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Power Management

News and in-depth technical information for system designers responsible for specifying or selecting power sources for electronics applications. Topics include power supplies, components including dc-dc converters, batteries, digital power, and alternative energy technology.
Top Story
Top Story

Burn-in, burn-in: dc inferno 12/15/2009

Tales From The Cube: Missing information on an optocoupler's data sheet cuts short a much-needed vacation for one engineer.

News

Power supplies for new LED applications fit into high-margin markets 12/15/2009

IC vendors eagerly anticipate that the huge market for LED bulbs to replace incandescent and CFL (compact-fluorescent-light) bulbs will drive the demand for ac/dc power-management ICs. The largest bulb-replacement market of all, the replacement of 60W light bulbs, will have razor-thin profit margins and most likely go straight to Asian manufacturers.

Coated optical fibers promise uniquely flexible PV cells 12/3/2009

One of the big practical issues with silicon solar cells is where to put them. Their conversion surface is also their collecting surface, so you end up with a huge flat panel facing the sun. This scenario limits the configurations in which designers can deploy the panels. Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found an alternative.

China’s proposed ban of rare-earth metals would affect hybrid cars, CFLs 11/26/2009

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is proposing a total ban on exports of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium and a restriction on neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum to a total of 35,000 tons a year, which is far below global needs. Many of these metals are vital to energy-efficient technology.

Power-converter IC targets dimmable LEDs, needs no optoisolator 11/12/2009

The large installed base of dimmable-lighting switches dictates that most new lighting technologies, including LED lights, should support dimming, and the myriad disparate specifications for dimming switches requires these lights to meet a wide range of characteristics.

Microcontroller for power meters thwarts tampering 10/6/2009

Government agencies and utilities are pushing to move the global power infrastructure to a smart grid—a transition that will rely on the installation of intelligent power meters in residences and businesses.
In-Depth

Integration in the other direction 1/21/2010

Building your system with separate dice or separate chips may be a smart alternative to using SOCs.

Determine your IC's transient thermal behavior to prevent overheating 1/6/2010

Use Spice to determine the thermal time constants of the IC package.

The Hot 100 Electronic Products of 2009 12/15/2009

EDN’s editors offer up their annual list of the year's 100 most significant amplifiers, CPUs, ICs, LEDs, microcontrollers, vector network analyzers, and more.

Battery-charger IC drives energy efficiency 12/4/2009

The IC Insider looks at Freescale Semiconductor's latest SMARTMOS 10 dc/dc converter and how it drives a circuit with an ultra-low input voltage.

Microinverters and power optimizers: Power conversion migrates down to the PV panel 12/3/2009

Alternative forms of power have become increasingly popular as utilities react to rising fuel prices and government mandates. Photovoltaic cells usually receive most of the attention as solar-energy cost drivers, but the ac/dc inverter design is equally important to overall system efficiency and cost.
Experts

New power-supply efficiency numbers herald a new era in power management 11/17/2009

GUEST OPINION: The EDN article "Industry standards lead push toward energy-efficient computing" discussed the new Platinum power requirements for high-efficiency ac/dc power supplies. But have we reached the point of diminishing returns by pushing efficiency requirements too high?

Understanding power-over-Ethernet power allocation 8/10/2009

GUEST OPINION: Along with power-over-Ethernet's growing popularity has come growing demand for intelligent and efficient POE power allocation and management. In response, today's POE silicon suppliers have made sure that real-time power management is an integral part of virtually every enterprise-grade midspan and switch. Still, confusion about power-allocation best practices persists.

Can’t see the forest ... 6/25/2009

Analog design is all about trade-offs, so system-design expertise is vital to any company offering analog chips.

Voices: Avnet LightSpeed’s Cary Eskow: illuminating energy-efficient design 11/27/2008

Cary Eskow is director of LightSpeed, the solid-state-lighting- and LED (light-emitting-diode)-business unit of Avnet Electronics Marketing. A 28-year Avnet veteran, he leads Avnet’s national team of illumination-focused engineers experienced in thermal, drive-stage, and optics design and has worked closely with LED manufacturers, advanced analog IC,

Voices: National Semiconductor’s David Anderson 7/10/2008

EDN's Paul Rako talks with David Anderson, National Semiconductor's chief technologist for power management, about his long and distinguished engineering career, his company, and the present and future of power management.
DesignIdeas

Convert negative inputs to positive outputs 4/23/2009

Create a 3.3V source from a –5V supply.

Shunt regulator monitors battery voltage 9/18/2008

A shunt regulator and a handful of associated components function as a battery monitor.

Tester cycles system-power supplies 7/10/2008

A simple two-relay circuit cycles system power on and off to test a design on the benchtop.

Touch-activated timer switch extends battery life 7/10/2008

Designed to fit into the battery compartment of an optical mouse, this circuit automatically shuts off the battery after a time delay.

Programmable current source requires no power supply 6/12/2008

A programmable current source is useful for creating I-V curves, charging and discharging batteries, preloading power supplies, and many other applications.
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Events

Semiconductor Reliability

Dates: 2/8/2010 - 2/10/2010
Location: San Jose, CA

Implementing MATLAB & Simulink algorithms in FPGAs

Dates: 3/11/2010 - 3/11/2010
Location: Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Power & Electricity Asia 2010

Dates: 4/5/2010 - 9/5/2010
Location: Suntec Singapore

Power & Electricity World Asia 2010

Dates: 4/5/2010 - 4/9/2010
Location: Singapore Suntec

Smart Electricity World Asia 2010

Dates: 4/5/2010 - 4/8/2010
Location: Singapore Suntec


EDN TECH CLIPS


Starting with the basics of PWM (pulse width modulation) counters, this clip discusses their usefulness in multiple applications and  demonstrates how to implement a PWM counter in an FPGA. Presented by Shelley Gretlein of National Instruments.; FPGA; national instruments; PWM counter; tutorial; video design idea; Using an inexpensive buck converter and a red LED, you can employ optical feedback to stabilize the output level of a high-intensity LED.; buck regulator; led; video design idea; Metastability of digital circuits can become a problem if you don't properly account for setup and hold times in synchronous circuits, or at random in the case of asynchronous inputs. Presented by Scott Davidson, Tektronix. ; asynchronous; setup and hold time; synchronous; Tektronix; video design idea; Dhananjay V Gadre of the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India, details and demonstrates the use of "Charlieplexing" to drive 20 LEDs using six available I/O pins on an 8-pin microcontroller.; AVR; led; microcontroller; Tiny13; video design idea; Dhananjay V Gadre of India's Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology explains how an LED can double as a photosensor and a visual indicator of ambient-light intensity.; EDN.com; led; microcontroller; sensors; video design idea; Bonnie Baker, senior applications engineer at Texas Instruments and regular EDN columnist, demonstrates a simple way to add DAC functionality to a microcontroller-based system using only an op amp and two passive components.; analog design; Bonnie Baker; DAC; EDN.com; op amp; video design idea; Mark Thoren, mixed-signal application engineering manager with Linear Technology, demonstrates an amplifier-based circuit design for a relatively inexpensive precision voltage source.; amplifier-based circuit design; linear technology; Mark Thoren; mixed-signal application; precision voltage source; Jim Williams, staff scientist with Linear Technology, explains why PC clocks are invariably wrong, and how engineers can surmount the extreme measurement challenge involved in solving the problem.; cell phones; computer clocks; jim williams; linear technology; nanoamps; quartz crystals; video design idea; Dhananjay V. Gadre from New Delhi, India:
Demonstrating a battery-less electronic dice, made using a faraday voltage generator, an AVR Tiny13 microcontroller and 7 blue LEDs.; AVR; electronic dice; Faraday Generator; microcontroller; shake shake generator; Tiny13; EDN Tech Clips deliver technical depth and tutorial design information for engineers involved in analog circuit design, power management, embedded-system design, board-level design, signal integrity, and more. 
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid23589075001 http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=959007201

Blog

PowerSource

7W LED bulb spills its guts, lives to light another day

I saw an product announcement a couple of months ago from TESS, a Taiwanese manufacturing company, for a 7W LED bulb that, at 560 lumens (lm), can ... 

Cree breaks 200 lm/W barrier, demos 208 lm/W in lab

Cree announced this week that it broke the 200 lumens/Watt barrier with an industry-best efficacy of 208 lumens per watt for a single white power L... 

Protecting your hardware IP in China: Practical experience

While visiting at Lantronix I had a conversation with Daryl Miller, VP of engineering, about the company’s challenges in dealing with protect... 


Special supplements

Power Leaders: ICs & Solar
This special section takes a look at the leading vendors in the semiconductor industry for power transistors and diodes, power-management ICs, digital power, and photovoltaics.
Power Leaders: ICs & Solar
Tops in Power
This year's "Tops in power" special section focuses on the most popular power news, articles, and blog posts covering power technology for 2008.
Tops in Power
EDN's Best of Power
Your favorite power-related EDN Design Ideas, features, products, and more, as measured by your clicks.
EDN's Best of Power
EDN's Best of Best: Power leaders
This issue takes a look at the leading power semiconductor vendors for power transistors, power management ICs, photovoltaics, and digital power. Plus a look at a future market segment: the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).
EDN's Best of Best: Power leaders

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