IoT & Smart Cities

September 2016
Mouser Electronics, a leading distributor with the latest semiconductors and electronic components, is exhibiting in Hall 7 on Stand 10 at the 2016 Maker Faire in Rome, 14 – 16 October. Mouser is joining over 100,000 maker enthusiasts of all ages and backgrounds to inspire them with the very newest components an
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Date:
09/30/2016
RS components' Live truck tour to educate and inspire existing and future engineers

RS Live, an impressive 35-tonne mobile experience

RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents, a distributor for engineers, announced RS Live, an impressive 35-ton mobile experience that is touring across northern and central Europe over the next 12 months showcasing innovation to customers, academic institutions and local communities. Through a
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Date:
09/29/2016
Energy conservation and reduction in CO2-emissions are key factors in mitigating global warming and preserving our future environment. These positive trends are leading to wider usage of power semiconductors in energy conversion systems supplying the rapidly growing global energy demand. IGBT (Insulated Gate Bi
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Date:
09/29/2016
IDTechEx Research has been closely following the ITO alternative market for the past five years. It forecasts that ITO alternative solutions will reach more than $250m by 2026. There is renewed interest here globally on conductive ink-based metal mesh films, as technology and application developments are making th
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Date:
09/29/2016
STMicro's wireless charging chipset enables smaller, simpler, sealed wearables

STWBC-WA charging-transmitter controller and STWLC04 wireless battery-charger receiver

A miniaturized wireless battery-charging chipset from STMicroelectronics saves space, simplifies enclosure design and sealing, and accelerates time to market for ultra-compact sports wearables, wellness monitors, medical sensors, and remote controllers. The combination of ST’s STWBC-WA charging-transmitter controller and
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Date:
09/28/2016
PSDcast - Brian White of TrendPoint on smart power in data centers

Brian White of TrendPoint

In this PSDcast Brian White of TrendPoint talks to Alix Paultre of Power Systems Design about the smart energy space and how it applies to data center efficiency. TrendPoint Systems designs and engineers flexible, scalable and cost-effective power metering devices for the critical facility, enabling customers
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Date:
09/27/2016
Ohio State’s all-electric Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3 sets new landspeed record

VBB-3 racing on the Salt Flats

After three years of battling difficult weather conditions at the Wendover, Utah, Bonneville Salt Flats track, The Ohio State University’s Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3 student team and driver Roger Schroer rallied to push their electric streamline vehicle to a world record two-way average top speed of 341.4 miles pe
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Date:
09/27/2016
Mouser now stocking the low-power Intel Curie module for wearables

Intel Curie Module

Mouser Electronics, a leading distributor with a wide selection of semiconductors and electronic components, is now stocking the highly anticipated Intel Curie module, a complete low-power solution designed for use in wearable devices and consumer and industrial edge solutions. Powered by the Intel Quark SE sy
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Date:
09/23/2016
Vishay's 4-Line ESD protection diode boasts small size

4-line ESD protection array

Vishay Intertechnology released a new 4-line ESD protection array for portable electronics in the ultra-compact chip-level CLP1007-5L package. Offering an extreme size reduction over previous-generation components without sacrificing performance, the Vishay Semiconductors VBUS54FD-SD1 offers low capacitance an
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Date:
09/23/2016
PSDcast - Guy Barnhart-Magen of Nation-E on cybersecurity for smart buildings

Guy Barnhart-Magen of Nation-E

In this PSDcast Guy Barnhart-Magen of Nation-E talks about cyber protection for smart buildings with Alix Paultre of Power Systems Design. Today, billions of smart devices interconnected through the Internet of Things (IoT). Smart buildings are facing significant threats that are exacerbated by two major factors: Fi
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Date:
09/21/2016
Wind River announcd  the availability of VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) client for the IBM Watson IoT platform.This is part of the IBM/Wind River collaboration to advance IoT deployments for industrial customers with new “edge-to-cloud” recipes designed to simplify and accelerate the development of
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Date:
09/20/2016
ON Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor International jointly announced that ON Semiconductor has successfully completed its previously announced $2.4 billion cash acquisition of Fairchild. “The acquisition of Fairchild is a transformative step in our quest to become the premier supplier of power manag
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Date:
09/19/2016
Imec scientist awarded ERC starting grant to develop advanced flexible electronics

Kris Myny

Leading nanoelectronics research center imec announces that Kris Myny, one of its young scientists, has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. The grant of 1.5 million euros is earmarked to open up new research horizons in the field of thin-film transistor technology. This will allow a leap forward compared to cu
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Date:
09/16/2016
Digital LED driver ICs from Infineon offer flicker-free control and low stand-by power

XDPL8220 LED driver

The XDPL8220 from Infineon Technologies extends their product portfolio of digital and configurable LED driver ICs. The IC enables the lighting industry to realize essential features for smart lighting and increases the benefits for both, end user and manufacturers. The primary side control of this device saves ex
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Date:
09/16/2016
Dialog Semi enhances connectivity of Tile Slim, the thinnest Bluetooth tracker available

Tile Slim is the world’s thinnest Bluetooth tracker

 Dialog Semiconductor, a provider of highly integrated power management, AC/DC power conversion, solid state lighting (SSL) and Bluetooth low energy technology, today announced that its DA14580 SmartBond System-on-Chip (SoC) is at the heart of Tile’s newest consumer product, Tile Slim. Available now, Tile Slim
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Date:
09/15/2016
ON Semi to demo breadth of solutions at Electronica 2016

Visitors to the over 400 square metre booth will see the company’s latest products and innovations

ON Semiconductor, driving energy efficient innovations, will focus on four key market segments at this year’s Electronica in Munich. Visitors to the over 400 square metre booth will see the company’s latest products and innovations for automotive, the Internet of Things (IoT), motor control and wearable de
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Date:
09/15/2016
Toshiba’s “Easy Prototyping” solution aids custom SoC development

Toshiba's vs. legacy tech

Toshiba Corporation announced the immediate availability of “Easy Prototyping”, a solution that allows reuse of the design assets required to develop large scale custom SoC with FPGA prototyping. Adoption of the solution dramatically shortens the development time from FPGA prototyping to custom SoC development. Ea
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Date:
09/13/2016
How can we detect cyber threats on the factory floor

Intrusion Detection

The Industrial IoT (IIoT) provides manufacturers in all industries with greater connectivity that in turn, generates valuable information and intelligence regarding operations. By leveraging this intelligence, they are able to attain significant efficiencies and manufacturing improvements. However, this expa
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Date:
09/12/2016
Linear's IEEE 802.3bt PD controller paves path to higher power levels

LT4295 IEEE 802.3bt powered device (PD) interface controller

Linear Technology introduced the LT4295 IEEE 802.3bt powered device (PD) interface controller for applications requiring up to 71W of delivered power. The next Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard – IEEE 802.3bt – enables manufacturers to go beyond the 25.5W allocated by the 2009 IEEE 802.3at standard. Linear Te
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Date:
09/12/2016
PSDcast - Tony Astley of GaN Systems on the future of the GaN marketplace

Tony Astley of GaN Systems

In this PSDcast Tony Astley, Director EMEA Sales Operations for GaN Systems, talks to Alix Paultre of Power Systems Design about the future of the GaN marketplace. Between the unstable nature of adoption of a disruptive technology to the more real-world issues of consolidation in the semiconductor industry, th
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Date:
09/09/2016
Arrow's LoRa development board speeds long-range IoT product development

LION board

Arrow Electronics has extended its support for developers of Internet of Things (IoT) products with the introduction of the SmartEverything LION board. The LION board supports a range of functions required in an IoT sensing node and enables simple, low power connection to the Cloud via the LoRa protocol. It wa
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Date:
09/09/2016
50A to 300A, Scalable µModule Regulator Needs 60% Less Capacitance to Power Sub-28nm GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs & Processors

µModule® Regulator with Precision DC & Transient Voltage Accuracy for Advanced Digital Devices

Linear Technology Corporation introduces the LTM4650-1A and LTM4650-1B, dual 25A or single 50A µModule® (power module) regulators scalable to deliver 300A to high power, low voltage sub-28nm GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs and microprocessors. The low core voltage of these digital devices requires very accurate voltage regu
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Date:
09/08/2016
PSDcast - Michele Grieshaber of Silicon Labs on the state of the embedded electronics industry

Michele Grieshaber of Silicon Labs

In this PSDcast Michele Grieshaber, Chief Marketing Officer of Silicon Labs, talks to Alix Paultre about the situation electronic design engineers find themselves in today. There are so many pressures and demands on the designer to create devices and products that are not only state of the art in power management, fu
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Date:
09/06/2016
Anritsu's ultraportable Site Master analyzer claims the smallest form factor available

Site Master S331P

Anritsu Company introduced the ultraportable Site Master S331P, presented as the lightest, smallest, fastest and most cost-efficient Site Master field cable and antenna analyzer ever developed. Addressing the market need for broad frequency coverage and high performance in an extremely compact and economical de
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Date:
09/06/2016
Qualcomm and Virginia Tech begin a multi-year collaboration this fall with the launch of the Qualcomm Thinkabit Lab at Virginia Tech's Northern Virginia Center in Falls Church. The Thinkabit Lab experience offers both teachers and students an engaging learning environment—part lab, makerspace and classroom—to fos
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Date:
09/06/2016
Smaller, smarter, and more powerful are market trends for low-power switched-mode power supply (SMPS) applications. Smaller requires the SMPS to have a more compact form factor – and, thus higher power density. Smarter requires intelligent system-to-system/system-to-human communication to ensure the systems are
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Date:
09/05/2016
Industrial automation systems are undergoing a revolution to reduce latency and down time. This directly translates to increased profits for factory operators and machine builders.  Dubbed Industry 4.0, this effort will add more intelligence across the factory floor from HMI panels and controllers to communication mo
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Date:
09/05/2016
In response to Google’s Little Box Challenge (LBC), our Virginia Tech team, the Future Energy Electronics Center (FEEC), decided to design a power inverter. As shown below, our design significantly surpassed the LBC specifications. Our final design exhibited a power density of 61.2 W/in3, exceeding the LBC goa
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Date:
09/05/2016
It should come as no surprise to anyone that a the continuing adoption of Digital Power System Management (DPSM) within the communications and computer industries continues to  be driven, in large part, to the high current levels demanded by the sub-20nm ASICs and/or FPGAs that are at the core of their sys
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Date:
09/05/2016
Here we’ll show how Spice can be used to provide proximity loss results for magnetics windings. Proximity loss equations are solved for a set of frequencies, and a simulation circuit is generated which predicts the proper AC losses regardless of the current waveform. Inductor winding AC resistance calcul
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Date:
09/05/2016
Automotive Infotainment is more than just fun and games

Kevin Parmenter, Power Systems Design Contributor

Automotive infotainment systems in passenger cars are projected to be a $35+ billion market by 2020, based on the fact that consumers are increasingly becoming connected, 24x7, as they access their data and content wherever they go. Travel and entertainment are merging due to consumers’ expectations and capabilities fo
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Date:
09/03/2016
In the last part of this series, we saw that only one of the modulator gains found in the literature can be confirmed with measurements. Furthermore, it is shown that the discrepancies in all the models are easily resolved by proper sampling of the system. Different current-mode modulator models In the
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Date:
09/03/2016
The implementation of the “Smart Grid” is accelerating rapidly.  Once just a vision in eyes of power engineers and utilities, the Smart Grid is swiftly taking shape.  A major driver in realizing a truly smart electrical grid is the adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs).  Grid-connected di
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Date:
09/03/2016
This software, in combination with Rigol oscilloscopes (series DS/MSO2000A, DS/MSO4000 or DS6000) allows customers to set up small test systems, which represent a reasonably priced alternative for measuring switching power supply parameters during the development phase. Switching power supplies are commonly us
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Date:
09/03/2016
In the last few years GaN based devices, both discrete FET’s and MMIC’s, have been released and widely used in high power microwave amplifier systems.  These devices, available from several foundry sources, are typically fabricated on 100mm SiC wafers.  GaN on Si processes are also under consideration, ho
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Date:
09/03/2016
Thermal behavior is important to determining the lifetime performance of electronic system design and the power supply is a critical element in determining that behavior. Heat has a number of effects on a system. The most problematic at a system level is one of long-term reliability. High operating temperatures te
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Date:
09/03/2016
Measuring the resistance of something is a great deal more complicated if that resistance is very small. With bigger resistances, measurements can be as simple as connecting two leads between a digital multi-meter (DMM) and the device under test (DUT) and reading the number. With small resistances, the multitude of
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Date:
09/03/2016
PSDcast - Semitech CEO Zeev Collin on next-gen smart wireless systems

Semitech CEO Zeev Collin

In this PSDcast Semitech CEO Zeev Collin talks to Alix Paultre of Power Systems Design on next-gen smart wireless systems. Between the Smart Grid, Indutry 4.), and the Internet of Things, the issue isn't really what to call it but how to give devices and systems the wireless functinoality needed to acheive the
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Date:
09/01/2016
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