Technical Features

November 2019
QSPICE: A Mission to Get SPICE Right

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

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
Date:
11/29/2024
New Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery in Capacitor Form Factor

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Figure 1 – A comparison of the volume energy densities of Nichicon’s electric double layer capacitors (EDLC) vs its small li-ion rechargeable batteries.

Nichicon has a new Li-ion rechargeable battery that can be directly mounted onto circuit boards without any special fixtures. This new product line is called the SLB series. This new SLB series have some of the characteristics of both rechargeable Li-ion batteries and EDLC’s making them viable alternatives in
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Date:
11/01/2019
Powering Advanced Healthcare Devices

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Figure 1. LTC3107 Harvesting Thermal Energy to Power a WSN and/or Charge a Battery

The costs associated with keeping a patient in a hospital bed for a prolonged period are becoming economically unsustainable – both for the institution itself, and the patient. As a result, hospitals are looking for ways to reduce these cost burdens by getting the patient well and autonomous as soon as possible wi
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Date:
11/01/2019
Breaking Down the Key Priorities for Powering Wearables

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Figure 1: Activity Tracker use case

Over just the last few years, we’ve seen the popularity of wearables surge across various market segments. It’s easy to see why: these products are packed with some of the latest and complex technological advancements and aim to improve well-being and simplify day to day tasks and activities in a completely in
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Date:
11/01/2019
Mobile Diagnostic Technology Delivers Hypertension Screening

Figure 1: A Medical Diagnostic Technology-equipped smartphone
Source: Leman Micro Devices SA

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With consumer wearables such as FitBits and the Apple Watch established in the market and consumers who have bought these devices now accustomed to seeing their own personalised health data such as heart rate displayed on their wrists (although not to standards of accuracy required by the medical profession), is
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Date:
11/01/2019
Power Requirements of Biosensor-Based Wearables

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Figure 1: Examples of wearable designs that can provide enhanced battery life via low-powered design.

The medical field has introduced an increasing number of portable and wireless medical devices for in-home patient care as it witnesses broader adoption of tele-medicine. With the advent of increasingly miniaturized and powerful electronics, we foresee the adoption of adapted wireless wristband wearables for me
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Date:
11/01/2019
Manufacturers Protect Appliance Products from Cyberattacks

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Figure 1. Unless protected by the appropriate cyber security technologies, appliances – including refrigerators – can host and spread a wide range of malware and computer viruses

Cyberattacks are on the rise worldwide. Most of the attacks that generate big press coverage are very dramatic and well-documented. We have all read about malware attacks, Denial of Service attacks, which shut down factories, governments and large international businesses - and even portions of the Internet -
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Date:
11/01/2019
Augmented Reality and the Internet of Things

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Figure 1: Augmented Reality (AR) glasses displaying airline flight information

For those of us who wear glasses for vision correction, we are used to seeing the world through lenses.  However, new technologies will allow a virtual world to be laid on top of the real world that we normally see. In other words, the lenses will become displays that allow us to see the “real” world th
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Date:
11/01/2019
Super Barrier Rectifiers Deliver Design-Free Efficiency

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Figure 1. Simplified Schematic of Buck-Boost LED Driver for DRL Application

Successive generations of power-semiconductor devices based on existing technologies strive to deliver incremental improvements in energy efficiency. Now there is a device, realized through proprietary technology, that enables power supplies to achieve a significant leap forward in performance and efficiency—the Su
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Date:
11/01/2019
A Plug 'n Play Linearizer for Your 5G RF Power Amplifier

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Figure 1. 5th Generation Cellular Mobile Communication

‘Mar’s Law’ presents a tongue-in-cheek perspective on how data measurements can sometimes be manipulated to fit a more linear profile than is the reality. However, there are no such shortcuts to achieving high linearity for a power amplifier (PA), which is at the heart of mobile cellular communication in
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Date:
11/01/2019
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