Technical Features

January 2018

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Figure 1: MOSFET channel punch-through showing outputs from previous SPICE simulators vs. QSPICE

QSPICE: A Mission to Get SPICE Right

Siddharth Mohan, design engineer, Qorvo

Qorvo’s QSPICE™ simulator for analog and mixed-signal simulation provides power designers with the tools to confidently evaluate their designs. Free to use, QSPICE improves SPICE basics, supports large amounts of digital logic without performance penalties, and delivers the speed and accuracy needed for rel

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Date:

11/29/2024

Connectors boost the efficiency of wind power plants

Norbert Weiss and Carsten Edler, HARTING ELECTRIC GmbH

Germany’s roughly 30,000 wind turbines currently produce a good 50,000 megawatts of electricity for households and companies. The expansion of wind energy both onshore and offshore is helping determine the pace and success of the shift in energy policy introduced at the beginning of the decade – a move away fr

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Date:

01/19/2018

Safety of Household and Similar Electrical Appliances – How EN 60335 Compares

Gary Bocock, Technical Director, XP Power

When designing to meet the requirements of EN 60335, engineers have to adopt a different mind-set. Compared with the familiar IT and medical standards, not only are some design limits different but also the potential users and end products are much more varied. Unusually in safety evaluation, multiple faults ha

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Date:

01/14/2018

TDK-Lambda Certified Medical Power Supplies

Essential performance, voltage dips and medically certified power supplies

Robin Jeffery, TDK-Lambda EMEA

Although essential performance is covered in IEC 60601-1 2nd edition, the 3rd edition defines it in greater detail as “the performance necessary to achieve freedom from unacceptable risk”. It is up to the manufacturer to determine if a loss of performance or functionality will result in an acceptable

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Date:

01/14/2018

Forced Air Cooling: Sourcing an Appropriate Fan

Mark Patrick, Mouser Electronics

Dissipating the heat generated by certain components is a key part of electronics design. Consequently engineers need to be sure that they put an effective thermal management system in place in order to ensure that operational reliability is maintained. There are a variety of different technologies that can be

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Date:

01/14/2018

CMF Series Dual Mode Chokes

Addressing Differential and Common Mode Noise With Innovative Dual-Mode Choke Technology

Lazaro Rodriguez Standard Product Engineering Manager Triad Magnetics

Circuit designers must deal with many types of noise: internal, external, RF, line frequency and more. Noise can be a limiting factor in system performance and so must be addressed and minimized. The question is “at what cost and effort?” Is it better to sacrifice performance or cost? In either ca

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Date:

01/12/2018

Figure 1. This graph pair represents Capacitance vs. Time and ESR vs. Time for the SCMT22C505MRBA0 at rated voltage (5V) for 4,000 hours at 85°C.

Self-Balancing Supercapacitor Reliability Testing Performance

Eric DeRose, Field Applications Engineer; Bob Knopsnyder, Senior Development Engineer; and Bharat Rawal, Contractor/Retired Manager, BestCap Technology, AVX Corporation

Supercapacitors are increasing in popularity amongst board-level components. In turn, there is now greater demand for supercapacitor reliability testing data, as sub-ppm component failure rates are critical for minimizing and eliminating PCB rework. The following case study addresses basic supercapacitor reliabili

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Date:

01/10/2018

Figure 1. Wrist-Worn Health and Fitness Monitor

Train Your Fitness Monitor to Deal with Any Lighting Conditions

Sudhir Mulpuru, Michael Jackson, Tapan Shah, Maxim Integrated

With the proliferation of wearable health monitors among fitness enthusiasts, it may be worth posing the following question: Is the data being produced by these devices always accurate and reliable? In the same way that automobiles encounter real-world driving conditions vastly different from the laboratory environ

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Date:

01/10/2018

Figure 1. Simplified Charge Pump Block Diagram of a Voltage Inverter

No Inductors Required

Tony Armstrong, Director of Product Marketing, Power Products, Linear Technology Corporation, tarmstrong@linear.com

A fundamental axiom for switching power supplies is that they must not generate a lot of noise. Accordingly, quiet, well-regulated power supplies are important for optimum performance in many circuit applications. In order to attain this level of performance it is critical to be able to mitigate any noise generated as

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Date:

01/09/2018

Thermal Management of Hot Spots in IT Equipment

Sonja Brown, Director of Product Marketing – Piezo and Protection Devices, EPCOS, a TDK Group Company

It is no surprise that electronic equipment can get hot. This is because electrical currents running through semiconductors and other components create thermal losses. Especially in IT equipment the losses in the form of heat dissipation can be quite significant. As much as 40 percent of the power used by data centers is for temperature control – mainly in the form of cooling the equipment to extend ha

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Date:

01/09/2018