false switching due to metal dust or chips − High quality ASIC sensor − Excellent temperature compensation − Factor 1 on steel and aluminum − No additional protection required − Outstanding accuracy − Long operating distances

Advantages of the Contrinex ASIC n Guaranteed operating distances n Quick installation: lower tolerance values, easy setup with or without

IO-Link n Excellent temperature compensation n Long life especially in environments with temperature changes and

vibrations n Extended operating distances

Applications − Welding installations in general − Welding cells of automotive industry

Before cleaning

After cleaning

Tel. +40 256-201346 • office@oboyle.ro • www.oboyle.ro www.epd-ee.eu | January, 2014 | EP&Dee

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PRODUCT NEWS

ACTIVE COMPONENTS

CUI Launches Complete Range of Free 3D Power Supply Models

New APE1723-HF-3 Step-Down Buck DC/DC Converter from Advanced Power Electronics Corp.

CUI Inc has launched a complete range of 3D models for their full line-up of ac-dc power supplies and dc-dc converters.

The move allows engineers to configure, view, and download 2D and 3D drawings in any of the major mechanical CAD formats; significantly simplifying and speeding the development process. The models are available for free via the CUI website, www.cui.com/resources/ 3d-models, and through CUI’s distribution partners Digi-Key and Future Electronics.

Advanced Power Electronics Corp. (USA), a leading Taiwanese manufacturer of MOS power semiconductors for DC-DC power conversion applications, has introduced the APE1723-HF3, a 200kHz 1A PWM buck DC/DC convertor with an adjustable output voltage range from 0.745V to 24V. The APE1723-HF-3 can drive a 1A load without an external transistor, saving considerable board real estate. Additionally, the APE1723-HF-3 operates at a fixed switching frequency of 200 kHz, enabling simpler filter components to be used in a design.

The external shutdown function of the APE1723-HF-3 is controlled with logic level signals, putting the device into its low-power standby mode. A further feature is internal compensation which provides feedback control for excellent line and load regulation, again without the need for additional external

To eliminate unnecessary data conversion costs and delays, CUI has announced 3D models for formats including, but not limited to, SolidWorks®, Pro/Engineer®, Autodesk Inventor®, and Mechanical Desktop®.

The models can be dropped directly into a product’s design.

The engineer can then check

compatibility in just a few mouse clicks, enabling them to specify embedded power supplies quicker and reduce the design cycle.

“We believe this service provides a valuable tool for our customers, especially as design cycles continue to shorten and they are asked to do more with fewer resources at their disposal,” commented CUI’s VP of Marketing, Jeff Schnabel.

CUI’s embedded power supply line encompasses a broad selection of ac-dc power supplies and dc-dc converters ranging from 0.25 W to 2400 W. CUI www.cui.com

components. The device features thermal shutdown for protection against damage in the event of over-temperature operation and has current limit protection and short circuit protection to safe-

guard the output switch. Output voltage tolerance is guaranteed at ±3% under specified input voltage and output load conditions.

The APE1723-HF-3 is RoHS-compliant and completely BFR/halogen-free to meet current REACH environmental requirements. It is available in either an SO-8 or a 5lead SOT-23 package.

ADVANCED POWER ELECTRONICS www.a-powerusa.com

AVX introduces integrated thin film, high directivity coupler series for WiFi bands

XP Power release low cost 6 Watt DC-DC converters in DIP-24 package

AVX Corporation, has introduced a series of integrated thin film (ITF), high directivity, directional couplers for WiFi bands.

Utilizing Land Grid Array (LGA) packaging technology, the miniature ITF couplers feature a rugged, inherently low profile construction designed for reliable automatic assembly and exhibit excellent high frequency performance across the WiFi frequency spectrum: 2,4005,950MHz. Available in 0302, 0402, and 0603 sizes, all of which provide identical electrical performance, the 3W couplers also exhibit high directivity (20dB), low parasitics, excellent solderability, improved heat dissipation, and self-alignment during reflow. AVX’s high directivity couplers for WiFi bands are rated for -40°C to +85°C and feature RoHS-compliant, 100% tin termi-

XP Power today announced the JCE06 and JTE06 series of low cost compact 6 Watt DC-DC converters aimed at a broad range of mobile communications, industrial and transportation applications.

Constructed in a plastic industry standard 24-pin DIP through hole mounting package, and measuring 31.75 x 20.32 x 10.40 mm (1.25 x 0.80 x 0.40 inches), the single and dual output units achieve a power density of 15 Watts per cubic inch and an efficiency of up to 84%.

Single output models are available with +3.3, +5, +12, +15 or +24 VDC outputs. Duals provide ±3.3, ±5, ±12, ±15 or ±24 VDC outputs.

The JCE06 accommodates a wide 2:1 input range and the JTE06 series an ultra wide 4:1 input range. All models cover the popular nominal input voltages of +12, +24 or +48 VDC. Input to output isolation is 1,500 VDC across the

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nations that are compatible with automatic soldering technologies, including: reflow, wave soldering, vapor phase, and manual.

Finished parts are 100% tested for electrical parameters and visual characteristics.

AVX www.avx.com

EP&Dee | January, 2014 | www.epd-ee.eu

range. An optional 3,000 VDC isolation model is available to order quoting suffix –H. A metal case option is also available by adding –M suffix to the part code at the time of order.

The converters suit a wide range of operating environments in temperatures from -40 to + 100°C. XP POWER www.xppower.com

PRODUCT NEWS

PASSIVE COMPONENTS

New tantalum capacitors from AVX exhibit lowest available SMD tantalum DCL & twice the reliability of basic commercial tantalum capacitors AVX Corporation, has introduced its new TMJ S1gma Series highreliability SMD tantalum capacitors, which offer three levels of next-generation statistical screening and process control enhancement for applications that require both exceedingly high reliability and extremely low DC leakage current (DCL). Twice as reliable as basic commercial tantalum capacitors, the new TMJ S1gma Series capacitors feature an impressively scant baseline part failure rate of < 0.5% per 1,000 hours at 85°C and rated volts. Available with DCL limits of 0.001CV (on selected codes) and 0.005CV, TMJ S1gma Series capacitors also exhibit the lowest DCL of any existing tantalum capacitor currently on the market, making them ideal for a variety of avionics, medical, safety system, and long-life battery operated circuit applications, such as remote wireless modules. Statistical screening

for the TMJ S1gma SMD tantalum capacitor series is available in three levels: S1gma Prime, S1gma Premium, and S1gma Pro Custom.

S1gma Prime uses three electrical screenings to remove maverick parts from the distribution.

S1gma Premium utilizes AVX’s

patented Q-Process in addition to the three S1gma Prime screenings to effectively identify and remove any components that may experience excessive parametric shifts or instability in operation; and S1gma Pro Custom can employ one or both of the three S1gma Prime and Q-Process screening techniques to identify and remove parts according to specific custom parameters.

AVX www.avx.com

AVX boosts 0603 MLOC Series Capacitance by 2X AVX Corporation, has doubled the capacitance of its 0603 Multilayer Organic Capacitor (MLOC) Series, extending the highest-rated capacitance value from 2.5pF to 5.1pF. Ideal for applications including RF power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, filter networks, and instrumentation, AVX’s 0603 MLO™ capacitors exhibit low ESR, high SRF, and high Q and are capable of supporting frequencies well above 5 GHz. Expansion matched to PCBs for improved reliability, the series also exhibits low dielectric absorption (0.0015%) and capacitance tolerances as tight as ±0.02pF. Rated for -55°C to +125°C and for 50V, 250V, and 500V, AVX’s 0603 MLO RF capacitor series utilizes well-established, low-loss organic

polymer materials. Every production lot is 100% evaluated for capacitance and proof voltage at 2.5 UR and reliability data has been verified via JEDEC, Mil Spec, and IPC testing. Lead-free compatible and RoHS compliant,

the series is packaged on 7” unmarked reels each containing 3,000 pieces.

AVX www.avx.com

AVX’s low ESR tantalum chip capacitor series receives full European Space Agency QPL qualification approval AVX Corporation, announces that its high-reliability TES Series low ESR tantalum chip capacitors have received full European Space Agency (ESA) QPL (qualified part list) qualification approval in accordance with the European Space Components Coordination (ESCC) specification ESCC3012/004. Rated for 1470μF and 6.3-50V, TES Series tantalum SMD chip capacitors offer higher capacitance and lower ESR values than any existing ESCC-qualified tantalum devices designed for use in aerospace applications. Available in five miniature sizes spanning 3216-18 to 7343-43 and in single and multianode cases, the series also provides design engineers with several downsizing options, enabling significant reductions in both payload and physical space, which are extremely beneficial in aerospace applications. Single anode TES Series tantalum capacitors are available in sizes 3216-18 (A), 3528-21 (B), and 6032-28 (C); vertical multianode TES Series parts are available in 7343-31 (D); and mirror multian-

ode TES Series parts, which fully halve ESR values, are available in 7343-43 (E). The series is also available in two tolerances, ±10% and ±20%; with three screening levels: B (x-ray), C, and non-ER for

non-flight parts; and with three ESCC lot acceptance testing (LAT) levels. Produced in AVX’s ESA-qualified manufacturing plant in Lanskroun, Czech Republic, TES Series tantalum SMD chip capacitors feature SnPb terminations and are supplied in bulk or on 4” or 7” tape and reel upon request.

AVX www.avx.com

AVX expands Mini-TurboCap™ BME capacitor series with new 25V rating and extended capacitance range for 50V parts AVX Corporation has expanded its Mini-TurboCap™ and RoHS Compliant Mini-TurboCap™ Series with a new 25V rating and an extended capacitance range (up to 39μF) for its 50V parts.

Now available in 25V, 50V, and 100V, these state-of-the-art base metal electrode (BME) capacitor series exhibit extremely high volumetric efficiency (CV) in addition to ultra low ESR and ESL in a compact footprint. Capable of conserving considerable amounts of critical board space, both MiniTurboCap Series are ideal for I/O EMI filtering in military and COTS+ switch mode power supply applications, industrial power converters, radar systems, and aerospace power electronics, among several others. Both comprised of X7R dielectric materials, the MiniTurboCap and RoHS Compliant

Mini-TurboCap Series feature an operating temperature range of 55°C to +125°C. Capacitance values for the series’ 25V parts extend up to 82μF; for 50V parts,

values extend to 39μF, and for 100V parts they extend to 8.2μF. The two series have also been life tested to 1,000 hours at 150% of the rated voltage and +125°C. AVX www.avx.com

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PRODUCT NEWS

PASSIVE COMPONENTS

Vishay’s low-profile and high-current Dale IHLP 1616 power inductors saving space and power now available from TTI, Inc. Vishay’s new low-profile, high-current Dale IHLP 1616 power inductors enhance space and power savings in DC/DC converter applications and can now be sourced through TTI Inc, the world’s leading specialist distributor of passive, connector, electromechanical and discrete components. The surfacemount Dale devices improve battery performance, help reduce size of portable and handheld electronic devices with low losses at frequencies up to 5MHz, low DCR values, and have a height profile that is 30% lower than in conventional solutions. Designed for DC/DC converter and energy storage applications, the IHLP 1616 series will be used to replace taller, larger, and/or lower-performing inductors, thus enabling lighter, thinner mobile and desktop computers, servers, cell phones, digital cameras, global positioning systems, and other handheld electronic products. The inductors are fully

RoHS compliant and 100% lead (Pb) free.

Benefiting from low profiles (1.2mm and 2.0mm), a shielded construction, and ultra low buzz noise, the power inductors can handle high transient current spikes without saturation. Technical details of IHLP 1616 series devices include a high

frequency range of 100kHz up to 5.0MHz, lowest DCR/μH values (0.047μH to 4.7μH) and an operating temperature range from -55°C up to +125°C. TTI www.ttieurope.com

AVX announces market introduction of the first space-level BME X7R MLCCs AVX Corporation, a leading manufacturer of passive components and interconnect solutions, has announced the market introduction of the first space-level, base metal electrode (BME), X7R dielectric MLCCs. Exhibiting capacitance voltage (CV) capabilities superior to those of conventional precious metal electrode (PME) MLCCs, the new BME MLCCs provide higher capacitance values in significantly smaller cases sizes, reducing both board space and total component weight, which are especially critical in space applications, while maintaining the high reliability performance required by the space industry.

The new surface mount, BME MLCCs also feature Sn/Pb plating with Flexiterm® terminations, which provide considerably enhanced resistance to mechanical stress by allowing for more than twice as much board flexure as standard terminations.

Qualified on the European Space Association’s (ESA’s) European Preferred Parts List (EPPL II) under the criteria of the European Space Components Coordination’s (ESCC’s) specification 3009, AVX’s new space-level BME MLCCs are rated for 16-100V and 2.2nF to 8.2μF, are available in case sizes spanning 0603-1812, and, in addition to space applications, are also ideal for use in a range of high-reliability aviation and military applications. Moreover, these devices, included in a line expansion that incorporates case sizes 0402-2220, are also currently being evaluated for approval on the ESCC’s Qualified Parts List (QPL) qualification process.

“AVX has a long history of developing robust, high-reliability components for the space industry, the demands of which continue to grow even more stringent with regard to performance, size, safety, weight, and cost,” said Michael Conway, Product Marketing Manager at AVX. “Rising to these challenges, our leading edge, space-level, BME capacitors further complement our existing line of space capacitors, providing customers with an extended range of trusted, high-reliability solutions for mission-critical applications.”

AVX’s space-level, BME MLCCs are available in three capacitance tolerances (±5%, ±10%, and ±20%) and with three ESCC lot acceptance testing (LAT) levels.

Lead time for the series is 14 weeks and pricing information and datasheets for individual part numbers are available upon request.

AVX

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www.avx.com

PRODUCT NEWS

PASSIVE COMPONENTS

New low ESR polymer capacitors from Panasonic suit many different applications and are now available from TTI, Inc.

Expanded range of sulphur-resistant chip resistors from Yageo offers a stable and reliable performance and is now available from TTI, Inc.

Panasonic’s new OS-CON™ and POSCAP™ series polymer capacitors can now be ordered from TTI, Inc., the world’s leading specialist distributor of passive, connector, electromechanical and discrete components. Featuring very low ESR values, a wide capacitance range and an extended life span, the devices are suitable for many different applications, including automotive, industrial and telecommunications.

OS-CON series aluminium solid capacitors benefit from a high conductive polymer electrolyte material and excellent noise reduction capabilities and frequency characteristics.

The devices have a long life span and since the electrolyte is solid, the ESR has little change even at low temperatures. Technical details include a voltage range of 2VDC up to 100VDC, a capacitance range of 3.3μF up to 2700μF, an operating temperature range of -55˚C up to +125˚C, an endurance of up to

Yageo’s expanded AF series of sulfur-resistant chip resistors can now be ordered from TTI, Inc., the world’s leading specialist distributor of passive, connector, electromechanical and discrete components. The recently introduced 4-pin, 2resistor (0402 x 2) AF122 arrays and 8-pin, 4-resistor (0402 x 4) AF124 arrays help meet increased market d e m a n d s .

Offering a stable and reliable performance in a wide variety of environments, including those with high level of sulfur, AF arrays save space on the PCB and save time in pick and place applications. To improve the sulfur resistant capability, Yageo utilizes a special material in the inner electrode with the alteration of the resistor structure.

5000h at 105˚C and up to 2000h at 125˚C, ESR values down to 5mΩ, a ripple current of up to 7200mArms, and a height of 4.5mm up to 13mm. POSCAP series solid electrolytic chip capacitors feature excellent performance for high frequencies while maintaining a low profile

and high capacitance. The devices are also highly reliable and have a high heat resistance. The anode is sintered tantalum and the cathode is a highly conductive polymer TTI www.ttieurope.com

AVX adds new capacitance values and voltage ratings to its range of C0G (NP0) MLCCS AVX Corporation, has expanded its range of high reliability C0G (NP0) dielectric multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs). Available in case sizes spanning 01005 to 2225, voltages up to 500V, and capacitance tolerances as low as ±0.1pF, AVX’s C0G (NP0) MLCCs provide one of the most stable capacitor dielectrics available in today’s market, making them ideal for resonant circuit applications requiring superior stability or a precise temperature coefficient, such as: matching circuits, handheld devices, and GPS, among others. New values range from 3.3nF in 0603 to 10nF in the 0805 size. Additionally, a new 200V product up to 100pF is also

now available in 0603. The most popular formation of the temperature-compensating EIA Class I ceramic materials, modern C0G (NP0) formulations exhibit the lowest losses and most stable voltage and temperature characteristics of any ceramic capacitor application class. Additionally,

C0G (NP0) formulations do not exhibit any aging characteristics.

AVX www.avx.com

AF series chip resistors meet the requirements of the ASTM-B809-95 standard, 60°, 1,000hrs.

The devices provide high stability and reliability in harsh environ-

ments and are ideal for use in applications such as mining, communication base stations, industrial equipment controls, power supplies, computing servers, consumer electronics, and DRAM modules, HDD. TTI www.ttieurope.com

AVX offers the lowest profile 0603 and 0805 MLO™ diplexers available in the global market AVX Corporation, offers the lowest profile 0603 and 0805 multilayer organic (MLO™) diplexers available in the global market.

Compared to equivalent low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) products, AVX’s 0603 and 0805 MLO diplexers exhibit superior attenuation, low insertion losses, low parasitics, high heat dissipation, and excellent solderability.

Ideally suited for band switching in dual and multiband systems, such as WiFi and WiMax (WLAN/BT); mobile telecommunications, including 3G and 4G LTE (WCDMA, CDMA, and GSM); and GPS, the 0603 and 0805 MLO diplexers measure a scant 0.42mm (0.017”) and 0.55mm (0.021”) in height,

respectively. Based on AVX’s patented multilayer organic high density interconnect technology, the 0603 and 0805 MLO diplexers employ high dielectric constant and low loss materials to

realize high Q passive printed elements, such as inductors and capacitors in multilayer stack ups.

Expansion-matched to PCBs, the devices also provide improved reliability compared to ceramic and silicon components.

AVX www.avx.com

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