Silicon Labs has introduced a quartz-beating MEMS resonator technology, the first fruit of its 2010 acquisition of Sunnyvale-based Silicon Clocks. “We are guaranteeing ±20ppm performance for 10 years from -40 to 85°C, Mike Petrowski, v-p timing products at SiLabs, told Electronics Weekly. The technology has been branded CMEMS and the devices will broaden the firm’s oscillator range at the low ...
Analogue and Discretes
AMS uses 3D chip technology for smartphone sensors
Austrian chip maker ams is applying through-silicon via (TSV) 3D IC fabrication technology to its ambient light sensor devices. TSV technology is being used to interconnect stacked wafers in FPGAs and memory chips and ams believes it can apply the technology to analogue sensors to very small wafer scale packages. “We have been developing the TSV capability and expect to ...
Tiny chip protects microUSB 2.0 smartphone inputs
Toshiba has extended its range of low-capacitance ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection devices with the DF4D6.8UG in a 4-pin Wafer-Level-Chip-Scale Package (WCSP4B). A big application for the protection device, because of its small footprint, will be in microUSB 2.0 interfaces in smartphones. It is important to minimise the load that is added to the data line with any kind of ESD ...
HiWave launches low-power Bluetooth loudspeaker module
For battery-powered wireless loudspeakers, HiWave Audio has launched a low power stereo amplifier module with a Bluetooth interface. The firm’s intellectual property, which it has built into a chip, is a digital audio modulation technique that cuts music playback power significantly, at the expense a comparatively small increase in distortion. “At the heart of the module is the HiAS2002 boost ...
‘Most accurate’ 20bit SAR ADC ever
Linear Technology has announced what it claims is the most accurate ADC, with INL errors of 2ppm maximum over temperature. “LTC2378-20 is the first 20bit SAR ADC on the market offering ±0.5ppm typical integral nonlinearity [INL] error with a guaranteed specification of 2ppm maximum over temperature, making it the most accurate ADC in the industry. With 104dB SNR it has ...
ST launches MEMS sensor design contest in Taiwan
STMicroelectronics has launched the 2013 iNEMO Design Contest in Taiwan. It is the third time ST is running the competition for students and young engineers in Taiwan to design new applications built around ST’s iNEMO MEMS-based multi-sensor technology. This year’s contest encourages contestants to use sensing technologies to create new ways of interaction among technology, life and environment. “With over ...
Multiband LTE will need better RF design
Next generation smartphones are likely to have 40 radios in each handset to support the plethora of mobile standards and the need for multiple radio front-end circuits will have an impact on others parts of the design. One example is the design of the digital pre-distortion receiver which is shared by multiple power amplifiers (PAs) in 4G LTE systems. There ...
Globalpress Summit: Exar transitioning
“The server world is changing,” says Lou di Nardo, CEO of Exar, “the customers are defining the system they want. There’s a focus on low-power servers which is creating a discontinuity – programmability is one feature of that.”
Maxim DAB tuner supports software-defined radio
Dubbed "RF to Bits", the supplier's radio platform is designed to allow the implementation of baseband processing using off-the-shelf DSPs
One or two die approach to automotive sensors
Roland Einspieler from magnetic position sensor supplier ams describes the measures it has taken to support the ISO26262 compliance programmes of automotive customers