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June 2003 - In This Issue [Cover Story] PLLs Plot An Adjustable Course Phase-locked loops (PLLs) are commonplace in applications like cellular phones, wireless transceivers, and Global Positioning Systems. Despite their familiarity to systems engineers, however, PLLs come with their own unique set of challenges. For... — Cheryl Ajluni [Design Application] 3G Testing Issues Get Serious At times, it has seemed as if the momentum around 3G was almost completely stalled. Yet a closer look reveals that only the overblown 3G hype has died. Forward-looking participants continue to invest toward 3G deployments. According to a recent... — Daniel Oosthuizen Keep A Close Eye On 1xEV-DO Some people believe that the wireless Internet may very well be the "killer application" for 3G. After all, it is a valuable medium for the transmission of many types of communication, including data, voice, streaming content, e-commerce, and news.... — Ebrahim Kal Kalbasi Recognize The Value In WLAN Performance Testing The communications world is becoming increasingly dependent on wireless local-area networks (WLANs). New applications based on 802.11 standards are rapidly expanding into corporate, residential, Wireless-Internet-Service-Provider (WISP), and... — Richard O'Dea , et al. Connectivity Fabric Eases Base-Station Woes Third-generation (3G) base-station designers are facing tough design choices. They must keep up with increasing performance requirements while reducing system power dissipation. At lower power, a hundredfold increase in performance can be achieved.... — Peter Galicki Don't Fall Into Circuit Protection's Pitfalls Often, little things make a big difference in a successful design. When it comes to telecommunications equipment, the incorrect specification of a circuit breaker can lead to unnecessary system shutdowns, superfluous costs, and the under-protection... — Kenneth Cybart [Product Features] 60-GHz Transceiver Flaunts Low Cost And Compact Size Frequency spectrum is be-coming a valuable resource in today's wireless systems. As a result, many equipment developers are targeting the unlicensed 60-GHz frequency band for low-cost, high-data-channel communication applications. These applications... — John Blyler Rapid Application Development Is Now Becoming A Reality As wireless handsets continue to grow in popularity, so does the need for related software applications. To meet this demand, the industry must entice independent software developers to write applications for wireless platforms—especially those... — John Blyler POE Products Cut WLAN Installation Cost For those people who have installed a wireless-LAN access point in their home or office, the challenge of finding an available power outlet is very familiar. This problem is even more difficult for corporate IT departments, which are tasked with... — John Blyler Power Amplifiers Prove Highly Efficient Recently, power-amplifying devices have taken the cellular-handset world by storm. The improved efficiency of such chips has greatly increased the performance, feature set, and battery life of most cellular phones. This fact has not gone unnoticed... — John Blyler [New Products] Stacked-Die Package Design Gets Easier One of Cadence's big announcements at DAC concerned a new auto-wirebond capability for designing stacked-die packages. For space-constrained cell phones and wireless handheld devices, reduced chip-size advantages can be gained from stacking die two,... — John Blyler Co-Verification Tool Gains Analysis One of the important elements of a system-level design methodology is the co-verification of both hardware and software subsystems. The goal of Mentor Graphics' latest version of Seamless is to address this challenge. This version even goes one step... — John Blyler Prediction Serves Low-Power RTL Designs Today's mobile wireless devices demand power-efficient systems. At the register transfer level (RTL), however, it is very difficult to accurately estimate power consumption and design for low power. The problem is that power usage depends on the... — John Blyler System Power Tool Supports SystemC This year, one of DAC's hottest topics was low-power design. Only a few system-level tool suites are geared toward low-power design. One of them hails from ChipVision, which is noteworthy because of its development of a design tool called ORINOCO.... — John Blyler AMS And MEMS Verification Get Boost In the wireless-device arena, both MEMS and analog/mixed-signal designs are seeing significant growth. But layout and verification tasks are particularly tricky. Tanner EDA has made this job easier with the latest release of L-Edit Pro, Version 10.... — John Blyler Real-Time Speeds Reach Embedded Using virtual platforms, VaST Systems Technology Corp. announced that the cycle-accurate development of embedded systems can now be performed at real-time speeds. For developers of software-rich chips, such as wireless devices and automotive... — John Blyler SystemVerilog Supports Verification To enable an advanced design-for-verification (DFV) methodology, Synopsys has announced broad support for the Accellera SystemVerilog language. By integrating verification throughout the development process, designers can improve quality and... — John Blyler SystemC Converges For Design The importance of system-level design was one of the recurring themes at this year's DAC. Many people see the SystemC language as the way to achieve high-level hardware and software design parity. To support this goal, CoWare announced the... — John Blyler GPS Chip Set And Software Solution Shrinks Down Trimble Navigation and Infineon Technologies have joined forces to squeeze their integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) chip set and software solution into an even smaller package. In this case, that means a two-chip VQFN form factor that is... — Staff Library Targets High-Frequency Designs A new device library is available for use within the Ansoft Designer software. It is based on NEC Compound Semicon-ductor Devices' low-noise bipolar transistors. This high-performance electronic-design-automation (EDA) software allows engineers to... — Staff ISO 9001:2000 Quality Certification Is Achieved Recently, Emerson & Cuming Microwave Products, Inc. announced the achievement of ISO 9001:2000 certification. This certification is considered to be the highest international standard for measuring a company's Quality Management Principles. ISO... — Staff Power-Divider/Coupler Line Hits The Street A full line of high-quality yet extremely affordable SMA and Type-N power dividers and directional couplers are now available. Manufactured by Cellular Specialties, Inc., they enable seamless operation to wireless subscribers for both voice and... — Staff RTOS Adds Universal Serial Bus Support A new version of Nucleus, called Nucleus USB, provides Universal Serial Bus (USB) support for the popular real-time operating system (RTOS). This combination of real-time software promises to make it easier for developers to create embedded systems... — Staff Cell Phones Reap Power-MOSFET Benefits Mobile devices require low-power electronics like the new TrenchFET power MOSFETs. Built on a patent-pending p-channel technology, these packages can reduce device on-resistance to as low as 5 milliohms in the PowerPAK SO-8 configuration. When used... — Staff IEEE 802.15.3-Compatible Radio System Debuts High-speed wireless-personal-area-network (WPAN) designs have received a boost from the Transpairent Radio development system. This new technology takes advantage of the IEEE 802.15.3 standard. In doing so, it allows consumers to run multimedia... — Staff Enhanced Indoor WLAN Solution Is Deployed A new coverage solution has a major goal: to extend wireless-cellular coverage within either a single building or a multiple-building campus environment. For those environments, this means fewer interrupted or dropped calls. In addition, the... — Staff DC/DC Converters Address Space Restrictions To satisfy the advanced needs of the latest-generation space-restricted datacom and wireless devices, the ALX series has been spawned. Each ALX model is 1.65 in. (41.9 mm) long by 0.8 in. (20.3 mm) wide with a 0.33-in. (8.3-mm) profile. The 50-W ALX... — Staff Processor Drives Wireless-Access Security Wireless-Internet security may perform better if the speed of transactions is increased. A new Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) chip, called the RC32365 Interprise Access integrated communications processor, uses hardware acceleration to address... — Staff Voice-Over-IP Phone Chip Finds Many Uses A highly integrated IP-Phone VoIP chip has been introduced for Internet telephony and Multimedia Terminal Adapter (MTA) applications. It targets the small-office home-office (SOHO) and other cost-sensitive applications. Typically, suppliers of... — Staff On-The-Go USB Solution Tames Power Management Increased data rates and ease of use have fueled the USB interface's popularity for both wired and wireless applications. Designers of mobile devices will be especially interested in a new integrated power solution that conforms to the emerging USB... — Staff DAC Aids Wireless Infrastructure Current and next-generation cellular networks need high-performance, low-cost wireless-infrastructure components. A programmable dual DAC5686 plans to meet this need. This digital-to-analog converter (DAC) supports up to four wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA)... — Staff FPGAs Sprout Low-Cost Programmable PROMs Memory has become an increasingly important component to the field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) used in wireless devices. One of the latest memory additions is a family of low-cost, in-system programmable PROMs for the configuration of FPGAs.... — Staff Thin-Film Resistors Find Hybrid Applications For chip-resistor designs, high reliability can be successfully gained by utilizing a thin-film-on-Aluminum-Nitride design. The thin-film components from State of the Art have a maximum power rating that is five times higher than conventional chip... — Staff C-Based Design Support Emerges For 90-nm FPGAs As nanometer-scale circuits become more prevalent, tools will be needed to deal with these designs. One such tool is the DK Design Suite—a design tool for software-compiled system design. It provides designers with a C-based language design... — Staff [Column] Are Wireless SystemsDevoid Of Grace? One of the hardest lessons to learn when designing wireless devices is the tenacious nature of wireless connections. For example, physical objects like buildings, tunnels, and canyons—both rural and urban—can adversely affect the RF... — John Blyler Architectures Drive Up Cost And Power Consumption Current wireless architectures are jeopardizing the future of this industry. Okay, it's true that wireless-transceiver integration has come a long way. For example, it enabled the industry to move away from bulky handsets with large numbers of... — Didier Lacroix [News] MP3 Solution Flaunts ARM And DSP Core New applications often send designers into unknown territories. To make up for a lack of expertise, these engineers may choose to rely on application-specific standard products (ASSPs). Fortunately, ASSPs keep emerging for new applications. In the... — Nancy Konish Visual Tools Serve New ICs To be successful in the marketplace, mobile devices must consistently increase their value and versatility. Their makers don't usually find it easy to meet those goals, however. They must face cost, design-time, and other development hurdles. Now,... — Nancy Konish Speakers Transform Into Internet Radio The race is on to build wireless audio applications into handhelds and other devices. For Bluetooth, this is good news. The standard is proving to be a good fit for applications like MP3 playback. Realizing its potential, Cambridge Silicon Radio... — Nancy Konish Transmit And Receive Diversity Comes Alive Smart-antenna processing, which also is referred to as antenna diversity, has been hailed as the data-throughput savior. In the past, this term solely connoted receive diversity. Now, a technology platform from Magnolia Broadband, Inc.... — Nancy Konish Mobile Entertainment Enters New Category Like its wired predecessor, wireless entertainment is guaranteed to be a hit with young audiences. When they reach their late teens, however, a large number of wired gaming enthusiasts traditionally move on to other interests. The... — Nancy Konish Short Clips Mobile Satellite Ventures or MSV (www.msvlp.com) appointed Dr. Santanu Dutta as VP of Systems Engineering. Dutta, who joins MSV from Ericsson Mobile Platforms, will be responsible for the architecture for MSV's next-generation system. ... — Nancy Konish CDMA-Handset Competition Heats Up The variety of standards and the industry's recent financial turmoil have left most handset manufacturers with a limited number of solutions and providers. This situation has resulted in a lack of healthy competition and product diversity.... — Nancy Konish Calendar Of Events 802.11 Planet Conference World Trade Center, Boston, MA June 25-27, 2003 www.jupiterevents.com/80211/spring03 iWireless World Featuring the co-located Wireless... — Nancy Konish On The Wireless Front EiC Corp. has announced the development of a high-voltage InGaP heterojunction-bipolar-transistor (HBT) process. An initial evaluation of engineering devices has yielded superior results. In fact, a BVceo of 35 V and BVcbo of 70 V have been... — Staff [Show Coverage] Realize The Wireless Connectivity Vision Wireless connectivity continues to grow. It promises to eradicate the information barriers of the wired world. Yet a big gap still exists between today's wireless technology and tomorrow's vision of ubiquitous information that's available anytime,... — Sharad Malik [Editor's Note] Want To Access The Web Via The Loo? Just when you think that nothing could surprise you, something always comes out of left field and hits you squarely in the head. That's exactly what happened to me while I was driving home recently. I was listening to the news when I heard a rather... — Cheryl Ajluni |
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