Multiprotocol transceivers perform feats of champions By Joshua Israelsohn, Technical Editor
With the abundance of PDAs, laptops, printers and scanners, routers and servers, e-mail, and spammers, the amount of data we access daily staggers the imagination. But it doesn't happen by magic. Somehow those gigabits of data must get from here to there, and before the job is done, they must be in a format compatible with gear built yesterday or more than a decade ago. No problem.
Design Features
Third-party components: easing the verification burden By Gabe Moretti, Technical Editor
Whether you call them intellectual property, virtual components, or reusable blocks, third-party components diminish their worth by increasing the verification burden. You have to see this fast-moving target quickly and verify it thoroughly.
DSPs for next-generation cell phones balance performance and
power Gil Bassak, Contributing Editor
DSP vendors are fighting the battle on several fronts for high-performance, low-power operation and offering scalable architectures and optimized instruction sets. But the industry still requires better tools.
Choosing a power supply, automatically Fabien Franc, California Micro Devices
Smart power switches provide a way for low-power devices to intelligently switch between power supplies and save power at the same time.
Designing RC active filters with standard-component values Celestino A Corral, Motorola Inc
By modifying filter-design equations to implement exact component values, you can minimize filter-response distortion and statistically predict behavior.
Radio airs a digital future By Warren Webb, Technical Editor
Although it is a much older technology, broadcast radio lags television in the conversion to digital transmission. Spectrum allocation, broadcast standardization, and infrastructure problems interfere with a smooth transition from analog to the digital airwaves of the future.
Tech Trends
RTOSs simplify DSP-application development and debugging Manju Nath, Technical Editor
Thanks to their improved and often complex architectures, DSPs are finding increasing applicability in consumer electronics and automotive electronics, along with their traditional telecommunications applications. Unfortunately, design tools for DSPs have not kept pace with their growing popularity. RTOSs from a few vendors are addressing this issue.
