Analog Domain

Know your ceramic capacitor, part one
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 9/18/2008
Class I ceramic capacitors are temperature-compensated and, therefore, provide the most stable performance of all the classes.

The secret, nonspectral lives of analog-input filters
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 7/24/2008
Your filter design must accommodate its client’s input characteristics to minimize the parasitic interactions between the two.

Honest energy, part two: Readers respond on low-power-factor loads
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 5/29/2008
Reader response to the last installment of Analog Domain has been both strong and informative—so much so that I’d like to share some of the feedback with you.

Honest energy: The danger low-power-factor loads pose for the energy grid
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 4/2/2008
As typical household products become more sophisticated, the power factor of the load they represent decays—a trend that is exacerbating a growing stress on our electric-power infrastructure.

What does “better” mean?
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 2/21/2008
Engineering practice has focused on balancing multiple goals: improving performance, increasing robustness, expanding function, and reducing cost.

Protecting interfaces from ESD
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 12/3/2007
Though on-chip-ESD structures serve as excellent secondary protection, they are usually insufficient to protect an interface over years of exposure in uncontrolled environments.

Building bridges: Specifying and refining interface designs
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 11/8/2007
Virtually every product design must bridge the digital abstraction and the real analog world. A few considerations early in the design phase can focus an interface design.

From thin air: Harvesting or scavenging power for remote-sensor applications
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 7/19/2007
NanoPower Forum prompts examination of design challenges and terminology surrounding wireless, low-power-sensor applications.

Confer for continuing education
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 5/24/2007
Despite the high cost of jet fuel and the high impedance that governments present to air travelers, attendance appears robust at the better professional conferences in our field.

Miller on edge: The role of Miller capacitance in nonlinear circuits
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 3/29/2007
In nonlinear circuits, internode capacitive coupling can manifest itself in ways that may not immediately look familiar.

The Miller's tale: How to calculate Miller capacitance
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 2/15/2007
Miller capacitance is a feedback element implicit to active devices as different in their operating principles as bipolar-junction and field-effect transistors. It does not appear explicitly as a parasitic in the active device's small-signal model; you can calculate it from the model and from the electrical conditions that the surrounding circuit imposes.

IC datasheets: Your mileage may vary
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 12/1/2006
Performance ratings require careful analysis, whether you're talking about the sticker on a hybrid automobile or a data sheet for an analog or mixed-signal IC.

Stacking up
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 9/14/2006
Advances in IC packaging and back-end manufacturing processes that take advantage of 3-D structures are beginning to blur the line between fabrication and packaging technologies. That the result could substantially increase the IC's I/O density is an understatement: IBM reports results that suggest that an exponential improvement in I/O density is possible with 3-D-IC integration ...

Scaling: a balanced view, part three
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 7/20/2006
In the last installment of Analog Domain, the application's matching, noise, and 1/f noise requirements determined the model minimum circuit's load capacitance, C_MIN—a representation of the following stage's input impedance. Matching varies in inverse proportion to 1/L_MIN; noise and 1/f noise follow an inverse-square-law relationship with the minimum length (references 1 an...

Scaling: a balanced view, part two
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 5/25/2006
In the last installment of Analog Domain, I began a summary of Klaas Bult's analysis on the effect of technology scaling on power dissipation (references 1 and 2). This column replicates the minimum-circuit model and Bult's Algorithm for reference (figures 1 and 2). The algorithm depends on three process-dependent quantities and eight application-dependent parameters.

Scaling: a balanced view, part one
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 3/30/2006
I've long maintained that, as long as semiconductor vendors use process descriptors to promote IC products, OEM designers need to know enough about those processes' capabilities to distinguish reasonable claims from hype (Reference 1). Leaving aside fond memories of IC processes that can support ±15 and ±18V rails, analog-IC designers began more than a decade ago to fee...

Initial inertial gestures
By Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor, 2/2/2006
Significant advances in user-machine interfaces invariably migrate from early-adopting applications to a much broader range of OEM products.

In the Analog Domain, Joshua Israelsohn focuses on analog components and the analog elements that influence both digital and analog interfaces.

A co-founder of JAS Technical Media, Israelsohn holds an SBEE from MIT and has 15 years experience in assembled product and IC design, primarily in the areas of precision measurement and audio circuits. He is also a former EDN technical editor who for six years covered analog design, analog ICs, the communications physical layer, MEMS/MOEMS, power ICs, and discretes. You can contact him via JAS Technical Media.