ELECTRON I

•FFER! - low-cost versatile oscillosco •e

CS
WORLD
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1 11
9 770959 833073
1
MAY 2001 £2.80

Chip capacitors
nvestigated
/0 via
:.thernet
'uel cells
3iosensors
kw thoughts
in EMC
)SP hardware
lesign
:ircuit ideas:
attery short protector
'.D as photodiode
igitd signal generator
)R stabilised oscillator
,g control from linear pot.
ise-line clamp
 Te net
Quality second-user
test 8t measurement
equipment
Tel: 02476 650702 NEW PHONE CODE FOR COVENTRY 02476

Hewlett Packard
Radio Communications Test Sets
Marconi 2955 £1500
8642A —high performance R/F synthesiser Marconi 29558 65E3 £3995
(0.1-10501H/I £4750 Marconi 2955A £2000
Marconi 2955R £2200
3335A —synthesiser (200Hz-81MHz) £2200
Marconi 2945 Comms service monitor £4500
Hewlett Packard Antntsu MS555A2 £1200
436A power meter and sensor (various) from £750 Hewlett Packard 89226 (GSM) £4000
Hewlett Packard 8920A (opts 1.2.3,4,5.111 £5250
437B power meter and sensor (various) from £1100 Hewlett Packard 8920B (Opts 1.4.7.11,12, £7250
Hewlett Packard Hewlett Packard 8922M £6000
Schlumberger Stabllock 4031 £3500
Marconi 6310 —programmable sweep generator
Schlumberger Stabilock 4040 £1500
(2 to 20GHz) —new £2750 Racal 6111 (GSM) £1750
Marconi 6311 Prog'ble sig. gen. (10MHz to 20GHz) £3500 Racal 6115 (GSM) £3995
Rhode & Schwarz CMTA 94 (GSM) £4995
Marconi 6313 Prog'ble sig. gen. (10MHz to 26.5GHz) £5750 Rhode & Schwarz CMT 55 (2GHz) £8000
Hewlett Packard Rhode & Schwarz CMT 90 (2GHz) DECT £4995
Wavetek 4103 (GSM 900) Mobile phone tester £1500
5370B —universal time interval counter £1500
Wavetek 4106 (GSM 900, 1800, 1900) Mob. Phone tester £2200
Hewlett Packard 8662A synth. sig. gen. (10kHz to 1280MHz)
£8250
— --
Hewlett Packard 3324A synth. function/sweep gen. (21MHz) 1^ ri
ICI nnnamin et
mu a
£2500 t1 imonn
t• amen
Hewlett Packard 3314A Function Generator 20MHz £1250 ,
Hewlett Packard j t
•,:,' Fi
l

8904A N1ultifunction Synthesiser (opt 2+4) £1950 1 •

R&S SMG (0.1-1GHz) Sig. Generator (opts B1+2 £2950

OSCILLOSCOPES 14111;11=121==z
I400 20MHz -DSO -2channel £800 : dinetema:
1421 20MHz -0S0 •2channel £600
Gould 4068 150MHz 4channel DSO £1500
Gould 4074 100MHz -400 Ms's -4channel £1350
Hewlett Packard 54201A -300MHz DightzIng £995

Fax 02476 650 773

Hewlett Packard 54600A -100MHz -2channel £750
Hewlett Packard 54502A -400MHz-400 MS/s 2channel £1800
Hewlett Packard 54810A InfInIum 500MHz 2ch £4000
Hewlett Packard 54520A 500MHz 2ch £3000
Hameg 205-2 20MHz DSO £550
Machu V152/V212N222N302BN302FN353FN550BN650F
Hitachi VI 100A -100MHZ -4channel
from £125
£900
MISCELLANEOUS
Intron 2020 -20MHz. Dual channel D 5.0. (new) Eaton 2075-2A - No,- - . /. • ,. lyse r at £2750
£450
lwatstu SS 5710/SS 5702 - EIP 548A 26.5GHz Ferd„t.r., r Counter £1995
from £125
Klkusul COS 5100 -100MHz Dual channel ENI 440LA (150KHz-300M1z) 35 Watt Power Amp £2500
£350
Lecroy 9314L 300MHz -4channels ENI 1040 (10KHz-500KHz) 400 Watt Power Amp t-2750
£3000
Meguro MSO 1270A -20MHz -OSO (new) £450 Fluke 5100A/5100B/5200A -Calibration Units (various available) from £107)0°

Ph/lips P813004 -200MHz •4channel £1750 Fluke 2620 Data Buckets £500
Ph/lips 3295A 400MHz Dual channel £1600 Fluke 45 Dual Display M/meter (IEEE) £550
Philips PM3392 -200MHz -200Mes -4channel £1995 Hewlett Packard 339A Distortion measuring set £1200
Phihps PM3070 -100MHz -2channel -cursor readout £750 Hewlett Packard 7780 Dual-Directional Couplers £650
Tektronix 465 •100MHZ -Dual channel £350 Hewlett Packard 3488A •Switch/Control und £250
Tektronix 464/466 -100MHZ -(with AN. storage) £350 Hewlett Packard 3457A multi meter 6 1/2 digit £950
Tektronix 475/475A -200MHz/250MHz - from £450 Hewlett Packard 3784A -Digital Transmission Analyser £4500
Tektronix 468 -100MHZ -DSO £650 Hewlett Packard 3785A -Jitter Generator 8 Receiver £1250
Tektronix 2213/2215 -60MHz Dual channel £350 Hewlett Packard 5385A -1GHZ Frequency counter £650
Tektronix 2220 -60MHZ -Dual channel D.S £995 Hewlett Packard 6033A -Autoranging System PSU (20v-30a) £750
Tektronix 2235 -100MHZ -Dual channel £600
Tektronix 2221 -60MHz -Dual channel D S.0 Hewlett Packard 6622A - Dual 0,P system ps.0 £2110
£ 2
:50
0
£995
Tektronix 2245A -100MHZ -4channel Hewlett Packard 6624A -Quad Output Power Supply £2000
£900
Tektronix 2440 -300MHz'500 MS's D S 0 Hewlett Packard 6632A -System Power Supply (20v-5A) £800
£2450
Tektronlx 2445A24456 -150MHz -4channel £1000 Hewlett Packard 83506 -Sweep Generator Mainframe
Tektronix 2445 •150MHZ -4channel DMM £1200 Hewlett Packard 8656A Synthesised signal generator £850
Tektronix TAS 475 -100MHZ -4channel £995 Hewlett Packard 86566 Synthesised signal generator £1250
2177550°
Tektronix 7000 Series 1100MHZ to 500MHZ) from £200 Hewlett Packard 8657A Synth sig gen (0 1-1040MHz)
Tektronix 7104 - 1GHz Real Tune -with 7A29 x2. 7B10 and 7615 from £2500 Hewlett Packard 8901B -Modulation Analyser£
Tektronix 2465/2465A/2465B -300MHzJ350MHz 4channel from £1250
Tektronix 2430/2430A - Digital storage -150MHz from £1250 Hewlett Packard 8903A.
16500A Band
.B -ELogic
-Distortion
AnalyserAnalyser
Mainframes from £1000
£1250
Tektronix TOS 310 50MHz DSO -2channel £750
Tektronix TOS 320 100MHz 2channel Hewlett Packard 16501AB 8 C -Logic Analyser System Expander Frame from £2000
£850 Hewlett Packard 379000 -Signalling test set £3750
Tektronix TDS 340A 100MHz DSO -2channel £1250
Hewlett Packard 83220A DCS/PCS test sets£3000
Hewlett Packard 8657B -100KHz-2060 MHz Sig Gen £3995
SPECTRUM ANALYSERS Hewlett Packard 86570 -xx DOPSK Sig Gen £4500
Ando AC 8211 17OHz £1500 Hewlett Packard 8130A -300 MHz High speed pulse generator £5250
Avcom PSA•65A -2to 1000MHz £850 Hewlett Packard 4275A LCR Meter (10KHz•10MHz) £3250
Anntsu MS 6106 10KHz -2GHz -as new £3500 Hewlett Packard 4276A LCZ Meter (100Hz-20KHz)- £1500
Anntsu MS3606B (10KHz-1GHz) network Analyser £3500 Marconi 10666 - Demultlplexer 8 Frame Alignment Monitor (140MBIT to 64KBIT)
AdvantestTAKEDA R1KEN -4132 -100KHz -1000MHz £1500 NEW £1750
Hewlen Packard 8756A/8757A Scaler Network Analyser from £1000 Marconi 2305 -modulation meter £999
Hewlett Packard 853A Mainframe 8559A Spec An (0 01 to 21GHz) £2750 Marconi 2610 True RMS Voltmeter
Hewlett Packard 182T Mainframe 8559A Spec An (0 01 to 21GHz) £2250 Marco',6950/6960/6960B Power Meters 8. Sensors from £
£4500
5°
Hewlet; Packard 8568A (100Hz -1500MHz) Spectrum Analyser £3500 Marconi 2840A 2Mblts Transmission Analyser P.O A
Hewlett Packard 8567A -100Hz -1500MHz £3995 Philips 5515 -TN -Colour TV pattern generator t-1400
Hewlett Packard 8752A Network Analyser (1 3GHz) £5995 Philips PM 5193 -50MHz Function generator £500
14
Hewlett Packard 8754A -Network Analyser 4MHz-1300MHz £1500
1°°
Leader 3216 Signal generator 100KHz •140MHz -AM/FM/CW with built in FM stereo £795
Hewlett Packard 3561A Dynamic signal analyser £3995
Hewlett Packard 35660A Dynamic signal analyser modulator (as new) asnip at
£3250
Hewlett Packard 8753A (3000KHz-3GHN Network An £3500 Racal 1992 - 13GHz Frequency Counter £500
IFR A7550 -10KHz•iGHz -Portable £1950 Rohde 8 Schwarz NRV dual channel power meter 8. NAV Z2 Sensor £1250
Meguro MSA 4901 -30MHz Spec Analyser £700 Systron Donner 6030 •26.5GHz Microwave Freq Counter £1995
Meguro MSA 4912 IMHz •IGHZ Spec Analyser £995 Tektronix ASG100 -Audio Signal Generator £750
Tektronix 2712 Spec Analyser (9kHz 18GHz) £3750 Wavetek 178 Function generator 150 MHz)
Wendel & Goltermann TSA-1 system analyser (100Hz-180MHzi £2750 Wayne Kerr 3245 - Precision Inductance Analyser £Ê5°
199
9 5
WIltron 6409 -10-2000MHz R/F Analyser £1750 Wayne Kerr 6245 - Precision Component Analyser £2500

All equipment is used -with 30 days guarantee and

90 days in some cases
Add carriage and VAT to all goods. Tel: 02476 650 70
Fax: 02476 650 77
Telnet, 8 Cavans Way, Binley Industrial Estate.
Coventry CV3 2SF. CIRCLE NO. 101 ON REPLY CARD
 •

323 COMMENT 362 FUEL CELLS

Killing fields -recognition at last Chris Ev ans-Pughe investigates fuel cell
technology and its implications.
324 NEWS
• Electronics skills shortages 367 NEW PRODUCTS
• Cambridge firm in optical disk link up New product outlines, edited by
• Firms team up to make superchip Richard Wilson
• Amstrad profits plummet
• Patent bounty hunters pay $40000 378 CURRENT
• New CO sensor made in UK
• Technology halves mobile antennas
CONVEYORS III
In this third and final article on low-
• Metallic superconductor Acoustic imaging provides a
voltage current-conveyors and their
• Ford cars to have electronic telematics unique insight into chip capacitor
applications, Giuseppe Ferri et al failure mechanisms -page 330.
• New IkHz to 30MHz oscillator IC
describe how to implement capacitance

330 CHIP CAPACITOR

FLAWS INVESTIGATED 382 CIRCUIT IDEAS
Ralph Carbone and Tom Adams • Battery pack short-circuit protector
provide aunique insight into the failure • Voltage-controlled pC-based sig. gen.
modes of ceramic chip capacitors. •I
2V battery level detector
• LDR stabilised Wien bridge oscillator
• Use an LED as aphotodetector
334 DESIGN COMPETITION • Baseline clamp
Time to get your entries in! Our design
• Log control from alinear pot
competition -with £900 worth of
prizes -closes 30 April.
389 LETTERS
EMC, Skill and training, More choice on
336 PC INTERFACE FM, Valve substitute, A true dome
tweeter, Phono preamp debate
VIA ETHERNET
Connecting external devices to your PC
via alocal-area network card is not as 391 NEW THOUGHTS
difficult as it may seem. Eddy Insam ON EMC Reader 4our — single-trace
explains how it all works and what you Ian Darney presents anew approach oscilloscope. Turn to page 353 for
need to know. to EMC with aview to demystifying details.
the subject.

350 QUENCHING
PROCESSOR THIRST 395 BIOSENSORS:
Ihe quest for performance in today's ELECTRONICS MEETS
mobile world means that high power BIOLOGY
consumption is the curse of chip Biological materials combined with
designers. But plenty of solutions exist. traditional transducers allow substances
Richard Ball reports. to be analysed much more rapidly than is
possible using conventional laboratory
354 SPEAKERS' CORNER techniques. David Clark reports.
Moving-coil loudspeakers are ins ariably
driven by avoltage amplifier. Here, 400 WEB DIRECTIONS Ethernet -10Mbitis over along
John Watkinson explores the alternative length of coaxial cable and very
Useful web addresses for the electronics
cheap to implement. Wouldn't it be
- current drive. engineer. nice to use it for i/o? See page 336.

356 PHONO-PREAMP New generation power sources -a

(")
FOR THE CD ERA e- e 1
fuel cell can power amobile phone
FlecInc CIrcud , air for 20 days and it takes only
Power supply problems and solutions are - e- 02
02
seconds to recharge. See page 362.
the subjects of this second article H+ H+ 0 2
describing Norman Thagard's high- H+ Polymer H+ H+
Fuel Electrolyte
June issue on
performance, pick-up preamp. Amu Catalyst Membrane Cathode Catalyst

sale 3 May

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

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322 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 Killing fields -recognition at last
The NRPB's recently published report on 'ELF
Electromagnetic Fields and the Risk of Cancer'
confirms aweak association between power line
electromagnetic fields and childhood leukemia. This
EDITOR should be no surprise to readers of Electronics
Martin Eccles World who may recall aseries of 'Killing Fields'
020 8652 3614 features in the 1990s by independent researchers
investigating the effects of power lines on those
CONSULTANTS living and working nearby.
Ian Hickman What is important is that over the intervening
Philip Darrington years the NRPB has slowly shifted from outright
denial of any possible link to agrudging recognition
Frank Ogden
that further research is needed to determine the
exact mechanism linking power lines and cancer
EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION
processes.
Jackie Lowe
As one of those researchers and an EW feature
020 8652 3614 writer. I'm pleased that the door to further research
has creaked slightly ajar. Nevertheless, there's still a
EDITORIAL E-MAILS mountain to climb to make sure that future research
iackie.lowe@rbi.co.uk is directed into those areas where it is likely to shed
most light.
GROUP SALES EXECUTIVE The main problem is one of definition. The
Pat Bunce eminent research group chaired by Sir Richard Doll
020 8652 8339 was only briefed to investigate the effects of non-
ionising ELF radiation emanating from electric
power systems. This led to an obsessional
ADVERTISEMENT E-
MAILS
concentration on the electromagnetic fields
pat.bunce@rbi.co.uk
emanating from power lines.
There has been no interest in extending power line
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION
electrostatic and electromagnetic field research to
020 8652 8339
interactions with other known harmful radiations,
involving natural charged particles and background has failed to grasp the nettle that there may be no
PUBLISHER
ionising cosmic radiation. lower safe limit for human lionising radiation
Mick Elliott In some ways it's remarkable that the Committee exposure, and that some public risk has to be
found any link at all, bearing in mind that over a accepted, as it is with road traffic accidents.
EDITORIAL FAX century of domestic and industrial electric power While the scientific jury is out, the precautionary
020 8652 8111 has more or less proved that power system magnetic principle has led to power companies in the USA
fields per se are unlikely to be directly harmful. buying up properties close to power lines deemed
CLASSIFIED FAX The problem facing regulators like the NRPB is a unsaleable, and planning codes and guidelines
reluctance to range across the EM spectrum to advising against domestic housing close to overhead
020 8652 8938
actively research interactions that may be harmful. lines.
This is partly due to NRPB resources being hijacked In the meantime, the likelihood of alink between
NEWSTRADE ENQUIRIES
to allay public disquiet about siting mobile phone electrodynamic fields and human disease through
020 7907 7777 background ionising radiation interactions is
masts near schools, while ignoring broadcast
transmitters generating far higher field strengths in strengthened by the numbers of papers reporting
ISSN 0959-8332
the same bands and areas. solar cycle disease curves for cancers at high
As Iwrite, Vatican Radio faces shutdown by the magnetic latitudes and high altitude urban locations
Italian Government for massively exceeding HF where natural background radiation flux is
field safety limits in urban areas near its short wave intensified by location.
transmitters. If threatened by local TV transmitter The NRPB must get away from its comfortable
shutdown and loss of soaps, public concern about preoccupation with ELF non-ionising fields, and
transmitter safety is likely to wane in the UK! actively investigate ionising radiation interactions
For a full listing of
RBI magazines:
The same goes for ionising radiation. Nuclear with all electrodynamic fields. •
http//www.reedbusiness.com paranoia has ensured that radiation risk assessment Anthony Hopwood

Electronics World is published monthly. By post, current issue £2.65, Overseas advertising agents France and Belgium Pierre Mussard,
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May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 323

 Poll reveals serious concern over
electronics skills shortages
A survey of electronics executives have with partnerships in the manufacturing base is not tied to
by City consultancy KPMG shows Cambridge, for example, we're a Britain.
there is serious concern over skills long way behind other countries." "Tax incentives are needed to
shortages in the industry in the UK. According to O'Brien, arecent keep them here. But although these
In asurvey of executives from IDC report says that the shortage of incentives certainly help, the main
firms such as ARM, BT Cellnet, skilled labour in Europe could reach reason that people invest in a
IBM and Motorola, 98 per cent of 3.8m by 2003. "You could probably country is the skills base," said
respondents in the survey said their say that just under one million of O'Brien. "And right now, the
major concern was over skills those could be in the UK," he said. biggest constraint is good quality
shortages. However, he stressed that people and access to aresearch
"Much more active investment is KMPG's report did not try to blame base."
needed in centres of learning," said any one party for the situation and
KPMG's head of electronics, Crispin insisted that the industry must also
O'Brien. "If you compare what we do more. Firms team up to
"The Government is listening, we
make superchip
IT in school not hitting right spot just have to wait and see how
effective their measures will be," IBM, Sony and Toshiba are to
The effectiveness of tackling the shortage of science said O'Brien, commenting on the develop jointly a"super-computer
and engineering graduates by boosting investment recent publication of the enterprise, on achip". With a300-person
on PCs and IT in schools has been questioned by a skills and innovation white paper. design centre in Texas, the three
director of one of the UK's science and technology The report by KPMG, announced firms will invest $400m on the
regional organisations (SATRO). mid February, also highlights the project over the next five years.
According to John Hindhaugh, director of lack of R&D funding and the Called 'Cell', the sub-0.1pm
Staffordshire SATRO, most of the Government's industry's relationship with chip will combine technologies
proposed £400m investment in new technology for Government and education as key such as copper interconnect,
schools will go on supporting IT in English, business areas that need to be addressed. silicon-on-insulator transistors
studies, leisure & tourism, geography and every other Countries where R&D funding is and low-k dielectric material.
subject area. high have ahealthier industry and Cell will be more powerful than
"This of course is no bad thing but these areas of economy, said O'Brien. Competition IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer,
the curriculum have little to do with electronic in Europe for inward investment is. the firms claim. Providing
design. Design & technology in schools is not often much higher now, he said, and only teraflops of processing power, it
seen as apriority for IT support," said Hindhaugh. five per cent of the UK electronics will be aimed at broadband
industry is actually UK owned, so consumer products.

Cambridge firm wins multilayer optical disk link up

Constellation-3D, the firm Cambridge-based Plasmon will use essentially transparent, multiple
developing high capacity optical its experience in recordable optical layers can be formed. A 20 layer disk
disks, has partnered with Plasmon to media to set up aprototype is capable of storing up to 100Gbyte
co-develop manufacturing processes. production line for fluorescent of data, the firm claimed.
multilayer disks (FMDs), most "C-3D has demonstrated multilayer
probably in the UK. read-out using their unique FMD
"Our collaboration will focus on technology at alevel that is
industrialisation of the production significantly greater than the two
processes, to provide future layers achievable with current
manufacturers of FMD disks with reflective recording layers," added
efficient, low cost and durable mass Street.
production techniques," said Nigel In January C-3D signed adeal
Street, CEO of Plasmon. with Lite-On to manufacture drives
FMDs use fluorescence, rather than for the disks. Last November it
reflection, to sense data. Dye placed signed asimilar deal with optical
in the pits of the disk fluoresces when disc equipment supplier Steag
alaser is focused on it. Hamatech.
Because the CD-sized FMD is Richard Ball

324 May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

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Tektronix 2440 300MHz Digital Scope £1950
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Tektronix 2445A 150MHz Analogue Scope £800
* Low noise and distortion * High common mode rejection
Philips 3264 100MHz Analogue Scope £450
* Switchable gain selection * Extensive RFI protection
Gould 0S300 20MHz Analogue Scope £180
Marconi 2370 110MHz Spectrum Analyzer £1100
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Box -The OneStop DIN rail mounting radio
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Number One Systems. Oak Lane.Bredon Tewkesbury. Glos. GL20 7LR UK

CIRCLE NO.108 ON REPLY CARO

Ma\ 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

UPDATE

Amstrad profits plummet

due to e-m@iler losses
Amstrad's telephone with e-mail experience, e-mail usage is currently
capability —the e-m@iler —is generating an income for Amserve
continuing to lose money for the which equates to £20 per phone per
company, which saw interim pre-tax year or £1.5m per annum on the
profits fall by over 80 per cent to current installed base of 77 000
£1.5m. units," said Amstrad chairman Sir
The consumer electronics Alan Sugar.
manufacturer's e-m@iler business is Sugar said that first advertising
operated through ajoint venture with revenues were expected to start later
Dixons known as Amserve. As the this year when the installed base tops
majority shareholder, Amstrad 120 000 units.
incurred apre-tax loss of £3.9m in its "We are looking for growth of the
Amserve business. installed base and as more e-m@ilers
Around 77 000 e-m@ilers have are sold losses from the Amserve Last week Amstrad also announced
been installed since the launch last business will continue but the future plans to license its rust GSM mobile
March. These are being sold at aloss profit potential of the Amserve phone product to Chinese
in order to quickly build up auser business will increase," said Sugar. manufacturer Haler CCT.
base. It is hoped that they will then Amstrad, which is one of five Turnover for the six months was 27
generate revenues through advertising suppliers to satellite broadcaster per cent down from £60.8m to
and call charges. BSkyB, also saw weakness in the £44.1m.
"With over nine months digital TV set-top market. Richard Wilson

Patent bounty hunters pay out $40 000

BountyQuest has paid out $10000 "BountyQuest taps into the world's
each to four people who may have knowledge market to uncover this
found 'prior art' to break patents. hard-to-find information, which can
The company was set up last year be used not only to weed out bad
to make money by putting bounties patents, but also to validate good
on the patents that other companies ones," Cella said.
do not want to exist. BountyQuest rewards start at
"Patents are adouble-edged sword. $10000 and could go higher than
While they encourage creativity and $im, depending on the value of the
the introduction of new products that information to the client searching for
improve lives, they can also stifle it, said the company.

Satellite mission investigates competition —particularly when they

don't represent genuine innovation,"
Prior art, claims BountyQuest, has
been found that challenges the
solar storm effects said Charles Cella, founder and CEO
of BountyQuest when it was set up.
following patents: amethod for on-
line music sampling, held by Intouch
The first results have been published from the four Patents are awarded only if there is Group; amethod controlling access to
satellite Cluster mission which is measuring the Earth's no evidence that an idea has been an event venue through alterable
magnetosphere. The bow shockwave, where the solar thought of before. A search for tickets, held by Walker Digital; a
wind interacts with the magnetosphere, has been evidence, or prior art as it is called, is technology for database copying, held
measured in detail for the first time. Findings from the made before granting the patent, but by Oracle; and atechnology for
mission may enable designers to increase the ruggedness this search may not be exhaustive. single-chip network routers, held by
of communication satellites which have been destroyed Finding prior art can cause apatent to Cisco Systems.
by solar storms in the past. be withdrawn. Steve Bush

New CO sensor stands to benefit from tighter gas laws developments producing better
Fuel-cell sensor technology transfer the output signal to currently suspended, requires that sensors has caused legislators in
developed by Scipher spin-off conventional solder pins while an all public buildings must have Canada and the European Union
firm Monox stands to benefit internal platinum/ruthenium carbon monoxide (CO) detection to set much tighter limits on CO
from possible changes to EPA electrode system deposited alongside smoke and other fire detection —and the US is under
(Environmental Protection directly onto plastic minimises detection systems. pressure to follow suit.
Agency) regulations in the US. precious metal use. Test gas An attempt was made to New Canadian and European
The Swindon-based firm, a passes into asulphuric acid enforce the regulation several legislation requires reliable
spinout from the Scipher electrolyte via asemi-permeable years ago but, following a detection at gas concentrations
intellectual property group, has membrane/wick system. massive spate of false alarms down to lOppm, asensitivity
developed ahermetic plastic The company has already from the sensor technology then which, until recently, could only
carbon monoxide sensor —the received a$1m order for the new available, the requirement for CO be achieved with bulk
subject of 27 patents. sensor, with more promised. detection was put on ice. semiconductor heated wire
It uses conductive plastic to A ruling in the US, although However, recent technology transducers. Frank Ogden

326 May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

 UPDATE

New technology will halve mobile antenna numbers

Quintel S4, the company that several antennas are attached to "Personal communications are
emerged from adeal between them. DERA said its technology let transforming all our lives and the
DERA, the research arm of the each antenna receive up to five pace is hotting up," said Andrew
Ministry of Defence, and UK radio signals at once. Middleton, director of knowledge,
landlord, Rotch Group, was This means the services of all information systems at DERA. "Not
launched this week. five 3G licence holders could be all change is good and it is
The company is combining combined on one roof-top or mast important to offer socially
technology from DERA with antenna. responsible choices."
properties owned by Rotch to halve Quintel reckons that each Rotch's part in the deal means
the number of mobile phone operator will need up to 20 000 sites making its £3bn portfolio of
antennas across the UK and Europe. to complete the roll out of third around 130 000 possible sites
Radio masts are often shared but generation mobile services. available to Quintel.

Interactive audio plan Software boost for WAP

Broadcaster Capital Radio has developers. Nokia's WAP
teamed up with US digital radio Toolkit 2.1 is afree soft- •

technology firm, Command Audio ware tool that provides a

to launch on-demand interactive PC-based environment in rem eaut. miorNsme ••••,1».

audio through the UK's digital which developers can write, amieurelemm MUM.*
.....•••••••••••••• •••••••••••••
/ern...01mM S./Wm/two

audio broadcasting (DAB) network. test and de-bug WAP •••••• 1•0«.4.1.• •MIdimateIVM
.••••••a

Ajoint venture company also applications. For this owe «mew. ••••••••••

including UBC Media, Command version, the company has «Ar4M Ifflega•••••...

Audio-UK (CA-UK) will produce added simulators for its

on-demand interactive programmes 6200 and 7100 series
and license other programmers and phones. It also includes a •—

service providers. June 2000 WAP Forum •

According to the firms, when specification reference oelt cair

1
-- -1 111M 1

deployed in the UK this will allow im plementation simulator, r

listeners to choose from arange of which supports multipart push among other new features. The simulator enables the
programmes and listen to them prototyping of next-generation WAP services that will be supported in hand-sets coming to
whenever and wherever they want. the market later this year and next.

ag.

rà
'AU T1

Orange unveils the house of the future. A detached house in Hertfordshire is being used as
aresearch centre to test, monitor and evaluate advanced services and products for the home.
Dubbed Orange at home' the project is being led by mobile operator Orange. The house was
adapted at acost of £2m to include arange of services that can be controlled using wire-
free' technology such as lighting, heating, security, curtains and baths.

ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001 327

UPDATE

Metallic superconductor works at 39K

Japanese researchers have found a Cambridge University. "But it The Tokyo work may open up
simple metallic compound that doesn't really compete with high new avenues of research, using less
superconducts at twice the temperature superconductors." exotic and expensive elements than
temperature of previous materials. Blamire's group at Cambridge niobium, the current favourite.
Magnesium diboride (MgB 2) has already repeated the Tokyo At Cambridge and other
superconducts at 39K, claims experiments, creating 99.99 per cent research centres, scientists are at
Tokyo's Aoyama Gakuin University, pure MgB 2,with aT of 39.5K. the stage of making bulk materials
twice that of the previous best Ceramic and other intermetallic by sintering powders, said
metallic material. compounds remain much better Blamire.
"It's certainly anew type of superconductors, working at over Work is under way to make
semiconductor," said Dr Mark 100K, but they are potentially useful electronic components
Blamire, amaterials scientist harder to manufacture than metallic which would involve laying down
researching superconductivity at varieties. thin films on substrates.

All new European Ford cars to have

electronic telematics within 5years
Ford aims to put electronic telematic supporting GPS-based location,
systems in all its European cars security and information services will
within five years. be provided by Vodafone's UK
The car maker has stepped up its mobile network and its D2 subsidiary
plans for in-car electronic systems in Germany.
through apartnership with mobile Services are expected to include
communications operator Vodafone providing emergency and roadside
with the intention of bringing in-car assistance, traffic information and
security and information services to dynamic re-routeing as well as an
its range of European vehicles by operator and voice controlled
2006. service.
The first production Ford Focus For example, the driver will be
cars with telematics will appear in connected with the emergency
Germany next week. A UK launch services, who will also be
LEDtronics has unveiled aset of incandescent using Vodafone's mobile network automatically alerted if the airbag is
replacement lamps based on clusters of high intensity will follow shortly after, said a deployed. Also, the vehicle's position
LEDs. The DecorLED range uses astandard Edison- company spokesman. will be calculated using the GPS
screw base and outputs in six colours from the 18 "We anticipate that within five location system.
LEDs. Lifetime is claimed to be 11 years. Light output years nearly all new Ford vehicles "Telematics is an integral part of
ranges from 3000mcd for ablue bulb, to 10 000mcd will be fitted with some type of our strategy," commented
for green. Power consumption is just 1.0 to 1.7W, for telematics system," said David Vodafone's Thomas Geitner.
lamps equivalent to a 15W incandescent bulb, the Thursfield, president and CEO of Typical additional cost to the first
company said. Depending on the colour, the LEDs are Ford Europe. Ford Focus' being fitted in Germany
made from either InGaAIP or SiC/GaN technology. The in-car communications links will be 0845. •

lkHz to 30MHz oscillator IC

Linear Technology has produced the LTC1799, ahandy
lkHz to 30MHz oscillator in an five-pin SOT-23 package.
Frequency is set between 100kHz and 30MHz with a
single resistor (f has a linear relationship to R), and an
output divide ratio of 1, 10 or 100 is selected with asingle
external pin.
Claimed frequency error is two per cent or under
between 5kHz and 20MHz (0°C to 70°C) with ±4Oppm/°C
temperature and 0.05%N supply stabilities.
The chip operates from 2.7 to 5.5V, although it will not
reach 30MHz on lower voltages.
Typical supply current is lmA and output impedance is
1000. Linear sees the chip driving charge pumps, clocking
switched capacitor filters and replacing crystal and ceramic
oscillators.

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

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May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

 Ralph Carbone and
Tom Adams provide a
unique insight into the
failure modes of
ceramic chip
capacitors.

Chip cap flaws investigated

I
Above Fig. 1. taceramic chip capacitor tails, where they filter out unwanted high- should be aclosed circuit is now
Nondestructive don't automatically blame the frequency noise. In these open, and the driver will be looking
acoustic image assembly process. The mechanism applications, random circuit at an erroneous 'Air Bag Failure'
looking down into a of failure may have been built in at "glitches" are shorted to ground, thus message.
ceramic chip the factory. preventing inadvertent errors from On agiven printed circuit board,
capacitor shows Ceramic chip capacitors are among being generated. it's usually not difficult to tell that a
overlapping the least expensive of electronic However, the most common failure ceramic chip capacitor has failed —
delaminations components, and among the simplest mode for aceramic capacitor is the there may be aspike in the power
(green, red, black) in design. A ceramic chip capacitor development of aresistive short. This supply for example. It may be more
between layers. consists of alternating layers of metal causes DC signals to also be shunted difficult to tell by electrical testing
Acoustic image plates, or electrodes, and ceramic to ground —i.e., ashort circuit which of many capacitors has failed.
courtesy Sonoscan. insulating layers. condition —resulting in the failure of Without resorting to relatively
At each end of the capacitor, one the product. heroic measures, it is nearly
set of plates —positive or negative — Most ceramic chip capacitors sell impossible to tell why the capacitor
Ralph A. Carbone joins together in atermination. for relatively low prices. If they were failed. Examining acapacitor visually
is aReliability Properly built and installed, aceramic made and tested to the exacting doesn't give you much information
Physicist in the chip capacitor will store and release a standards of, say, ahigh-speed unless the capacitor has sustained
Failure Analysis of charge thousands or millions of times microprocessor, they would be more gross damage that is visible on the
Components (FAG) per second without incident. reliable, but they would also be exterior.
Laboratory of The primary function of acapacitor exorbitantly expensive. Still, afailed Often —but not always —the failure
Hewlett-Packard is to block DC voltages, while ceramic chip capacitor can be an is the result of an internal
Co.. Roseville CA passing AC signals. As such they are annoyance at the very least. manufacturing defect that eventually
USA. Tom Adams often used in avariety of circuit For example, it is typical for reached acritical state. The most
is aConsultant with designs. automotive air bags to contain atest common internal defects are voids in
Sonoscan Inc., Elk By volume, they are most often circuit. If acapacitor in the test the dielectric layers.
Grove Village IL used as 'bypass' components on circuit becomes defective, aleakage A void is abubble of air —or
USA. voltage supply or bus line circuits, current may flow around it. What possibly another gas —that became

ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 COMPONENTS

Fig. 2. Optical view of sectioned

capacitor shows adelamination that, in
this case, ran nearly the entire length of
the capacitor. Photo courtesy Hewlett-
Packard.

Fig. 3. Acoustic image showing damage

—one or more delaminations, and
probably cracks —in aceramic chip
capacitor. Acoustic image courtesy
Hewlett-Packard.

trapped in the fluid ceramic before

the capacitor was fired. If you sliced
acapacitor open at just the right
point, the void would look like atiny
flattened bubble. It might lie entirely
within one layer of ceramic, or it
might be in contact with one or both
of the adjacent plates.
Sawing open acapacitor to examine
avoid is something not often done, ultrasound and receiving the return Since the density of agas is
because of the labour and time echoes from the interior of the extremely low compared to the
involved. In most applications, the capacitor. density of asolid, the difference in
condition of asingle ceramic chip The return echoes are used to make acoustic impedance between either a
capacitor isn't truly critical. But in data points. The whole collection of metal or aceramic and air is huge,
some systems —those that go into data points from acapacitor shows its and results in avery high-contrast
earth-orbiting satellites or marine internal structure, including defects. data point.
buoys, for example —every capacitor Ultrasound is reflected only by In the completed acoustic image,
has to be flawless. For these interfaces between different defects are very easy to spot. The
applications, capacitors are often materials. The stack of electrodes and ordinary acoustic view, looking
inspected by acoustic micro imaging, dielectrics in acapacitor presents a straight down into the acoustically
which sees internal defects great many material interfaces, but transparent capacitor, shows the x-y
nondestructively. Voids and the other these are basically low-contrast outline of defects, but there are other
frequent defects, cracks and interfaces, at least when compared to kinds of acoustic views, including a
delaminations, are usually too small defects. nondestructive cross-section that
to be imaged by x-ray. The three common defects —voids, shows feature depth.
cracks, and delaminations —amount Cracks in ceramic chip capacitors
Detecting flaws via acoustic to an interface between asolid usually extend more or less vertically
imaging material and the air or other gas through several layers of ceramic and
Acoustic micro imaging uses an inside the defect. Technically, what metal. Since they provide adirect
ultrasound-pulsing transducer that occurs is adifference in acoustic pathway between plates, cracks create
scans over the capacitor. Several impedance, which is the density of a dead shorts. Voids can also cause
thousand times asecond, the material multiplied by the speed of shorts, by aslightly more indirect
transducer switches between pulsing ultrasound through that material. route.

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 331

COMPONENTS

Peter Marlow
Contents: Introduction; A-Z
of manufacturers and
models
Readership: Professional
service engineers, some
college courses.
Pages: 400pp
Price: £22.50

Fig. 4. Optical view of anearly vertical firing crack first detected acoustically. The dimensional
accuracy of the acoustic image simplifies and speeds up accurate physical sectioning. Photo courtesy
TV Fault
Hewlett-Packard.
Finding Guide
Unique expert authorship and trusted
Television magazine identity. Real repair
If avoid lies entirely within a business because the acoustic image and troubleshooting info -not just cribs
ceramic layer, it still encourages has already shown exactly where the from manufacturers' data sheets. Ease of
metal migration between the two defects are. reference -this book is an essential
adjacent plates. Eventually enough Because acoustic micro imaging repair tool, not just another volume for
metal coats the inside of the void so primarily operates in the reflection the shelf, Television magazine's TV Fault
that ashort occurs between the two mode —pulse the ultrasound, recei‘ e Finding column is aunique forum for
plates. the return echoes —ceramic chip practical servicing tips, with the UK's
Delaminations are horizontal capacitors can be imaged acoustically leading service engineers and servicing
separations between layers. equally well when they are still writers contributing their observations
Capacitors having one delamination mounted on aboard. This became and recommendations month by month
are likely to have several more important recently at Hewlett- But try finding those faults reports for the
delaminations at various layers, since Packard, where acircuit board used Amstrad CTV2200 that's on your bench
delaminations are the result of alack in amedical product began to Even with an index you will be chasing
of bonding between layers. experience field failures. through apile of magazines,.. until now
Companies involved in high- The problem was identified Peter Marlow's TV Fault Finding Guide is
reliability applications send around a electrically as asingle ceramic chip adistillation of the most used fault
million ceramic chip capacitors ayear capacitor on the board. The lab could reports from 11 years of Television
to the applications laboratory at have removed the capacitor from the magazine. Arranged by make and
Sonoscan [www.sonoscan.com] for board for acoustic imaging, but this model the information is extremely easy
acoustic inspection. The lab's would have created the possibility to access, and the book is aconvenient
acoustic imaging screens the that the removal process had caused size for the bench or to carry with you
capacitors into good and bad whatever defect was present —at least This will undoubtedly become one of the
categories; for expensive high- in the eyes of the capacitor service engineer's most useful tools.
reliability uses, this is far cheaper manufacturer. Instead, capacitors on Unlike other fault guides, this one is
than having asystem become failed assemblies were imaged right based on top quality information from
impaired or fail outright in an on the boards. leading authorities, and genuine repair
inconvenient or impossible location. The results show two types of case studies. This is real-life servicing
The lab sometimes saws capacitors defect —large delaminations between information, not just acompilation of
open too, chiefly so that customers layers, and cracks resulting from the manufacturers' manuals.
can see defects optically. Sawing in firing process. No voids were found. Over 2,000 reports covering over 300
exactly the right place is asimple suggesting that manufacturing flaws models. Instant on-the-spot diagnosis and
were related to firing, and did not repair advice. Television magazine's
involve the fluid ceramic material. leading writers' wit and wisdom
The board assembler was then able to available for the first time in book form.
Contact information set up ascreening process for
Sonoscan Inc., 2149 East Pratt Blvd. Elk Grove Village incoming capacitors, and the To Jackie Lowe, Room L514,
IL, USA 60007. Phone: 847 437-6400, capacitor manufacturer was able to Quadrant House, The
fax: 847 437-1550, e-mail: info@sonoscan.com, adjust his processes to make Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey,
website: www.sonoscan.com delaminations and cracks less SM2 SAS
frequent. •

332 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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Design competition
Devise a useful Launched this year, the ZXF36L01 is aversatile high-Q
and/or ingenious bandpass filter requiring a minimum of external components. Win a£500
In addition to the variable-Q analogue filter there is also a
application for the mixer block, making the device suitable for awide range of
applications. voucher
ZXF36L01 versatile All you have to do to enter the competition is send a
design idea incorporating the ZXF36L01 to the address
high-Q bandpass below. Entries will be judged on ingenuity, originality and redeemable
usefulness. All entries are subject to the rules set out below.
filter with integral A designer's kit is available from Farnell and you can find
full data on the device on Zetex's web site at Farnell.
mixer and you http://www.zetex.com/pdf/ics/zxf36101.pdf.
It is not necessary for you to prove your design, and
could win a £500 buying the kit is not acondition of entry into the competition.
The design you submit has to work in practice but you will For more
voucher to spend not be penalised for not having built aprototype.
information...
If you do submit adesign that meets the competition
Visit
with Farnell. criteria and you have bought the kit, then you will receive o
Farnell voucher for £15, courtesy of Zetex. http://ww\A
There's two runner Send your entry to Filter Design, Electronics World, farnell.co
Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS. for details of the
up prizes of £100 Note that it is not necessary to send your prototype! Simply
ZXF36L01
send the circuit diagram and aclear, concise description of
development kit
vouchers too. the circuit. It will help if you describe why you think that your
circuit should be among the winners. You can also e-mail or http://www.
your entry to jackie.lowe@rbi.co.uk, but unless the e-mail has zetex.com/pdf/ic
asubject heading that reads 'Filter Design' it will not be
s/zxf3 61 01.pdf
eligible. Please attach diagrams and text separately and
• Electronics World reserves the right include adaytime phone number with your entry if possible. for more data on
to publish submitted entries. All The closing date for the competition is 30 April. the filter chip.
designs published will be attributed
to their designers. A minimum
payment of f50 will be made for Mixer Filter
each design published. output input
• Submission of an entry does not
remove your right to exploit your
design, but it does give Zetex the
right to use the entry as an
application note, or as the basis Mixer Filter
thereof, effectively making the input — 1 output
design public domain.
• Winners will be chosen jointly by Local
technical experts from Zetex, Farnell oscillator - 1
and the editor of Electronics World.
The judges' choice will be final and
no correspondence will be entered
into regarding the choice of winner.
• No employee of Reed Business This Electronics
Information, Zetex and Farnell, or World competition
any of their associated companies, !. is sponsored by
may enter this competition, nor ma\ UK semiconductor
members of their families. You don't need manufacturer
• No entry will win more than one to buy this this Zetex and
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 interfacing
Ethernet
Connecting external ou are browsing the Internet
looking at you car's own web
potential extended uses. Boring as
the subject may be, the conversation
devices to your PC via a page. The screen is full of sometimes ends in opinionated
messages and indicators telling you discussions about the need for
local-area network card all about your car, but an orange flag Internet fridges and microwaves that
is not as difficult as it tells you there is something that e-mail you when the noodles are
requires your attention. ready.
may seem. You look at the various gauges: Nevertheless, there are some
Eddy lnsam explains how clutch, brake fluid, they seem OK.
Oil looks abit low though, so you
interesting possibilities for
considering the use of alocal-area
it all works and what you place atick under one of the oil network as aserious interface
brands in the 'garage reminder' between apersonal computer and
need to know. In a memo pad. external input/output devices. For
second article, Eddy will You wonder how people did this in one, it means the two can be as
the past; did people actually open the remote from each other as need be —
describe a development bonnets and look inside their own anywhere in the world in theory.
device that can get you cars? Then the door bell rings, the
washing machine repairman is at
You can also share adevice among
several users, say arooftop web
going in no time at all. your doorstep... "Your dishwasher camera or weather monitoring
just e-mailed us to say its drive belt station accessed by all users in a
is just about to go." building or school —or even from
Whether you think the concept of home.
networking your possessions is a There are benefits at the practical
good thing or not, it may be of some level too. Remote data logging and
use knowing how it all works. In any controlling equipment becomes
case, this article is for you because it much easier when it can all be
Interactive publishing! will at least put you on the first step interfaced using standard and well-
Interfacing via Ethernet is acomplex topic of the "I am not afraid of the tested networking components,
involving new concepts for those of you used technology," ladder. cabling and connectors.
On the other hand, you may have New network models such as 'Real
to RS232 and the like. If you have any queries
already thought of network-enabling Time Publish Subscribe', or RTPS
regarding interfacing with Ethernet, e-mail your own product or application, but for short, are also making Ethernet
martin.eccleserbi.co.uk using the subject been put off by the apparent more suitable for real time systems,
heading Ethernet interfacing'. complexities involved. This article data logging and control. Interesting
Any queries that are of general interest will will give you an insight into the possibilities arise too when
expertise and effort involved. interfacing to other proprietary
be published in next month's article, together
What's more, areadily available networks such as Home Automation,
with their replies. We'll do our best to answer preprogrammed chip to be described X10, CEBus or LON.
all your questions, but as the time available to in the next article will give you a But then, it can all sound very
prepare answers is finite, we cannot guarantee head start on the prototyping stage. complicated: the protocols, the
you areply. Ed. stacks, and so little information
Why use Ethernet? published. But is it? The answer is
As aconsultant, Iam sometimes not really, and it is certainly not out
asked about the Internet and its of reach.

336 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 PC INTERFACING

Embedding is the word

Internet-enabled hardware products
are slowly becoming commonplace.
From vending machines dialling up
to report their stock, to pinball
machines publishing their high
scores on the Internet for all to see.
Internet appliances —the term used
for browsers that do not use a
computer —are predicted to overtake
Fig. 1. A cheap PC
PCs for Internet use within the next
network card plus
four years. A new addressing
micro controller
scheme for the Internet (version 6)
forms the basis for
allows for astaggering 296 times the
asimple unit that
number of addresses currently
allows aPC access
available. The address field used is
to external I/O
128 bits. Each nut and bolt in your
devices via alocal
washing machine will be able to
area network.
have its own unique Internet
address.
Many modern products are driven
Remote PC
by internal microprocessors. These and non-PC machines.
Enabled for TCP/IP
small devices are quite powerful, From this point of view, using
communications
but one generally omitted fact is that Ethernet for I/O external access is
via the LAN
in order to implement the an attractive, cheap alternative.
functionality required for Internet Furthermore, different brand, newer
and network access, alot of and older machines with different
program code space is required. operating systems can access the
Gone are the days of simple devices. Macs, Linux, Unix and
ASCII dial-up interfaces, simple portable hand-held devices can all
ZMODEM or Kermit protocols. be used. Figs. 1&2. LAN
Nowadays your processor has to
deal with PPP, ARP, IP, ICMP, TCP Software at the PC end
and ahost of others. More on this If you develop apiece of network
later. hardware, you will need to think
about how to drive it from the PC.
Of PCs and interfaces You may not need to write any
PCs are well known for their lack of software at the PC end at all. Your
suitable interfaces into the real device could for example emulate a
world. They were not originally web page, and be accessed as if it
designed with many facilities for
driving external equipment, or to act
LAN cable
as data gathering stations.
Many alternatives using the Ethernet PC ISA card
Fig. 2. It is possible to buy
parallel and serial port have been on Network cards for well under
offer, but this approach is becoming £10 now so interfacing via
less practical nowadays —especially Ethernet is convenient, fast
with NT and Windows 2000 where and reasonably cheap.
special low-level software system 10base2 Ethernet cards
drivers are required. interconnect via coaxial
Worse still, parallel and serial cables. Many cards can be
ports are now called 'legacy' daisy-chained, each end of
devices, which is computer jargon the chain being terminated
for obsolete. The newest machines with a.50[1 terminator.
from the shops just do not have
these ports any more. These are all
being replaced by USB. PIC Ethernet
Eventually, USB devices may be microcontroller
...., ----- .......
accepted as the standard method for
411111=.
general-purpose direct, local
interfacing to aPC.
The advantage of using anetwork,
as opposed to adirect connection, is
distance. Most PCs will have alocal User Interface, including sensors
network connection. Low cost and data gathering hardware
Ethernet cards are readily available
and easy to install —even in older

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 337

PC INTERFACING

be done.
Protocols, as camels designed by
committees, are by definition
complex. The following values give
read arough idea of the amount of
program code required to implement
serial I/O an average Ethernet enabled
User dedicated
Ethernet application. Values are for aPIC
microprocessor micro
interface chip 16F877 using assembler: ARP,
controller
1.5Kb, IP and ICMP, another
spare = 1.5Kb, TCP another 2.5Kb, PPP (for
circular buffer
digital & — modem access) 3.5Kb.
analogue I/O RAM 16k bytes
So if you want to Ethernet enable
your project, you may need to
Fig. 3. The Ethernet chip buffers incoming serial stream and dedicate quite abit of program
presents the data in parallel form to the micro controller via a space to handling the protocols.
circular first-in first-out data buffer. The micro performs all But do you need to use these
necessary high level addressing and decoding. Clean data is complex established protocols? Isn't
then transferred to the user application, which can be custom Ethernet interface chip, it possible to just talk directly to
embedded in another microprocessor. which is in turn connected to the other workstations using your own
local area network via suitable simple private encoding system?
electrical isolation transformers. The answer is yes. Each Ethernet
were anormal Internet page. The Ethernet interface chip acts packet carries aframe identifier that
If you need more dedicated like asophisticated serial-to-parallel describes the protocol format used
control, standard API libraries are converter. Its job is to read serial by its payload. Pick anumber of
available for network packets of data from the wire, check your choosing and send any data
communications. The one in their header bytes with an internal format you like.
Windows is called Winsock, which address, perform checksum The rest of the network will just
is afamily of API calls contained in calculations, and push the block into ignore your privately encoded
aDLL file. auser accessible first-in, first-out packets —but first check with
There is also higher level support data buffer. This FIFO' queues the www.isiedufin-
in the form of ready made OCX data blocks for processing by the noteiliana/assignments/ethernet-
components, add-ons for Visual application. numbers/to ensure the number you
Basic and C. List 1shows asimple The job of the microprocessor is have chosen has not been already
'C' demonstration program showing to retrieve the blocks, and according allocated!
how Winsock calls can be used to to the information within, perform a Of course, you will need to
send and receive data from aremote few more data calculations and program your PC to talk directly to
on the network. checksums, then pass the 'clean' the Ethernet card, and your packets
data on to another device or system. will not be able to get past arouter
How do they do that? The micro must be quick enough to onto another network or the
Figure 3 shows ablock diagram of retrieve frames from the FIFO Internet. There may be real
the business end of asimple buffer before it overruns. If it isn't, advantages in using alternative
Ethernet embedded device. It packets may be lost. network models, for example to
consists of asmall dedicated During transmission, the opposite maintain speed and response times.
microprocessor connected to a takes effect. The microprocessor There isn't that much software
places data blocks in abuffer, the available at present out there.
Ethernet chip then adds any required Expect little support from software
Networking glossary headers and checksums, perform the vendors.
API Application program interface parallel-to-serial conversion and For real flexibility, you will need
ARP Addressing resolution protocol then push the serial stream into the to use Internet protocols, and until
DLL Dynamic link library wire. At the same time, it checks for dedicated TCP/IP interfaces are
FIFO First in, first out possible collisions. More or less, built in to the micros in hardware,
FTP File-transfer protocol that is all there is to it. The rest is all you will need to live with the
HTTP Hypertext transfer protocol done in the software. complexities of handling the
ICMP Internet control message protocol protocol in software.
MAC Media access control What does the micro do? There's already anumber of
PPP Point-to-point protocol The microprocessor's job looks products in the market offering
RIPS Real-time publish subscribe simple. Take data from abuffer, do different levels of functionality. The
SMTP Simple mail transfer protocol some conversions and then do best way to find out about these is to
TCP/IP Transmission-control protocol/Internet whatever with it. Easy? Well, not look at the web sites mentioned in
protocol quite. the separate panel. What follows is
Telnet Protocol within TCP that allows aremote ter- A fair bit of housekeeping needs just asimple summary.
minal on the network to appear as a local to be done along the way. The most common offerings come
one. Functionality needs to be included in the form of complete PCB cards
10baseT Twisted-pair 10Mbit/s Ethernet to communicate packets in the with built-in micro, RAM, PROM
10base2 Coaxial-connected 10Mbit/s Ethernet background with other users to let and usually abuilt-in Ethernet
UDP User datagram protocol them know who and where we are interface driver chip. Units range in
USB Universal serial bus for example. There are various size from the smaller 8051 core-
established 'protocols' that describe based, to larger, 386 embedded
exactly when and how this should Linux-based cards.

338 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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PC INTERFACING

Network functionality is usually especially one that doesn't perform technology, from the bit-shifting
supplied in the form of a'C' as well as advertised —as you would protocols to the higher level scripts.
software library or module that the developing your own from scratch. Iam not going to cover this in any
user compiles or links with their Again, depending on your detail, as there is plenty of
existing code. This is sometimes a requirements, you will need to information around in books and
cut down, but workable, version of evaluate how many functions are magazines. What Ihave done is a
the standard sockets library. necessary for your application. It is quick tour of the basic concepts
If you do not want to use aready- pointless to include the full TCP involved, with special relevance to a
made card, there is nothing much stack into aproduct that would be rnicrocontroller-based
available at the single chip level. happy to communicate using simple implementation.
Notable exceptions are the iChip UDP packets. This is awaste of References mentioned later in this
systems from ConnectOne and code space, components and article contain all the extra detail
Seiko. Originally offered as aset of resources. Is speed of access you may ever need. The main
software/firmware licences important? Is your field of work in sources for detailed specifications
implemented in ASIC form, this is real-time systems? If so, you should are 'RFCs' or 'requests for
now available in single-chip form consider alternative network comments'. The text contains the
(the Seiko part number is 7600). A models. reference number that relates to the
US company, 'psi!, has just As Imentioned earlier, the ready- topic. You can find RFCs on the
announced another single chip made controller described in the Internet by searching under 'RFC'.
device. More devices are expected next article may help you alittle bit
to appear in the future. with this decision process. It will Ethernet
Ihave found some of the claims allow you to evaluate and try You may already have anetwork
made for these products are in the possibilities and use it in prototypes. connector on the back of your
'flexible with the truth' class. This Because the controller provides computer. Look for aBNC socket
is reflected in the unnecessarily long access to the data stream at various with acoaxial cable (remember RG-
times taken to get the software to levels, it can also be used as a 58U?), or aflat cable ending in
work properly and reliably. These teaching tool, and as acomponent in something looking like aplastic
difficulties are possibly due to the amore advanced network tester or telephone connector.
newness of the technology, but it is server. It was originally designed as In most offices, these wires just
ahard way for you to learn. atool for evaluating network stress. disappear down the back of the desk
Ihave used two processors for the only to reappear at some obscure
Roll your own or boil in the controller. One handles the protocol room at the end of the corridor.
bag? interactions and another, supplied Ethernet is one of the main
If you want to network your and written by the user, handles the survivors among anumber of
application, depending on how application. similar technologies developed in
complex it is, you will need to Data transfer between the two the 1970s and 80s, possibly because
decide whether to go for the ready- processors is via simple serial of its low tech' simple and reliable
made route, i.e. buy cards, modules commands. The boring overheads approach. The coaxial cable 'thin-
or components in, or roll your own. such as checksums and framing are wire' version —also known as
If you are starting from scratch, completely handled by the main 10Base2 —is widely used in low-end
the initial learning curve is pretty controller. applications.
steep. Using aready-made solution Thin-wire Ethernet is simplicity
may be your only option. It is Still confused? itself; all workstations are connected
pointless to re-invent the wheel. If you have managed to get this far, together in daisy-chain fashion with
If you are considering quantities and still you think you have not a50f1 terminator at each end of the
or reliability, adeeper knowledge of understood networks, don't despair. chain. Data packets are just bursts of
the product and its performance may The next few sections will unravel current fed into the impedance of
be important. In practice, this means some of the theory, and explain the wire, and are read as voltages by
that you could spend as much time what you need to know. the receivers.
trying to get an external offering to No article on Internet basics can Transmitters fire bursts more or
work properly and reliably — do without aguided tour of the less without the knowledge of any
other transmitters. Collisions —i.e.
when two generators feed the wire
at the same time —are detected by
preamble dest address source address type payload (46-1500 bytes) CrC
an abnormal rise in the voltage on
the wire as two or more currents
superimpose. Each transmitter then
Ox800 ARP request/reply (28 bytes) pad >18bytes waits for acertain random time
before attempting to transmit again.
Ox806 IP datagram (46-1500 bytes) The flat, or twisted, cable
variation —known as 10BaseT —
Fig. 4. Ethernet frames comprise a6-byte destination and source addresses, plus afield word indicating uses separate wires for transmit and
the type of payload carried. The two most common payloads relevant to the TCP/IP world are shown in receive; this gives better error
the figure. The preamble is astring of 62 bits used to synchronise the internal clock generator. A 4-byte immunity and simpler driver
CRC word terminates the packet. The Ethernet interface chip strips the headers, performs address circuitry at each end. However,
comparison and checks for CRC validity before placing the data block in the RAM buffer. workstations cannot just be

340 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 PC INTERFACING

byte stream
connected to each other. Rather,
they need to be connected to a
central hub', which acts more or EMCEE= DEIMEED
less like arepeater or distributor.
Other methods are available,
working on similar electrical
principles.
In terms of speed, two main TCP TCP/UDP header TCP/UDP payload....
flavours are available, 10MHz and
100MHz. In many small office and
home environments, 10MHz is the
most popular. It is easy to install,
and the cables are easily cut and IP IP header IP payload
crimped. Iwill only be considering
the 10MHz version from now on.

How fast will it go?

A speed of 10MHz sounds
appealing when considering using a ethernet ethernet header ethernet payload checksum
LAN for interfacing to external I/O
devices. Reality is different though; Fig. 5. Russian dolls: each protocol packet contains inside another packet of ahigher level protocol.
you have to consider the Each layer contributes something to the end result: addressing, routeing fragmentation, transport, error
inefficiencies of any start-stop burst control and error correction. The end result, in the case of TCP, is acontinuous, reliable data byte
protocol, plus gridlock effect caused stream.
by collisions and other users sharing
the network.
There are many good and bad area for the different speeds Every Ethernet frame has aheader
statistics around showing between the LAN and the rest of the consisting of a6-byte source
relationships between usage and system. address, a6-byte destination
throughput. Just as on today's Using the chip involves first address, and a2-byte protocol
motorways, you can experience initialising anumber of registers to identifier. This is then followed by
hold-ups at the most obscure times set the various operating modes to the payload, which as mentioned
and for no apparent reason. determine, for example, whether before, can only have between 46
Anybody designing equipment using transfers are 8or 16-bit. Then, using and 1500 bytes.
anetwork for data transfer must be aloop or interrupt routine, the chip On receipt of aframe without
well aware of this. waits for adata register ready flag, errors, this payload is 'peeled off'
As aconservative estimate, just denoting that so many bytes of and passed on to the rest of the
one PC with one interface and no received data are present on the system. The protocol identifier field
other users should be able to FIFO buffer. specifies which type of protocol the
exchange data at between 70% and On transmission the system places payload is carrying. For example,
90% of the full advertised speed. its data in another part of the RAM 0x806 denotes an Internet protocol,
Throughput decays drastically buffer, and sets aflag, which is usually or IP' message.
when more users are on the network reset at the end of transmission. The payload will have its own
at the same time. The 'sensormag' More detailed information on the header and payload part, which are
article in the reference includes workings of Ethernet interface chips dealt with by the next layer in the
some charts and calculations plus a can be found in manufacturers' data chain. This is the concept of
pointer to an Excel program for sheets. Unfortunately, there doesn't protocol layers', Fig. 5.
estimating these delays. seem to be much information It is important to know that
In terms of hardware support, available on the Internet apart from Ethernet data bursts or frames are
there are dedicated Ethernet some National Semiconductor data completely independent of each
interface chips available from sheets, as mentioned in the panel. other. Frames are fired like bullets
various manufacturers. Most are out of agun, and, apart from a
compatible with astandard generic Protocols, addressing and collision detection mechanism
architecture, known as NE2000. payloads during transmission, what happens
They have astandard 8or 16-bit Ethernet data packets —better to them afterwards is of no further
data bus interface, compatible with known as frames —cannot be of just concern to the transmitter. In other
most CPU addressing schemes. any size. If you were to do some words, the Ethernet network layer
Access to the chip is done via a simple calculations involving the does not provide for any global form
number of internally paged maximum distance between of flow control or error protection.
registers, usually arranged as sixteen workstations, the speed of light in At the other end, received frames
I/0 or memory locations. Most coaxial cable and various other are checked for consistency by
chips can be directly connected to a timing considerations about calculating their CRC. Frames
CPU memory bus, or even directly collision detection, you would work arriving with errors are simply
to aPC-bus edge connector. The out that frames cannot contain fewer dropped or ignored. It is up to the
blocks of data being transferred are than 46, or more than 1500 payload higher layers to provide for any
stored in FIFO memory, as abuffer bytes each, Fig. 4. form of flow control and error

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 341

 PC INTERFACING

Fig. 6. Commands
C:>arp -a to match workstations hardware
are available from
addresses and IP addresses. ARP
the DOS prompt Interface: 192.168.0.1 on Interface Ox2 stands for address-resolution
that allow you to Internet Address Physical Address Typ.
protocol.
check your network 192.168.0.2 00-c0-df-e8-83-5c dyna. , .
In atypical network, computers
interfaces. A PC 192.168.0.15 45-54-48-50-49-43 dynami
spend asmall part of their time
workstation
sniffing each other, that is, sending
maintains alocal C:>
short probe packets too see who else
cache of other
is around. This is usually done on a
workstation
regular, or on a'need to know'
addresses, which is
basis. The ARP protocol is used for
dynamically C:>ping 192.168.0.15 just that. It makes use of aspecial
updated every two
MAC 'broadcast' destination
minutes or so. Pinging 192.168.0.15 with 32 bytes of data: address (OxFFFFFF).
Network stations
All Ethernet stations on the
regularly transmit Reply from 192.168.0.15: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
network accept broadcast messages.
ARP packets to each Reply from 192.168.0.15: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
The broadcast message basically
other to maintain Reply from 192.168.0.15: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
says, "Hey out there, anybody with
their caches up to Reply from 192.168.0.15: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
IP address 190.168.0.15?" The one
date. The DOS
and only station having this IP
command arp is Ping statistics for 192.168.0.15:
address allocated will then reply
used to display Packets: sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
with apacket stating its hardware
and/or update your
Minimum =Oms, Maximum = Oms, Average = .0ms MAC address.
local cache.
In aWindows network each
workstation builds up and maintains
alocal table of IP versus MAC
Fig. 7. Ping sends aprobe packet to aremote IP destination, which just echoes address pairs. Before sending a
the packet back. The sender can use the information collected on the way to message to another station, the table
deduce aspects of the path, delays, users, route taken, etc. The name ping is is consulted. If there is no entry, an
derived from submarine echo sounders. Ping is avery useful facility for advanced ARP query message is sent out. The
network support. The controller described in this article can be used to generate table is dynamically maintained,
custom ping type packets. flushed and refreshed every few
minutes.
protection. numbers, e.g. '192.168.0.1'. Windows provides anumber of
It is also relevant to note that the In acomputer network, each tools and facilities, mainly supplied
source and destination addresses are workstation is allocated its own IP as DOS console programs, which
'hardware' addresses. Known as address, maybe once only by the you can use to see this in action.
media access control, or 'MAC', network manager, or dynamically at Open an MS-DOS command box in
numbers, they refer to 6-byte various times by aprogram in the your computer and enter "c:>ARP(if
patterns uniquely associated with network server. Each workstation the program is not available in your
each Ethernet card and usually with an Ethernet card will also have machine, try installing these
assigned at manufacture. its own hardware MAC address. components from the New
In practice, the address is stored in The four-byte IP address means programs/communications tools
aseparate serial EEPROM on the nothing to the Ethernet card. Wizard). The program arp will
PC card. Blocks of addresses are Ethernet frames contain only MAC display the current IP/MAC address
assigned by the IEEE to each addresses as destinations. Sending a pairs for all the local machines in
manufacturer, so when you buy your packet of data to aremote location your network. You may see nothing,
PC card, it will have its own unique requires knowing its MAC address. especially if there was no recent
number stored in it. If you connect ablack box into a network activity. Remember that the
You can change this number if network containing acontroller and tables are dynamic and flushed
you want to. Apart from some data logger for example, you must every few minutes.
simple restrictions, such as that the allocate it an IP address, and notify Next, enter "C:>ping
first byte in the sequence must have everybody else of it. But how does 192.168.0.15" —or the address of
a'1' and a '0' as its least-significant the rest of the network know what any other station on your network —
bits, any number can be used as long our hardware MAC address is, and and wait to see any replies, then try
as there are no clashes with other how to access the controller? You "C:>arp -a" again. Assuming that
cards in your network. need to know about ARP to answer your prototype controller is
It is not practicable to rely on this one. For more on Ethernet and connected to the network, the screen
fixed hardware addresses when IP, see RFC894. will show '192.168.0.15 4E-54-54-
managing areal computer network. 50-49-43,' Figs 6, 7.
Therefore, amore flexible form of ARP Any embedded Ethernet controller
addressing is used. This addressing As Imentioned earlier, the payload must include some form of ARP
scheme consists of four byte in an Ethernet frame can carry reply processing in order to respond
sequences, known as 'IP' addresses. formats other than IP. One such to 'who are you?'-type requests
They are displayed for human format is ARP, which is asimple made by other stations on the
consumption as four decimal query-response packet protocol used network. The controller also needs

342 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001 34 1

 PC INTERFACING

to include methods for querying Internet Protocol sequence. A receiver accumulates

other workstations in the network Internet protocol, IP for short, datagrams until they all neatly fit
for their MAC addresses using ARP forms the backbone of all TCP and into acontiguous block.
requests. This is one of anumber of UDP messaging. Like the rest, each It follows that fragmented IP
necessary overheads that push up IP packet —better known as datagrams are not really
the amount of code required in the datagrams — has itself aheader and independent of each other. This
controller, but they are essential for apayload component. RFC 791 is will introduce atime element in
the proper operation in ashared the basic document describing IP. any system. A receiver for
network. Within the IP header, the most example, has to consider when to
More on ARP can be found in important items of information are give up waiting for missing out of
RFC 826. The next topic of interest the source and destination IP order packets, and dump any
is IP, the 'other' relevant format addresses. For local previously stored.
carried by Ethernet frames, Fig. 4. communications between two Fragmented datagrams cause
stations in alocal loop, the IP problems with small embedded
address in the IP header and the systems. In theory, areceiver needs
MAC address in the Ethernet frame to allocate a64kb buffer for every
header just preceding it will first out of sequence datagram
correspond to the same workstation received. This means one buffer for
computer. This may sound like every different open socket (or
unnecessary repetition, but this channel) being serviced. This is
segment 1 sYn, seq.en
pairing is required for routers, impractical for small RAM limited
where the fields may be different. systems.
segment 2 There are other various fields One practical solution is to
syn4ack, secmn, acItem4-1
including achecksum, a disallow or ignore fragmented IP
fragmentation pointer, aprotocol datagrams. This may not be much
segment 3 code for the payload, and the of aproblem if the transactions
ack' segern+1 payload itself. involved are small, e.g. for asmall
Like Ethernet frames, IP data logger. However, there may be
datagrams are independent of each problems for systems dealing with
other and contain no in-built error long streams of block-encoded data
protection or recovery. So why is such as voice or video.
IP necessary? Well, IP is the Fragmentation is not much of a
segment 4 common layer above all hardware- problem with TCP (see later on) as
ack, seqzp, ack=rq, datae-r
dependent transport mechanisms. TCP can be engineered to use small
Irrespective of how the devices are segments to start with.

ack sececi ae-P+`

segment 5 electrically connected together —be In atypical situation, an
it via fibre, radio or phone lines — embedded system may need to deal
all data blocks end up as with many sources or originators.
compatible IP datagrams. Datagrams may be arriving from
The job of IP is to get the data more than one source at the same
block to its destination. Its main time. The microcontroller will need
contributions are addressing, to keep track of all, keeping state
routing and fragmentation. variables for each contact, to
Remember how Ethernet frames ensure the right replies are sent
segment 6 had alimited byte size range? back to the right originators. In a
fin, ack, seqz--s, ackz---t Similar limitations also apply to PC this is easily handled using
other transport mechanisms: optical concurrent threads. But small
segment 7 fibre, satellite links, etc. Internet microcontrollers do not have such
ae, a ckr.-S+ 1
protocol allows datagrams to be niceties.
segment 8
tin.ack,seqe. a
e's+1 chopped (fragmented) into shorter
sections of the right size for
Three types of IP payloads are of
interest here: ICMP, UDP and TCP.
transmission and vice versa: short
segment 9 ack, ack=t+/ sections packed into single, longer ICMP
datagrams. ICMP stands for 'Internet control-
The method employed for message protocol'. This is not a
fragmentation is relevant for protocol used to transfer messages,
embedded systems. Fragmented but rather to provide akind of
datagrams include a 'pointer' internal maintenance messaging
indexing the position of the first service.
byte of their data payload in an One of the most common uses for
Fig. 8. Simplified diagram of aTCP conversation. Three stages imaginary 64kb data buffer. ICMP is aservice known as
are essential: setting up the channel, the actual data transfer Therefore, each IP datagram 'pinging'. This is amethod where a
process, and closing down the conversation. State transition contains exact information about workstation can query another by
tables are generally used in the software to implement the the position and size of their transmitting aspecial short 'ping'
overall process. One set of tables and data memory buffers payload within this imaginary message and wait for an echo
will be required for every open channel. This is not practical buffer. This allows for fragmented response. Fig. 7.
for small microcontroller memory limited applications. datagrams to be received out of Any embedded implementation

344 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 PC INTERFACING

should incorporate facilities for

echoing any 'ping' commands
received. There's more on this later.
House
Replies in ICMP are also mains
commonly sent in response to failed wiring
UDP datagrams. An embedded
application should also incorporate
simple facilities for dealing with x-10
home PIC Ethernet
ICMP 'unobtainable' messages. 877 controller
control 16F84 interface
ICMP is documented in RFC 792,
interface
950, 1812, 1122, 1191 and 1256. Serial to
controller

Datagrams and UDP

User-datagram protocol, or UDP for
short, is asimple transport-layer
protocol. It is aconnectionless,
unreliable protocol with no error or Fig. 9. X10 Home Control Interface: aseparate PIC forms the basis of asimple
flow control mechanisms. interface between X10 home automation and the local area network. No interface
In effect, UDP is nothing more standards exist at present for this kind of interactivity.
sophisticated than an IP datagram
with an extra addressing field: aport
number. A port number is an Transmission control where the data block belongs in the
interesting concept. If aworkstation protocol, TCP array.
has an IP number allocated to it, how Transmission control protocol, or This scheme is very convenient as
can different processes or programs TCP, is very different from UDP or it allows segments to arrive out of
in the workstation communicate at to any of the protocols described order. There is no need to
the same time? The answer is using previously. It is apoint-to-point acknowledge every segment
ports. oriented, reliable, byte-stream received, asingle ack can be sent
Workstation "192.168.0.31" can service. for more than one transmission
use port 21 to talk to another All error protection and flow segment received.
workstation, use port 80 for web control is carried out in TCP. The Both transmitter and receiver also
access and use port 27 for file main document for this protocol is operate a'data window' scheme
transfers. Think of telephone RFC 793. You will find additional telling atransmitter how many more
extensions working off amain information in RFC 896, 1122, 1323 bytes the receiver is willing to
private exchange number. and 2018. accept. This provides aform of data
Document RFC 768 fully describes Traditionally, error and flow flow control.
UDP. Sending aUDP message is control in telecommunications were By constant adjustment of the
somewhat like sending apostcard to handled at the lower layers. It was windows and delays, TCP can be
afriend, asimple 'shoot and forget'- recently discovered that low-layer honed to provide an efficient flow
type protocol. It can be very reliable error handling is not as effective as mechanism tuned to aparticular
in networks that are reliable to start higher layer handling. This is one of channel's characteristics. In such a
with such as LANs. the reasons why the layers below channel, the transmission line is
This method is normally used for TCP do no need to provide any form nearly constantly active all the time,
simple file transfers and remote of error or flow management. with very few ACKs sent back.
booting of PCs. It is also used In UDP, stations just shoot You could see efficient and
anywhere where afailure to receive packets at each other. TCP requires inefficient TCP in action by
is not adisastrous issue, or one that the two stations to establish a observing the TX and RX lights on
can be simply compensated by a 'connection' first. Once the amodem. Inefficient TCP is when
repeat transmission later on. connection is established, data can both TX and RX flash or flicker in
Because of this simplicity, UDP is flow from one station to the other. opposition, with periods of no
asimple protocol to implement in an Opening aconnection is done by activity in between. Efficient TCP is
embedded application. Simple error sending specially flagged segments — when the RX light is nearly
recovery can be implemented at the in TCP, apacket or unit of constantly on, denoting anearly
user level. This can take the form of information is called asegment — constant flow, with the occasional
mindless repetition to asimple that are used to synchronise counters flicker of the TX 'ACK' light.
`ACK'-based datagram response. and timers at either end, Fig. 8. Implementing TCP requires the
Writing the software at the PC end is Transmission control protocol use of astate transition table,
also easy, as the program in List 1 requires all data to be acknowledged. linking 'actions' with 'states' and
shows. Rather than acknowledging each 'events', plus adata control block to
The controller described here uses segment individually, TCP uses a store all variables for each particular
UDP to demonstrate simple read and pointer scheme where the receiver connection —also known as a
write to aparallel and the analogue acknowledges the position of the socket.
port. It also uses UDP for simple index or pointer of the last reliable In normal practice aserver, or
data connection to and from the user block of data received. Each listener, opens anew thread for
serial port. UDP is an effective segment thus carries ablock of data every open connection request
protocol for developing special user plus an index pointer into an received from aclient. This thread is
applications. imaginary array of bytes, that is, maintained until the connection is

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 345

PC INTERFACING

closed. The state table is described implement aperfectly workable On telephones and modems...
in detail in RFC 793. 'lite' version of TCP in an Ihave limited the description to
Implementing the full set of TCP embedded processor. operation over alocal area network.
requirements in an embedded system This may or may not be connected to
is not trivial. Including each and Telnet, HTTP, FTP SMTP... the Internet via arouter or server.
every combination of events, states Telnet, HITP, FTP and SMPT are Most of you will be using adial-up
and actions will readily inflate a higher level application protocols. Internet service provider. The link
micro's valuable program and data They were designed for specific end- between you and the ISP is via a
memory space. In addition, threads to-end purposes —FTP for file modem. Generally, the protocol used
are not easily implemented in the transfer, SMTP for mail, HTTP for on this link is called PPP (or the older
smaller devices. web access. variant SLIP).
Fortunately, some simplifications These protocols have one thing in The main purpose of PPP is to
can be made if the connection has common. They work by sending and encapsulate IP datagrams into aform
been coherent for along time, and it receiving streams of bytes, usually more suitable for modem
is resilient to repeated and/or ASCII characters, down an already communications; this is done by
missing data. Depending on the use opened TCP connection. using special escape sequences to
it is put to, it is possible to In terms of implementation, these avoid transmitting characters such as
are relatively simple. One just needs ETX, which can produce odd effects
to generate the right sequence of on some modem links.
Useful web sites characters. As long as there is an Extra PPP messaging sequences are
National Semiconductors Ethernet Chip data sheet existing TCP open channel to convey used at the beginning of the
www.national.com/ds/DP/dp83905.pdf the characters, you could even use a transaction to negotiate details on the
General X-10 Home Control Information: BASIC-like program. transmission methods used, types of
www.x10.com Implementing asimple web server compression, to exchange passwords
More information on embedded Ethernet controllers: involves nothing more than writing a and to allocate adynamic IP address.
www.embeddecl.com, www.chipcenter.com, program that receives an ASCII serial Point-to-point protocol is not
www.connectone.com, www.ipsil.corn stream, senses for special character implemented in the present version of
RFC papers are available from various websites in sequences, and sends back another the controller. Even asimple version
different formats. Try one of the search engines sequence of characters. of PPP would take at least 2k of
such as www.google.com and enter the search program space.
word "RFC". RTPS — real-time networking Implementing PPP is not trivial.
Useful article on Ethernet throughput and RTPS A number of alternative network 'Lite' versions of the protocol may
www.sensormag.com/articles/1100/22/main.shtml models exists. Most are designed for not be very reliable, and can be very
particular applications such as stream ISP dependent. PPP is anegotiated
voice, video, and real time control. protocol; anegotiation can
An abbreviation for 'real-time sporadically fail, say by aclient
publish subscribe', RTPS is agood requesting facilities that aserver may
Further reading example of arecent innovation in refuse to provide at that time.
TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1, W.Richard Stevens, Addison networking models. Nodes 'publish'
Wesley, 2000. A very comprehensive guide for all data onto anetwork or 'subscribe' to And home networks
aspects of TCP/IP. This is one of the best known any data they need from the network. The idea of intelligent buildings and
books in the subject. Subscriptions eliminate the need for home automation has been with us
Windows 2000 TCP/IP Protocols and Services, request traffic. for along time. Many proprietary
Technical Reference, T. Lee and J. Davies, The model is aimed at real-time standards and protocols for
Microsoft Press, 2000. This book contains aCD control systems using the Ethernet, interfacing and control now exist;
with all published RFCs to date. where speed of response and reaction many are under development. These
Network Programming for Windows, A. Jones and J. has to be tightly controlled. A number systems have found aslow uptake
Ohlund, Microsoft Press, 1999. A must for of companies, among them General and difficult marketing, maybe
anybody involved in network and Winsock Motors, have evaluated the use of because of the high cost of the
programming. Many examples are included. Ethernet in such schemes, and have interfaces and sensors.
Interfacing Tini, Les Hughes, Electronics World, July found it avery reliable real-time The introduction of low-cost IP
2000. A description of the Dallas Java-based web transport medium. technology may influence future
controller. RTPS technology is very recent, and decisions on this subject. Figure 9
typical of anumber of similar shows away aPC LAN could be
developments to move away from the linked to an X10 home-automation
limitations of TCP. Companies such as network. There are not many
RTI (www.rti.com) are offering common or emerging protocols for
The author components and toolkits under a$10k such interfaces at present. •
Dr Eddy Insam is aconsultant in innovative licence.
applications of telecommunications and specialises in For some small real-time In the next article, Eddy discusses
graphics and signal processing. He can be reached on applications, asubset of the ways of implementing asimple
edinsamgeix.co.uk. technology is all that may be controller based on aPIC 16F877 and
If you are considering aserous application for this necessary. Ihave been looking at astandard LAN PC card. This
device, Eddy will endeavour to answer your queries some implementation possibilities, and controller can be used for
via e-mail. can see that this is an area that will see demonstrations or as the basis for an
alot more development in the future. embedded prototype interface project.

346 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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 PC INTERFACING

List 1. Simple C code for the PC showing how to use the Winsock API to //hardcoding the message for this demonstration.

communicate with an external I/O device. Refer to the literature for char pTx[8];
pTx[0]=0x01; pTx[11=rand(); //set the LEDs to some
more examples. This demonstration program shows how Winsock can
random pattern
be used for communicating between aPC and an embedded ethernet pTx[2]=0x03; pTx[3]=0; //read data port in A
device. This is a Windows console application. To run, open aMSDOS int nTx=4; // tot of 4 bytes in tx
box, and enter the name of the program followed by optional packet

arguments.
// The actual TX call
Programming notes: If using Microsoft Visual C, open as a Windows
SOCKET stx=sendto(hSocket, pTx, nTx, 0,
console application, and copy this file to the directory. (SOCKADDR*)&Sdest, sizeof(Sdest));
Program must be linked with the Winsock 2library "WS2_32.1ib". if (stx== SOCKET_ERROR)
The Winsock DLL file "WS2 32.DLL" must be present in your system, ( printf('Sendto() failed, error %d',GetLastError());
usually already present in W95(SP2), W98, NT and W2K. goto Exit;

In order to reduce listing clutter and improve readability the code is

kept as simple as possible with many parameters hard-coded in. For the //Having sent the data packet, we now need to wait for a
same reason, error handling is implemented with simple "gofo" type //response. Before calling the receive function, we
statements. //could install a receiver timeout, this can be useful for
A useful reference (with samples) for winsock programming is A. Jones //avoiding call from blocking forever if no data received
( int to.3000; // hardcode a 3 second timeout
& J. Ohlund, 1999. "Network Programming for Windows", Microsoft
int
Press. nr=setsockopt(hSocket,SOL_SOCKET,SO_RCVTIME0,(char*)&to,size
of (to));
if (nr == SOCKET_ERROR)
( printf("setsockopt(SO_RCVTIMEO) failed, error:
//
GetLastError());
// Copyright (c) 2001, EIX ltd
goto Exit;
//
//Command Line options:
//c:> exename [ipaddress)
//** Waste one second...
//where ipaddress is destination address, e.g. 192.168.0.15
//No need to include this in your program. This is only
//
//here to let the reply packet enough time to arrive before
*include ‹winsock2.h>
//next function is called.
*include stdio.h'
Sleep(1000);
*include stdlib.h'
//** main entry point to the program
//** Check nr of bytes in rx buffer...
int mainfint argc, char* argv())
// Again, no need to include this function in your
program.
//** First, initialise any global variables to their default
// This is only here to show a possible way of sensing
char zIPadd[32);
if there are
strcpy(zIPadd,'192.168.0.15'); // default
// any bytes left in the receive buffer before calling
destination IP address
recvfrom().
//** Next, deal with any user input provided in Command Line
DWORD nb;
for (int i=1; icargc; i..)
int e=ioctlsocket(hSocket,FIONREAD,&nb);
( if (argv[i][0]>='0') strcpy(zIPadd,&argv[i][0));
if(e==SOCKET_ERROR) ( printf('Ioctl
error:%d',GetLastError());
//** Initialise Winsock 2...
goto Exit;
//Loads or increments DLL usage count.
}
//Must call WSCleanup() on exit!
printf('Rx buffer has %d characters\r\n',nb);
WSADATA wsadata;
if (WSAStartup(Ox202, &wsadata) != 0)
//** Call the receive function...
( printf ('Winsock 2 cannot be loaded, error %d'.
//This function may block until whole datagram is received
GetLastError());
//(or until a defined timeout occurrs, if set as above).
return -1;
( SOCKADDR Sremot;
Sremot.sa_family= AF_INET;
//** Create our socket...
int nremot.sizeof(SOCKADDR);
// Socket is initialised for UDP datagram transactions
char pRx[256]; int nRx=256; // rx data goes here
SOCKET hSocket.socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);
SOCKET srx=recvfrom
if (hSocket == INVALID_SOCKET)
(hSocket,pRx,flRx,0,(SOCKADDR*)&Sremot,&nremot);
( printf ('Socket creation failed, error %d'.
if (srx.= SOCKET_ERROR)
GetLastError());
( // handle the specific 'error' case of a timeout
goto Exit; //simple abort avoids listing clutter
int ee=GetLastError();
iflee==10060) printf('Receiver timed out, no data
//** Define destination as a socket structure...
received*);
//Note the use of the standard Winsock functions htons and
else printf('recvfrom() failed, error
inet_addr
ee);
// htons() reverses byte endian order, needed for IP packets
goto Exit;
// inet_addr() converts IF strings such as 190.0.0.1 into
IP DWORD
// If we get this far, data was received OK, so do something
SOCKADDR_IN Sdest;
with it!
Sdest.sin_family= AF_INET;
printf('Received OK, first 4 bytes of data:
Sdest.sin_port= htons(0x5001); //hard-coded
for (int i=0; i<4; i..) printf('%02X ,(BYTE)pRx[i]);
dest port
printf('\r\n');
Sdest.sin_addr.s_addr= inet_addr(zIPadd); //dest IP
address
//** Lastly, close socket, unload Winsock. and exit...
//** Now transmit the data...
Exit:
//Winsock will send the UDP datagram to the socket specified
closesocket(hSocket);
//in Sdest. The function also generates a local receive'
WSACleanup();
//port number for replies.
return 0;

//Create some useful data to transmit. We shall be

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 347

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 PIC Basic Pro Acomprehensive guide to using PIC BASIC
EXPERIMENTING
Section 1

TA 11101,e44z~14
Dispins
Section2
with the
Write your PIC programs in BASIC! -No STAMP REQUIRED!
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PICBASIC PRO Section3

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 Quench'
The quest for performance in today's mobile world means that high
power consumption is the curse of chip designers, but plenty of solu-
tions exist. Richard Ball explains the traditional approach and looks
at the latest attempts to keep pace with clock speeds

I
ftoday's trends continue, by 2015 we'll all be carrying Intel XScale
small nuclear power sources to keep our laptops going.
1.000
Why? Because microprocessors will be consuming
more juice than aV8 dragster and spewing out more
800
heat than arocket nozzle. So claims Pat Gelsinger, CTO E
of Intel's architecture group.
Mind you, such comments are abit rich coming from 600 2
o.
the company that's done more than most in the race to
push up clock speeds. 400 e
l
o

So why are we heading towards nuclear-powered u

laptops, and what are chip designers doing about it?
200 3
The quest for performance has often been at the
expense of power consumption —witness Compaq's latest
Alpha processor which runs at 1200MHz (1.2GHz),
producing 125W. Mind you, it does have 130 million req`ein
F so 400 600 800
transistors. DOrystose
62 500 750 1000
One of the traditional routes to higher performance is Mips

increasing the number of pipeline stages in the processor. Power 1

450 900
(mW) 10 1 180
As each stage has less to do, the clock speed can increase.
Core
Increasing the pipeline depth might increase the clock Voltage 0.
75 V
1.00V 1.30V 1.65V
speed, but it's adubious method of improving overall
performance and is definitely bad for power consumption. Intel's XScale processor can dynamically adjust voltage,
Pentium 4and its 20-stage pipeline, for example, frequency and hence power.
processes fewer instructions per clock than Pentium III on
conditional code, and hence its power/performance ratio
is worse.
An IBM paper at this year's ISSCC conference nicely parallelism in the processor —placing two, four or more
sums up pipelining: "A deeper pipeline could have arithmetic units in parallel to do more work in asingle
yielded even higher frequencies, but at the expense of clock cycle.
reduced instructions per clock (IPC). Processor The problem with these superscalar designs is that if the
performance is not proportional to frequency but rather program code can't be written or reordered to take full
the product of frequency and IPC." account of the processing resources, then performance is
Another well trodden route to performance is wasted. And this happens alot in systems with parallel

Power consumption runs wild

A
ccording to Patrick Gelsinger, Gelsinger, if current Intel trends continue
chief technology officer of the chip power density will reach that of a
Intel architecture group, nuclear reactor in 2007 and dissipation
increasing the absolute performance from will be the same as the surface of the
the x86 processor series has resulted in sun, 10 000W/cm 2,in 2015.
less and less performance per gate per His solution is less brute force —so
megahertz. smarter branch prediction and pipelines
The law of diminishing returns has —and processors designed for specific
taken over and increasing power tasks.
consumption is the result. Despite Perhaps Intel is waking up and
reduced supply rails, according to breaking out of the Windows-PC mould.

350 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

processor thirst
architectures. The end result is more heat for less useful Semiconductor process
work. Improving the semiconductor process is the simplest trick
Plenty of solutions exist to the problem of high power in the book for reducing power consumption. As the
consumption in processors and hence, to acertain extent, geometry size reduces, voltage is forced down —most of
any system-on-chip. However, different solutions fit the time —and so power drops quickly.
different markets and applications. Today the work-horse process is 0.18pm, but in R&D
labs, firms are building circuits on 0.13pm or smaller. At
Dynamic clock and voltage management this level some significant problems are beginning to
Power consumption in acircuit is proportional to surface.
frequency, but it is also proportional to the square of the As gate lengths decrease, then the gate oxide thickness
voltage. Therefore, the easiest way to cut power is to must also reduce, and this defines the maximum voltage
reduce the voltage. of the transistors. But for high performance devices, a
This does mean areduction in frequency, but if the loss thin gate oxide will result in high leakage current. For
in performance can be absorbed, then the reduction in low power, athicker gate oxide will impact performance.
current and power is well worth the effort. Therefore many firms, such as Toshiba, IBM and
Intel has certainly taken this approach with XScale, its Motorola, are using different flavours of transistors in a
second generation successor to StrongARM. At one end single device.
the chip can run from 1.65V, hitting 800MHz and Motorola's 0.13pm (130nm) process detailed at last
consuming 900mW. Throttling back the voltage to 1.0V, year's IEDM conference has gate lengths from 80 to
however, sees the clock halved to 400MHz while power 110nm, and gate oxide thicknesses of 1.8nm, 2.5nm for
plummets to 180mW. At the extreme end power reaches low power, 5nm for 2.5V UO and 7nm for 3.3V I/O.
just 10mW at 0.75V and 50MHz. Another way to reduce leakage current and parasitics
Intel has still gone down the "let's get maximum in to use silicon-on-insulator. Driven by IBM, this
performance" route, but in this case that performance technology may well be used by AMD in its mobile PC
might not always be used. Sometimes it's sacrificed for processors.
much lower power.
A similar scheme is being applied by Transmeta to its Simultaneous multi-threading
Crusoe processors. Its LongRun technology uses SMT is not anew idea —it was first used by Cray in one
subroutines in the software to determine the processor's of its chips over 30 years ago. However, the idea is only
loading and adjust the voltage and frequency settings. just appearing in mainstream devices, and it promises
However, LongRun is not accessible to the programmer - much, especially in the server or telecoms markets.
XScale's power tricks are, and XScale has awider voltage In asuperscalar processor —even with the greatest
scaling range. compiler in the world —asingle thread is hard pushed to
Obviously this technique applies well to the handheld keep all the execution units active. In deeply pipelined
consumer device market. devices, acache miss or mis-predicted branch causes

Power restrictions in 'system-on-a-chip' devices

H
itachi has taken afresh look at The same chip, running the same performance of the system, but Hitachi's
power restrictions in system-on- software, can be allowed to run free in a figures (for an undisclosed single-processor
chip-based appliances and come mains-powered application, and peak- application) show a48 per cent reduction
up with ahardware-based on-chip power limited when battery powered. in peak power only results in 10 per cent
management system called ChipOS, And this peak limit is accurate, rather slower system speed.
writes Steve Bush. than just the average reduction which With four processors under the same
Processors tend to draw power in comes from processor clock speed ChipOS controller, an 81 per cent
bursts. Inconveniently, power supplies switching. reduction in peak power was available
have to be sized to match the power Hitachi claims that adie with ChipOS with 10 per cent slowing.
peaks, or include chunky capacitors to could be used in alow cost 1W system The penalty with ChipOS is additional
meet peak demands. or a 10W high-performance system. hardware. Logic blocks have their clocks
This problem is particularly bad in When multi-tasking, one task can be gated and their power rails switched.
battery-powered devices where ahigh given priority and allowed to have all the Associated with each block is ablock-
peak draw can bring apair of AA cells to processor's capacity up to the imposed specific power driver, which controls
their knees and cause asystem reset. power limit during an activity burst. The clock gating, and rail switching. Running
ChipOS tackles this by allowing the other tasks will be slowed or stalled until above this is apower scheduler that uses
system designer to specify amaximum power becomes available again. knowledge of block power requirements
power draw from asystem-on-chip. Power limiting clamps the overall to allocate blocks to tasks.

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

 MIL%
large chunks ot data to be flushed -wasting a
considerable amount of power.
Multi-threaded processors can fill slots in the
instruction issue with waiting threads. So the whole thing
runs faster, or to look at it another way, the same amount
of work is done with less wasted power.
However, SMT doesn't come for free - it adds around
ten per cent extra hardware.
SMT may be about to become mainstream, especially
if, as is rumoured, Intel puts it in Foster, the next spin of
Pentium 4. It's already in the latest Alpha, described
earlier.

Clock distribution
Better clock distribution design is also an avenue to
reducing power dissipation, as aprocessor's clock tree
can have amassive overall impact.
For example, another IBM paper from ISSCC
Alchemy is aname to be reckoned with in the chip design world, having its ancestry describes its POWER4 chip. This dual microprocessor
in the original StrongARM team. Its first chip, the Au1000 (above), is back from the device contains astaggering 170 million transistors. At
fab and undergoing testing. Like Xscale, clock frequency and hence power can be 1.1GHz it consumes around 115W.
dynamically scaled. Initial figures indicate that running at 1.25V and 200MHz, the "Approximately 70 per cent of the power is burned in
chip dissipates 200m W, while at 1.5V and 400MHz power is up to 500m W. the clock distribution and latches," the firm says.

Electromagnetic gun fires a pellet 20km in a second

Sandia Labs' Zmachine atmospheres pressure" on the pellet, has been to keep this temperature
electromagnetic pellet accelerator according to Sandia. When fired up down as the pellet can no longer be
has boosted aprojectile to 20km/s - to 13km/s, the aluminium pellets are accelerated once it vapourises. The
i.e. 45 000mile/h. Inside Zmachine, neither distorted or melted, but with picture shows researcher Mark
20 million amps produces amagnetic the wick turned up to achieve 20km/s Knudson holding two pellets in his
field that expands in around 200ns the aluminium reaches 2500K and right hand and the chambers of Z
and generates "several million liquifies. Research over the last year machine on his left.

ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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 Voltage or
current
SPEAK driveP
Moving-coil loudspeakers are invariably

CORNER
driven by a voltage amplifier. Here, John
Watkinson explores the alternative -
current drive.

.1
. raditionally, the moving coil have to be proportional to the Generally the audio industry does
loudspeaker drive unit has been amplifier voltage. nothing about this problem, even
connected to avoltage This is adesirable condition, in though the cone velocity becomes
amplifier. Figure Ia) shows that an which the cone velocity follows the anti-phase to the input below
ideal voltage amplifier has zero audio waveform. resonance, making the output
output impedance such that the waveform atravesty of the input.
voltage at the output terminals is If only... Instead, new clothes continue to be
independent of the load impedance. in the real world though, this doesn't made for the Emperor long after his
In reputable amplifiers this happen. Figure lb) shows that the death.
requirement is typically met with tight connection between input With voltage drive, anumber of
negative feedback, which simply waveform and cone velocity is lost other factors can affect the cone
compares the output voltage because the drive unit has finite velocity and potentially cause
waveform with the input signal resistance as well as inductance. distortion. These include suspension
waveform. The result is that the cone velocity non-linearity and coil inductance.
Figure la) also shows that an ideal no longer follows the input If the coil inductance were constant,
drive unit would have zero resistance waveform. In any other control the result would just be an HF roll-
and zero inductance. The only factor discipline, this would be regarded as off. Unfortunately, coil inductance
controlling the coil current is the back amajor shortcoming and something changes with the cone position as
EMF. Any difference between the would be done about it. Imagine an different amounts of the pole
amplifier output voltage and the back aircraft in which the control surfaces structure are within the coil. The
EMF would result in an infinite didn't follow the stick, but were impedance of the drive unit is also a
current, so the coil velocity would blown about by the slipstream. function of coil temperature, which
itself is afunction of the power
dissipated.
Zou ,=0 Coil resistance =
zoui = Figure 2a) shows an ideal current
v Coil source driving aloudspeaker. An
inductance ideal current source has an infinite
Coil output impedance. The output current
resistance is proportional to the input voltage
and is independent of load
Vou ,=back EMFz back EMF impedance.
.
-.cone velocity-V, n
Fig. 1. Most loudspeakers don't execute the input waveform. In la) is an ideal system with a Implementing current drive
zero output impedance amplifier and zero coil resistance speaker. Fig. lb) depicts areal system.
Effectively, the power amplifier has
Even though Zour is close to zero in areal amplifier, coil resistance and inductance mean that become atransconductance amplifier.
back EMF is not equal to Vow- .Cone is not under control of input waveform.
Figure 2b) shows that current drive
can be achieved by providing asense

354
ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001
 AUDIO DESIGN

resistor in the coil current path. impedance of the amplifier means

Amplifier negative feedback is then that there is no electrical damping of
used to compare the voltage across the drive unit's fundamental
the sense resistor with the input. resonance at all. The only damping is
When the two are identical the due to the drive unit's own structure.
current in the coil must be with atiny amount due to sound
proportional to the input voltage. radiation.
The current drive amplifier can be The strong resonance is audible and
implemented with almost any the drive unit can easily over-travel.
amplification technology used for Consequently the designer is forced
voltage drive —including switched- into making some active
mode. error-correcting. Class-A or compensation for the driver
vacuum-tubes. fundamental resonance in the shape
The operating principle is now of an analogue computer/op-amp
different from that of voltage drive. circuit or DSP. In fact this is no great
drawback, because this has to be done design, which amplifier topologies Fig. 2. Current drive
The force produced by the coil is
with voltage drive if any degree of can't affect. principles. In al,
proportional to the current, so the coil
precision is required. The difference The main advantage of current v. ith infinite output
operates in constant-force mode. As
the cone mass is also constant, the is that with voltage drive it is possible drive would appear to be in tweeters, impedance, current
to dispense with resonance where the elimination of the effects is independent of
drive unit operates in mass-control
compensation if alower quality is of coil inductance can give auseful coil resistance and
mode. In this mode the amplitude
acceptable. improvement in frequency response inductance (and
falls at 6dB/octave as required for
At low frequencies the drive unit and linearity. Tweeters tend to be back EMF). Figure
constant velocity and flat frequency
becomes compliance controlled. Non- used well above their fundamental 213) shows how
response.
linearities in the suspension. and resonance, so the lack of damping current drive can be
A desirable result of current drive is
modulation of the BI product with there may not be an issue. achieved using a
that the effects of coil inductance and
coil position, will cause distortion At low frequencies, the use of load-current sense
inductance modulation are
whether voltage or current drive is current drive is less compelling resistor.
eliminated, along with changes in
sensitivity due to coil heating. This used. In fact given good engineering because the problem comes down to
will reduce HF distortion and extend and acorrectly designed resonance- one of precision drive unit design. If
the frequency response while compensation mechanism, voltage the suspension is non-linear, or if the
eliminating thermal compression and current drive would give exactly BI product changes as the coil moves
the same effect at low frequencies; because of an asymmetrical flux
effects. Both of these benefits are
well worth having. the sound quality would be limited by pattern, the choice of drive topology
the drive unit. is irrelevant.
Infinite output impedance Inductance modulation is negligible As has been stated countless times,
However, the down side of current at LF. The distortion there is to make afine loudspeaker it is
dominated by magnet and suspension necessary to have fine drive units. •
drive is that the infinite output

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355
May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD
 Power supply problems and
solutions are the subjects of this
second article describing
Norman Thagard's high-
performance, pick-up preamp,
which exhibits 0.006% THD up to
several kilohertz.

Phono preamp for the CD era

Reprinted with permission from Audio Xpress.

I
nthe second part of this preamp project, you'll discover the power supply in the same enclosure as the preamp.
that paying close attention to good power-supply design In the end, Idecided to take the conservative step of
and construction techniques offers its own rewards. placing the power supply. Fig. 1, in its own enclosure with
Ihave favoured on-board regulation since my digital the unregulated DC output supplied to the preamp through
design days. However, my amplifier designs have had aconnecting cable. So, Iused the old parts-bin transformer.
discrete regulators located on their own separate circuit If you want two true monaural channels, Iwould
boards. This was partly because Iused voltage-doubling recommend using two of the aforementioned toroids and
techniques that added enough bulk to the doubler/regulator duplicating everything. Iopted for the dual mono
that it was not practicable to place this circuitry on the configuration, where the transformer secondary is the last
preamplifier's PC board. common component with everything downstream
Here, Ireturned to my roots with small IC regulators electrically and electronically separate.
located on the preamp circuit board. A given power transformer can radiate at alevel
sufficient to induce hum in the preamp.' In theory, a
Choosing atransformer toroidal transformer would restrict its field to the torus.
The current requirement for each preamp channel is only Even so, it is probably better to locate the AC power
Fig. 1. 20mA per rail, with another few milliamps required for the portions of the system away from the signal portions. If that
Power-supply monolithic voltage regulator. Almost any transformer with is undesirable or impractical, Irecommend asmall toroidal
schematic. The sufficient secondary voltage should work. power transformer located as far from the preamp boards as
circuit in the Ihad a48V, centre-tapped 150mA transformer in my possible.
tinted area needs parts bin. Ialso obtained asmall 44V centre-tapped This is more than atheoretical consideration, since the
to be replicated toroidal transformer at 73mA in case Idecided to mount hum induced in this preamp when it was located
for each channel. immediately above the power amplifier's power
Switching fusing transformer was intolerably loud. This occurred even
the transformer +21V
R101
SW 1 though the prototype phono preamplifier is in asteel
T1 o
\c,
primary and the enclosure, and the power amplifier used two toroidal power
oL
capacitor ratings ▪ C103 ▪ Cum transformers.
10n•
will need to be Electrostatic shielding with aluminium will clearly not
GND 0E
chosen according prevent such hum induction. Simply locating the preamp
Star GND 1On'
to your country's • C104 + away from intense alternating magnetic fields is the most
C 102
mains supply and R 102 N cost-effective solution. Moving the preamp just 6inches
—21V
mains away from the amplifier reduced the hum below the
102
regulations.
D
'Mains ratedi audible level.

356
ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001
 AUDIO DESIGN

Rbi

C105

PCM:ge:
MtrMe

Fig. 2. Power-
supply board
parts placement
(left) and PCB
pattern (right).

Filter design assumed that the unregulated, but heavily filtered, output
With such asmall current requirement, it makes sense to voltage delivered to the preamplifier circuit board would be
try for additional ripple 'eduction by using two stages of no less than about 18V under worst-case conditions.
filtering. This takes advantage of very large, but still very The above relationships show that if you select the
compact, electrolytic capacitors, where the usual capacitor- full-wave rectifier, you will obtain 6dB more ripple
input power-supply filter is followed by an RC low-pass attenuation from the RC filter.
filter.
My criterion for the capacitor values was the size of those Ripple blips •
most readily available to me —four at 22001k, 50V and At 2mV/division, the ripple on an oscilloscope is barely
four at 4700g, 35V. The smaller capacitors are positioned visible, appearing almost as apulse train of small 'blips.'
as conventional capacitor-input filters, with one each in the The blips are probably due to the heavy current flow during
positive and negative power supplies for each channel. the short period during which charging current flows
Four 220e resistors connect the four 2200pF capacitors through the rectifier diodes to the 2200pF capacitors of the
to the four 4700pF capacitors. In this way, each positive capacitor-input filter.
and negative power supply of each channel follows the raw A small resistor between the diodes and the capacitors
DC output across the 2200pF capacitors with an RC filter would reduce the amplitude of the blips, but there is
of 1.034s time constant. This corresponds to afilter cut-off already heavy overkill here.
frequency of (2nRC) -1 =0.154MHz. Capacitors of 470pF As amatter of interest, if ripple were to be reduced to
would be perfectly acceptable. 10mV with acapacitor input filter alone, the charging
The total amount of ripple attenuation provided by the current through the rectifier diode would be about 5A —
filter circuitry depends on whether you use half- or full- even though load current is amere 25mA. Charge is the
wave rectification. Iknow that this is almost always full- product of current and time. The charge removed from the
wave in high-end equipment. However, the amount of filter capacitor during the 16.7ms cycle time T(T=8.3ms in
ripple attenuation is so high that either type is acceptable in afull-wave rectified supply) must be restored to the
this application. It may be that the 60Hz hum from residual capacitor during the short (in awell-designed supply)
ripple in ahalf-wave supply is less objectionable than any recharge period,
120Hz hum from full-wave rectification. 2 If recharge (diode) current is considered constant (it is
The idea is, of course, that no audible hum be present no not, but the approximate answer so obtained is sufficient),
matter which rectification scheme you use. There is no then,
audible hum produced by residual ripple in this preamp /,L,„ xT=1
„,,,,„, xAt
with the power supply described here —asupply that uses
half-wave rectifiers. Solving this expression for charging current yields,
Since ripple is attenuated by afactor of ten (20dB) for T ,
each decade that the ripple frequency lies above the filter 'RECHARGE = X

cut-off frequency, the second stage of filtering here

provides, 20dB/decadex2.6 decades=52dB of additional This formula already suggests that charging current will be
much greater than load current 3 because the small charging
reduction where.
interval At is so short in comparison to the relatively long
60Hz
=390 cycle period T.
0.154Hz Although diode conduction actually continues past the
number of decades is x, where 10e=390; peak capacitor voltage Vpeak ,if you assume that conduction
begins at time At before it ceases at Veal,. then voltage
log 10x=x=log390=2.6 magnitude at the onset of conduction is VeukcoscoAt.
For this application, Ichose 220C1 for the filter resistors. I The quantity °ea is the diode conduction angle, and for a

357
May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD
 AUDIO DESIGN

half-wave rectifier the ripple frequency is ct.377s -1 .The

peak-to-peak ripple voltage is therefore, From this, it follows immediately that,
V,ippi
e=Vpeak— VeakCOSCIlda. 0.0167
'RECHARGE 0.0000825.09A
x0.025A =
Remember that coed is intentionally made small to reduce
ripple so that the trigonometric approximation, A pretty impressive number.
Current //DAD is constant at about 25mA and the
cosuet a.I——
I(o.àdàt).
2
2 capacitor discharges for almost the entire 16.7ms period T.
The formula for the discharge of acapacitor at aconstant
is valid. If the output voltage of the supply is to be about current leads to Vripple =k0AD T/C. For the 2wog filter
2IV, then you can solve for, capacitors then,
Fig. 3. Preamp- 12%'_' / yea )1" 0.025 x0.0167 0.189V
V
enclosure z 0.0022
construction
pictorial. [2(0.00/ 21] 1F2 Surge current through the diode in the preamp power
z82 jis supply is of the order of 1.2A. This is still apretty startling
377 number, but the surge ratings on even small rectifier
diodes are well in excess of this.
For example, a1N4002 diode has a30A surge rating, but
is sold as a1 A rectifier. It should be clear why surge
ratings need to be so much higher than the average DC
load-current rating.
A capacitor of almost 42000g would be required to
reduce the ripple to 10mV. Using the additional RC filter
reduces the almost 200mV ripple to less than 0.5mV with
far smaller capacitors.
It is enlightening —even eye opening —to look at things
like this. Many designers treat power supply design very
casually. Iused to, too, until it bit me.

Voltage regulators
Unregulated output voltage from the rectifier/filter will
vary, depending on the power transformer secondary
voltage under load. Measured voltage was 24V at acurrent
draw of 25mA with the transformer that Iused.
Once you've selected the actual transformer, you could
simply increase the resistor value in the RC
filter. Better still, you could add yet another
+18 to +28V
stage of RC filter so that approximately I5V
would be presented to the preamplifier under
GND
load. In either case, it would require no voltage
-18 to -28V
regulator.
Star GND
While you are certainly free to use other
Turntable GND schemes, the one chosen here was to use
+18 to +28V
78L IS and 79L15 IC voltage regulators on the
preamplifier circuit boards to supply the
GND
needed ±15V power rails. The regulators are
-18 to -28V
part of the main preamplifier circuit shown in
last month's issue. Voltages from the
regulators were limited to aI5V magnitude
because of the 30V drain-to-source voltage limitation of
the 2SJ109 JFETs.
Some features of on-card regulation are discussed in
National Semiconductor's Voltage Regulator Handbook. 4
This publication is agood general reference for power-
supply design.
As always, there are constraints you must consider. If the
unregulated voltage is too high, the voltage and/or power-
dissipation limits of the regulators will be exceeded. If this
voltage is too low, then the regulator will 'drop out.' This
means that it will cease to regulate because some active
device within it is no longer in its active operating region.
Although these limitations are slightly different for the
78LI5 and 79LI5 regulators, the worst-case limits require
an unregulated voltage magnitude in the range
≤28V. These regulators are widely
available from several manufacturers, including the
replacement series manufacturers such as ECG, NTE, and
RCA.
Since parts numbers will vary. he careful to select

358
ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001
 AUDIO DESIGN

Fig. 4. Power-supply-enclosure construction

pictorial.

+21V
GND
-21V
Star GND
+21V
GND
-21V

Live
Earth
Neutral

)* R104 e

regulators whose output-voltage tolerances are guaranteed

to be within t5%. There are even tighter-tolerance devices Parts for the power supply
available if you wish to go to the trouble and expense of Resistors
finding them, but it really isn't necessary to do so. R101,102 220Q, 2W, 2% metal
In the interests of stability, each regulator will require
the input capacitor shown, unless you place the regulator Capacitors
immediately at the output of the unregulated supply. C101,102 2200p F, 50V aluminum electrolytic
With the recommended value for the 79L15's input C103,104 4700pF, 35V aluminum electrolytic
capacitor, there was an intermittent, low-amplitude, high-
frequency oscillation. This Itamed by increasing the Transformer
capacitor value to lg. For consistency, Ialso used IMF T1 48V ct at 150mA (see text)
input capacitors for the 78L15 regulators.
A case could be made for deriving first-stage supplies
from the output of the 78L15/79L15 regulators by using The mating portion of the jacks extend out beyond the
yet another RC filter, or perhaps azener. This would mean board's edge. This arrangement allows unimpeded
that the first stage would operate at some lower voltage. connection to the jack of the RCA plug from the toneann.
This should be no problem, however, given that the output Isoldered a0.0IpF ceramic-disc capacitor to the ground
swing demanded from the first stage is significantly less trace immediately adjacent to the ground trace connection
than that required from the second. of the input jack, and soldered the other end of the
capacitor to asolder lug. In turn, Igrounded this lug to the
Putting it together chassis via the screw attaching the PC board to the nearby
Layout and construction details are reasonably well metal stand-off.
described in Figs 2-4. Nonetheless, Ishould elaborate on a A stand-off under each corner of the board provides its
few of the details. secure mounting to the chassis while ensuring that the
As adesigner, Ialways think about the possibility of bottom of the board does not contact the chassis. All four
modification or repair of the device, especially for the stand-offs should obviously be of the same height. You
prototype version. For that reason, Iliberally employ can make them either of metal or insulating material,
quick-disconnects (QDs) as well as transistor and IC except that, as described earlier, the one to which the
sockets. The JFETs are not socketed here though because solder lug is attached must be made of conducting
of their unusual pin-out. material.
The power cable between power supply and preamplifier Imade the connection between the inner-conductor
enclosure has QDs at both ends. If you use QDs on this (centre) connector lug of the input jack and the board trace
cable, be sure that it has male connectors at the power- to inductor L1with avery short piece of uninsulated wire,
supply end and female connectors at the preamp end. In since the jack was mounted immediately adjacent to LI.
this way, even if you use Molex header-type connectors, Similarly, Istrapped and grounded the output RCA jack at
the 'hot' connector pins are not exposed. the board's edge, but made the connection between its
Ihave serious reservations about claims of sonic effects inner-conductor connector lug and the appropriate board
of QD metals. Even so, Ifavour gold connectors because trace with small-gauge shielded cable because of the
of past experience with other types' reliability problems distance involved. The shield of this cable is only
due to corrosion. grounded at the phono-jack end.
Imounted chassis-mount RCA jacks to the edge of the With this mounting arrangement of the jacks, it was
PC board, and used uninsulated wire to both strap and necessary to drill holes only in the front panel of the
ground the sleeve (outer portion) of each jack to the board. preamp enclosure, allowing the RCA jacks to protrude

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 359

 AUDIO DESIGN

almost completely outside the enclosure. To do this, the front R12. Unless you used severely mismatched BiTs in the
edge of the PC board must contact the inner side of the front current mirrors, cascocle current should be OK.
panel of the enclosure. Ialways check the power-supply voltages before Iconnect
The front-panel holes for the jacks must be sufficiently the rails to the circuit. Ialso use current-limited bench power
large that neither the jack nor the shield connector portion of supplies for breadboard work, and aVariace for initial power
any connected RCA plug contacts the front panel. Also be up and check-out of the prototype version of anew design or
sure that no other PC board component or trace contacts the after repairs.
front panel. The presence of the 220(1 resistors in the power supply
You could achieve the same effect more easily by using affords short-term protection against short circuits
PC-mount RCA jacks. If you use such jacks, you must downstream, but in the long term, their resulting power
modify the board's trace pattern accordingly. dissipation would exceed their rating. The IC voltage
regulators are internally protected against short circuits.
Avoiding grounding problems
Some attention to the grounding scheme is required. For one In summary
thing, there are differences among various turntables, Ithink that this pretty well covers the whys and wherefores
tonearms, and even cartridges in the way grounding is of this design. It is asatisfying approach from the standpoint
handled. For that reason, the actual interconnections may be of precision in arelatively simple discrete design. The THD
different, depending upon the builder's specific system and was only about 0.006% up to several kilohertz, rising to
its components. It will probably be true that most builders 0.026% at 20kHz with a0.5V RMS output.
will be very familiar with the schemes that work best in their Obviously, it is possible to achieve significantly lower
systems. levels of THD with higher open-loop gain and therefore
Iemphasise again that the RCA input and output more feedback. It is difficult to do so, however, with the
connectors are insulated from the enclosure. It is important precise active-passive equalisation scheme realised through
that the input connectors be grounded to chassis only through just two one-stage op-amps, as Idid here. The proponents of
the lOnF capacitors as shown. 'less is better' —and especially those sceptical of the benefits
While Iunderstand that isolating the input connector of negative feedback —will appreciate this trade-off.
ground from the chassis avoids aground loop, Ihave never As for listening attributes, the sound is open and dynamic.
seen areason given for the capacitors. Iassume they are for You hear no stridency, even on massed strings. The bass is
RF bypass, given the small capacitance value. awesome, and Ihave no explanation for this. Ido not know
These capacitors may be disc-ceramic types. Voltage rating about the Adcom or Marantz preamps, but otherwise it is
is probably not critical, but since 10n, IkV disc-ceramic true that there are no coupling capacitors in the signal path —
capacitors are used as AC-line filters for the power supply, it even at the input of the power amplifier currently in my
is convenient to make all of these capacitors the same and system. This was possible because the servo limited DC
perhaps save on quantity purchases. offset at around 600e. Still, there should be no perceptible
A ground loop can occur anyway if the cartridge or difference in bass, even with coupling capacitors, as long as
tonearm cable connects both channel grounds at the turntable the low-frequency cut-off is well below the lower limit of
end. If acontinuity check indicates this situation, then break hearing.
the potential loop by opening the shield connection at the It is simply amazing how many good recordings there were
turntable end for one channel only. 6 If that is not possible, in the days of vinyl. The ambience in the few Mercury
you can try omitting one shield connection to the PC board at Living Presence records that Ihave is remarkable. Iam
the preamplifier end for one channel only. sceptical of many 'golden ear' claims of magical qualities of
Iam not sure whether this, of itself, will give satisfactory amplifiers and preamplifiers and Iattribute none to this
results, because signal ground for that channel then comes design. Isimply assert that this phono preamp is good
circuitously from the other channel to the power supply and enough to accurately reproduce the information that is in the
back to the first channel. Ihave seen amplifiers oscillate with recording medium.
such circuitous ground paths. Ibelieve you will thoroughly enjoy its use, provided that
As an alternative, after breaking one shield connection for other components in the stereo system are equally good. I
the PC-board RCA input jack, connect the ground trace of continue to be impressed with the sound even after several
both channels' PC boards together and break the ground weeks. The more usual case is to be very impressed initially,
return to the power supply for one channel only. with the enthusiasm fading after the first few listenings.
Some turntable/tonearm combinations offer an optional Iam listening at higher volume levels than before. This
ground lead for connection to the preamplifier chassis. may be asign of lower apparent distortion, since there is a
Accommodation of this option is the reason for the binding tendency to adjust volume to alevel just below that at which
post labelled 'Turntable GND' on Fig. 3. The decision distortion begins to be objectionable. •
whether or not to connect this optional ground lead is based
empirically on the situation that results in the least hum.
For my system, the SME3009 tonearm cable provides this References
optional ground lead, which, at the tonearm end, is connected I. Manny Horowitz, 'How to Build Solid-State Audio
to the turntable platform of aThorens ID 125. Connection of Circuits', Tab Books/No. 606, 1972, (pp. 311-12).
the optional ground to the preamplifier binding post is the 2. Manny Horowitz, 'How to Build Solid-State Audio
preferred configuration in my case, since this reduces hum Circuits', Tab Books/No. 606, 1972, (p. 297).
below the audible level. 3. Mark N. Horenstein, 'Microelectronic Circuits and
At the power supply, only one chassis interconnection Devices', Second Edition, Prentice Hall, 1996, (Problem
point should exist. This is nicely illustrated in Fig. 4, which 4.79, p. 225).
also indicates what is meant by such terms as 'Star GND.' 4. Voltage Regulator Handbook, National Semiconductor
Corporation, 1975, (p. 1-1).
Setup and adjustment 5. The ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs, The American
No adjustments are required. It is agood idea, as mentioned Radio Relay League, 1997, (p. 11.24).
in the text, to verify the differential amplifier currents by 6. Manny Horowitz, 'How to Build Solid-State Audio
measuring the voltage across current source resistors R5 and Circuits', Tab Books/No 606, 1972, (pp. 314-15)

360 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORID 16 I

 Power tor the
Sources of energy can have massive implications for all sectors of
life, from the environment to lifestyles, but one alternative energy
source is making waves. Chris Evans-Pughe looks at fuel cells

D
everyday mass-market needs. But The US Department of Energy
elve into the subject
of renewable energy surf alittle further and you'll find projects that if 10 per cent of cars in
sources and you may fuel cells —probably the most the US were powered by fuel cells,
end up in aseries of commercially promising renewable regulated air pollutants would be cut
windmill-strewn, energy technology, and one of by one million tons per year and
solar-panelled growing interest to the electronics carbon dioxide by 60 million tons.
alternative websites populated by industry. The companies developing fuel
noble eco-types who apparently At the heavy-duty end of the cells for portable electronics
This image have the patience to wait half aday energy market, governments, utility applications have different
shows Energy to cook dinner in abox of hay. companies and car firms are motivations. They're interested in
Related Devices' Someone should tell them about embracing fuel cell technology. the technical advantages of a
methanol pizza delivery... I'm kidding. Their zeal is mainly due to pressure significantly longer operating time
powered fuel Alternative energy ideas are to cut emissions prompted by than today's batteries, cheap fuel
great, but not suitable for most concerns about climate change. and are-fuel time of seconds.
According to Motorola Energy
Systems, fuel cells would be able to
power amobile phone for over 30
days and keep alaptop running for
20 hours. Consequently, fuel cells
may be ideal for handling the
increased power needs of
multifunction mobile applications
such as 30 that will support video
and Internet surfing.
A fuel cell is across between an
engine and abattery. Like an
engine, afuel cell will run as long
as fuel (hydrogen) is supplied. Like
abattery, it produces electricity by
electrochemical reactions.
A fuel cell comprises two
electrodes and an electrolyte.
Hydrogen is fed into the anode and
oxygen —or air —enters through the
cathode. Encouraged by acatalyst,
the hydrogen atom splits into a
proton and an electron, which take
different paths to the cathode. The
proton passes through the
electrolyte. The electrons create a
separate current that can be used
before they return to the cathode, to
be reunited with the hydrogen and
oxygen to form water.
The first fuel cell was built in

362 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 ow generatio
1839 by aWelsh judge called Sir
William Grove, but the technology
wasn't really used until the sixties,
when the US space program chose
fuel cells for the Gemini and Apollo 02
spacecraft. et e- From
Nowadays there are many Electric Circuit air
varieties of fuel cell around. At the 02
U2

o
high end are industrial systems
using phosphoric acid and molten H+ +
0 2
carbonate. At the very alternative H+ Polymer H H+
end are entertaining concepts such Fuel Electrolyte H+ I
as University of South Florida's Anode Catalyst Membrane Cathode Catalyst
microbial fuel cell. This can be
powered by food, preferably meat
because of its higher energy
density. Within the fuel cell are
bacteria that speed the breakdown H 20
of its food-fuel, releasing electrons Exhaust
that charge abattery.
The systems of most interest for able to last up to ten times longer afuel cell powered domestic A PEM cell
electronics are proton exchange than existing rechargeable batteries. vacuum cleaner. uses acatalyst
membrane (PEM) —the technology Fuel cell powered cell phones could The NovArs approach to fuel cell to split
being used by firms such as Ballard be fuelled by asmall methanol design uses composite materials hydrogen into
for cars —and direct methanol fuel reservoir about the size of an ink-pen and sealing technology to minimise Ft+ ions and
cells (DMFC). Both systems can cartridge. size and weight. According to electrons. They
operate at relatively low Energy Related Devices —ERD founder Dr Arthur Koschany, PEM recombine
temperatures —from 40 to 80°C — for short —is another Los Alamos- systems have an energy density of with oxygen to
have high power densities and can based firm working on miniature nearly 100 times that of DMFCs form water.
vary their output quickly to meet DMFCs for cell phone power making them less bulky for higher Diagram
shifts in power demand. supplies. ERD's micro fuel cell is power applications. courtesy of
PEM systems include afuel made with multiple layers of thin Koschany sees two main Breakthrough
reformer so they can use the films. The alcohol side of the film challenges to commercialising the Technologies
hydrogen from any hydrocarbon contains acatalyst that breaks the technology for electronics. The first Institute/Fuel
fuel. DFMCs are less efficient but alcohol down into hydrogen ions and is price. The second is more Cells 2000.
have the advantage that the anode carbon dioxide. technical. "The price can be low
catalyst draws the hydrogen directly The firm says its fuel cells can be only if we can make them in high
from methanol, eliminating the need made inexpensively using aprinting enough quantities and this will
for areformer. process similar to the manufacture of involve considerable investment,"
Development work going on in ICs. It hopes to have production he says.
Los Alamos, New Mexico looks to prototypes this year. "Technically, we need asource
be the most significant for portable ERD is funded by New York- of hydrogen because compressed
applications. Companies including based Manhattan Scientifics that gases are not appropriate for using
Motorola Labs and recently also owns NovArs —aGerman with electronics. We are
Mechanical Technology are working company in Passau developing developing hydrogen generating
with Los Alamos National PEM fuel cells to provide small chemical hydrides for this purpose
Laboratory to develop miniature external power supplies for and these then need to be integrated
DMFC devices to replace batteries products such as DVD players and into the fuel cell."
in laptop computers and mobile laptop computers. NovArs plans to have apilot
phones. NovArs is also looking at production line running in 2002 to
Motorola's fuel cells are two to domestic appliance applications produce quantities in the order of
four years away from amarket and recently announced ajoint thousands. Full commercialisation
launch, but the company says its agreement with Electrolux to is three to four years away reckons
liquid methanol-powered cell will be develop an evaluation prototype of Koschany.

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 363

 II I ;I
The definitive biography of the
century's godfather of in
the pre-eminent Edison scholar "Israel's
meticulous research and refusal to shy
away from the dodgier aspects of
Edison's personality offers a fresh
glimpse into the life of the inventor."-
New Scientist

"Remarkable."- Nature

"An authoritative look into Edison's

working methods, here leavened by
enough personal detail to give the
achievements shape."-Publishers
Weekly

"Israel's book should go a long way

toward taking Edison out of the
shadows and placing him in the proper
light."-Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Exhaustively researched, with strong

Post your completed order form to:-
emphasis on Edison's methods and
Jackie Lowe, Room 1514, Quadrant House,
achievements."-Kirkus Reviews
The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5AS

The conventional story of Thomas Fax your completed order form to 020 8652 8111
UK Price: £15.00 Europe £17.00 ROW £19.00
Edison reads more like myth than
Price includes delivery
history: With only three months of
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man overcomes the odds and becomes How to pay
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thoroughly realized portrait of a Cardholder's statement address: (please use capitals)
burgeoning country on the brink of Name
massive change. Informed by Israel's
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unprecedented access to workshop
diaries, notebooks, letters, and more
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HP8165A Programmable signal source -1MHz 50Mcis - MAIN 3 •18GHz -N Socket -COO.
Elk '
854 -7104 - 60540 o ter 800MC.'S•18GHz -£600.
Pis A11-7Al2 1 1 719 -2-7x24- 6246A Counter 20Hz-26GHz -£1.2K.
HP3455/3456A Digital voltmeter £400.
A42-7B1 1 B8 7892A- 6244A Mi oCounter 20Hz-4.5GHz -£400.
HP5370A Universal time interval counter -Elk.
HP5335A Universal counter -200Mcfs-11000. 5- 20. 3528 Micro Counter OPT 010-005•46GHz -new in box -
K 7000 -7S -S1-S2-S3A
TEKTRONIX 577 Curve tracer •adaptors 1800.
TEKTRONIX 1502/1503 TOR cable tesL 140G. S51 S5 ,
-554 HP5340A oCo r10Hz-18GHz -Nixey -£500.
21A-6623A- HP53 Cou -18-24GHz -£800-£1K -OPTS
HP8699B Sweep PI VIO oscillator .0
types £P0 001- 0 e.
MF -1250. Both £00.
Dummy Loads & Power an up to 2.5 FX up to HP53 rce Synchronizer -£1.5K.
•K HP a o equency
18GHz -microwave parts new and ex e -relays - HP53 11 Digit LED Readout -1400.
d hich whe o cket of a
attenuators switches -waveguides -Yigs SMA APC7 P534 5 54A Plugin -4GHz -£700.
SIG erator do u EG 50-1
plugs adaptors etc qty. in stock. 345 •5355A Plugin with 5356A 18GHz Head -£1K.
to 50-2600 450 each.
B&K Items in stock •ask for list. 385A 1GHz 5386A-5386A 3GHz Counter -£1K-£2K.
SPEr. UMA Racal/Dana Counter 1991-160MC/S -1200.
Power Supplies Heavy duty • bench in stock -Farnell •HP- ,

Weir -Thurlby -Racal etc. Ask for list. Large quantity in P Hz-50k 50. Racal/Dana Counter 1992-1.3GHz -1600.
stock, all types to 400 amp 100Kv. ' al 0.2Hz-25.5kHz Racal/Dana Counter 9921-3GHz -£350.
HP8405A Vector voltmeter -late colour -1400. ‘11 Hz-40MC/S -
HP13508A Vector voltmeter £2500.
•
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A 100H .5 HP8640A -AM-FM 0.5-512-1024MC/S -£200-£400.
LIGHT AND OPTICAL EQUIPMENT HP 85688 100 P8640I3 -Phase locked -AM-FM-0.5-512-1024MC S
Anritsu ML93A & Optical Lead Powert HP 85 500-£1.2K. Opts 1-2-3 available.
Anritsu ML9313 & Optical Lead Powa Hz) -£3 HP8654A -B AM-FM 10MC.'S-520MC/S -1300.
Power Sensors for above MASSA MA98A -MA lyzer 15Hz-50 HP8656A SYN AM-FM 0.1-990MC/S -£900,
Battery Pack M295A. Hz OPT 2-12, HP8656B SYN AM-FM 0.1-990MC/S -11.5K.
Anritsu MW97A Pulse EctIO Hz-21GHz OPT 1-2-3 HP8657A SYN AM-FM 0.1-1040MC/S -12K.
PI available MH914C 1.3- MI45158 1.3 -MH913B 0.85 - TEKINQAP 50kHz-21GHz OPT 1-2 HP8660C SYN AM-FM-PM-0.01-1300MC/S-2600MC/S -C2K.
MH925A 1.3 -MH929A 1.55111011125/1 1.3GI MH914C TEK492BP 50kHz-21GHz -£3,000-£4 HP8660D SYN AM-FM-PM-0.01-1300MC/S-2600MCS -C3K.
1.3SM •£500 one Pl. TEK495 100kHz-1.8GHz -£2,000. HP8673D SYN AM-FM-PM-0.01-26.5 GH1 -112K
Anritsu MW98A Time Domain Reflector HP 8557A 0.01MC/S-350MCIS -1500. MF180T or 180C - HP3312A Function Generator AM-FM 13MC/S-Dual -1300.
PI available -MH914C 1.3 -MH91513 1.3 -MH913B 085 - £150 1821 -£500. HP3314A Function Generator AM-FM-VC0-20MCiS -£600.
MH925A 1.3 -MH929A 1.55 -MH925A 1.3GI •MH914C HP 8558B 0.01-1500MC,'S -1750- MF1130T or 180C -£150 - HP3325A SYN Function Generator 21MC/S -£800.
1.3SM •£500 •one Pl. 1827 £500. HP3326A SYN 2CH Function Generator 13MC S•IEEE -
Anritsu MZ100A E0 Converter HP 8559A 0.01-21GHz -£1,000 -MF180T or 180C -1150 £1 4K
•MG9126 ILD 1.351 Light Source uMG926 (LD 0.85) 1821 £500. HP3336A-B-C SYN Func/Level Gen 21MC/S -1400-£300-
Light Source £350. HP 8901A AM FM Modulation ANZ Meter -£800. 0500
Anritsu MZ118A 0 EConverter HP 8901B AM FM Modulation ANZ Meter -£1,750. Racal/Dana 9081 SYN AM-FM-PH-5-520MC S -£300.
•MH922A 0.8 0 E unit •MFt923 A1.3 0 Eunit £350 HP 8903A Audio Analyzer -11,000 Racal/Dana 9082 SYN S G AM-FM-PH-1.5-520MC S -1400
Anritsu ML96B Power Meter & Charger £450. HP 8903B Audio Analyzer - '500 Racal/Dana 9084 SvN SO AM CM 001-104MC S

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(/R( /F NO. 119 ON REPLY CARD
 Available exclusively from
Electronics World

Amazing music
21 trac-ks -72 minutes of
recordings made between
1900 and 1929. These
electronically derived
reproductions are no worse
than -and in many cases
better than -reproductions of
early 78rev/min recordings -
some are stunning...

All tracks on this CD were recorded

Pandora's drums
on DAT from cylinders produced in
the early 1900s. Considering the age
of the cylinders, and the recording
techniques available at the time, these
Unique and atmospherié music recorded tracks are of remarkable quality,
having been carefully replayed using
modern electronic technology by
in the early 1900s — the days before 78s. historian Joe Pengelly.

Use this coupon to order your copy of Track

Pandora's drums 1 Washington Post March Band. 1909
2 Good Old Summertime. The American Quartet 1904
Please send me CD(s) at £11.99 each 3 Marriage Bells Bells & xylophone duet, Burckhardt & Daab
including VAT plus carriage per order UK.
with orchestra, 1913
or overseas for which Ienclose:
4. The Volunteer Organist Peter Dawson. 1913
Cheque 5. Dialogue For Three. Flute. Oboe and Clarinet, 1913
6. The Toymaker's Dream. Foxtrot, vocal, B.A. Rolfe and his
Credit card details J tick as appropriate orchestra, 1929
7 As ISat Upon My Dear Old Mother's Knee Will Oakland, 1913
Name
8 Light As A Feather, Bells solo, Charles Daab with orchestra,
AddPess 1912
9 ,Dn Her Pic-Pic-Piccolo, Billy Williams, 1913
10 Polka Des English's, Artist unknown, 1900
11 Somebody's Coming To My House Walter Van Brunt, 1913
Phone number 12 Bonny Scotland Medley. Xylophone solo, Charles Daab with
orchestra, 1914
Total amount
13 Join the Fiaccoc• Billy Murray, 1929
Make cheques payable to Reed Business Information Group. 14 Luce Mia! Francesco Daddi, 1913
Or, please debit my credit card. 15 The Olio Minstrel 2nd part, 1913
16 Peg 0' My Heart. Walter Van Brunt, 1913
Card type (Master/Visa)
17 Auf Dem Mississippi, Johann Strauss orchestra, 1913
Card No
18 I'm Looking For A Sweetheart And IThink You'll Do. Ada
Expiry date
Jones & Billy Murray, 1913
Please mail this coupon to Electronics World, together with 19 Intermezzo. Violin solo, Stroud Haxton, 1910
payment. Alternatively fax credit card details with order on 0208
852 8111. Address orders and all correspondence relating to this 20 A Juanita. Abrego and Picazo, 1913
order to Pandora's drums, Room 514. Electronics World, 21 All Alone. Ada Jones, 1911
Quadrant House. The Quadrant, Sutton. Surrey SM2 5AS.

Total playing time 72.09

21 tracks - 72 minutes of music
Published by Electronics World All recordings reproduced by Joe Pengelly
 ÀPRODUCTS
Please quote Electronics World when seeking further information

64-tap pots with four system designer automatically RF channel emulator

save resistance values during
6-bit E2PROM registers with modelling feature
power down and preset values
Xicor has introduced the X9421 to suit system demands. The Telecom Analysis Systems has
and X9429 64-tap, single X9421 communicates via a added adynamic channel
supply, non-volatile digital serial port supporting the SPI modelling feature to its 4500
potentiometer ICs. The devices interface, while the X9429 uses Flex5 RF channel emulator.
are for applications in which a atwo-wire interface. Both Available from Sematron, the 3G è •C;( -fob o = ill MI
CI -• el II •
variable resistance value must operate from a2.7V single power-delay-profile emulation
be maintained during the supply voltage and each has mode can be programmed to
system manufacturing process. four non-volatile registers that provide time-varying RF channel
They have four 6-bit EEPROM can be individually profiles that let it meet and
registers per potentiometer for programmed. Applications exceed CDMA2000 and W-
storage of tap settings and include fibre optic modules, RF CDMA test specifications. It recei‘er pick up multiple signal
system parameters. This lets the amplifier biasing, LCD implements adynamic, mobile paths over time and select the
brightness control, power propagation environment for strongest rather than the average,
supply calibration, battery time-sensitive algorithms such as which may be several decibels
operated applications and rake finger management and less than the strongest. This is for
vending machines. They can wide band channel estimation. It testing smart antennas that are
recover their last position after a also implements moving- proposed for 3G networks where
power down cycle and suit propagation and birth-death up to four TAS4500 units can be
manufacturing applications that channel models in accordance combined. It also provides the
use preset analogue system with 3G specifications. These ability to go beyond two-path
values. Standby current is two classes of channel models dynamic models by letting all its
200nA typical and 5µA emulate the temporal variations paths be independently varied
maximum. in the propagation channel by over time.
Xicor changing delay spread Sematron
Tel: 01993 700544 characteristics versus time. A Tel. 01256 81222
www.xicor.com diversity technique lets the www.sematron.com

32-bit micros based on v850E Risc architecture

NEC has introduced 32-bit microcontrollers based on V850E Risc
architecture with programmable CAN gateway engines. The Atomic
and Cargate devices have ahardware-based CAN that lets them serve
as gateways for communication between networks within the vehicle.
This function lets them manage multiple tasks simultaneously from up
to five automotive networks, such as the power train, navigation system
or comfort control system. By implementing the CAN bridge in
hardware, the microcontroller relieves the CPU of routine tasks, such
data transfer from one message buffer to another. Time triggered
functionality lets signals be delivered based on time slots rather than
arbitrary external events. Time out monitoring lets the microcontrollers
anticipate the receipt of critical messages in adefined time frame. For
example, an air bag system can be programmed to communicate with
the microcontroller regularly, and then the microcontroller will
investigate if no message is received. The Atomic controller supports
three CAN interfaces and includes 256kbit on chip ROM and
peripherals such as LCD controller, 12 channel A/D converter and
various 16 and 32-bit timers. The Cargate has 128kbit ROM and
supports five CAN interfaces. Flash memory versions of both are also
available to support secure self-programming of the memory.
NEC Electronics
Tel: 01908 691133
www.nec.corn

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

Please quote Electronics World when seeking further information

Digital baseband for are optional, while terminals tolerance 20 per cent and
three, four and five are fixed. allowable ripple 190 to 930mA
Eureka DAB radios depending on capacitance and
Pin assignment is according to
Texas Instruments has unveiled IS07880. Limiting continuous working voltage. The radial
areference design and single- current is up to 70A at 23°C or lead capacitors measure 12.5 or
chip digital baseband for 50A at 85°C. Nominal voltages 25mm diameter by 12.5mm
Eureka DAB radios to help are 12 and 24V; a24V version high and are available with
make products such as with acontact gap more than trimmed or formed leads.
integrated digital radios and 0.8mm can be supplied. Nichicon
Internet audio players for Nominal unsuppressed power Tel: 01276 685531
automotive, portable and home consumption is 1.6W at the levw.nichicon-us.com
applications. The nominal voltage, typical
TMS320DRE200 digital operating time 7ms and release USB connectors take an
baseband includes time 2ms.
eighth of the space
programmable DSP technology Tyco Electronics
and Radioscape software. The Tel: 08706 080 208 The Mini-BTM USB
reference design contains WWW. tycoelectronics.com connectors from Molex take up
Solid-state relays for about an eighth the space of
components necessary to design
DC switching areceiver including the Inlet filters rated at 16 standard USB-B connectors.
Crydom has introduced its DRE200 baseband, analogue They are for portable
and 20A applications such as digital
DO6D chassis-mounting solid- parts and RF circuitry. The
state relays for DC switching baseband consumes less than Schaffner EMC has introduced cameras, cell phones and PDAs
applications. Rated at up to 200mW. The software lets users EN9222 IEC inlet filters rated and comply with USB 2.0,
100A DC at up to 60V DC, the add applications on top of the at 16 and 20A for applications which enables speeds up to
devices are for DC motor baseband, such as integrating from industrial machinery to 480Mbit/s. The design includes
control, solenoid switching, DC MP3 decoding with digital vending machines. They use the five circuits, with one reserved
lamp switching and battery radio on one chip. IEC320C20 connector and are for future use. Features of the
isolation. They can be operated Texas Instruments safety rated for IEC950 0.8mm pitch unit include metal
by an input of 3.2 to 32V DC, Tel: 01604 663000 applications. Other approvals shielding and grounding fingers
typically drawing 10mA. www.tLcom include VDE, UL, CSA and for EMI protection and alock
Mosfet output technology Semko. The 20A version has for secure mating. The
provides on-state resistance of Power relay module is dual 0.4mH inductors, with
10mil or less at full rated twin Y capacitors on the load
customisable side and one X capacitor on the
current, and simplifies
parallelling of devices. A power relay module that can line side.
Dielectric strength at 60Hz is be customised for automotive Schaffner
2.5kV rms and minimum requirements has been Tel: 0118 977 0070
insulation resistance at 500V introduced by Tyco Electronics. www.schaffner.com
DC is 1000Mû. Maximum Applications include power
input-output capacitance is windows, fuel pumps, power Electrolytics come in
50pF. They can operate in harsh sunroofs, wiper control, vehicle
laminated cases
environments regardless of lighting and cooling fans. With
orientation and there are no afootprint of 26.2 by 26.2mm The RU electrolytic capacitors
moving parts. UL and CSA and aheight of 25.2mm, the from Nichicon come in
approved, they are supplied in a F4/7 can be supplied with laminated cases and have
panel-mount package weighing plug-in terminals positioned to operating temperatures of —40
87g. IS07558 or terminals to +85°C at 6.3 to 400V and
Crydom preprepared for soldering to an —25 to +85°C at 450V. Working
Tel: 01202 857300 integrated PCB. Terminals one, voltage is 6.3 to 450V, connector is rated at 30V and
www.crydom.com two, six, seven, eight and nine capacitance 6.8 to 6800e, 1.0A. There are through-hole
and surface-mount versions,
both with an above-board
Two feed signal splitter height of 3.95mm. The SMT
The Faraday passive splitter provides two SDI or version includes four solder
AES feeds from one source. For short runs of cable, tabs for PCB retention, and is
it can replace digital distribution amplifiers. From a available with cover tape for
good SDI signal source it will support up to about pick-and-place equipment. The
40m of Belden 8281 cable. Typical uses are in cable plug has astandard length
small studios, edit suites and multiple displays in of 1.0m in Mini-B-to-USB-A
offices. The device is fitted with BNC connectors construction, with other lengths
and does not require apower supply. It may be available. The plug side can be
hung on the cable or, where multiple units are ordered as atested cable
required, fitted into a1U high 19in rack, which can assembly or plug component
be supplied.
Faraday Technology Molex
Tel: 01782 661501 Tel. 01252 720751
www.faradaytech.co.uk www.molex.com

368 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 NEW PRODUCT

Please quote Electronics World when seeking further information

SM capacitors extend to
100V DC rating
The VS surface mount Rectifier is efficient to 86 per cent
aluminium electrolytic International Rectifier has introduced computers. There is achoice between two
capacitors from Panasonic have topology-specific Hexfet power Mosfets for control parts, the IRF7468 and IRF7469, and
capacitance values from 0.1 to isolated and buck DC-to-DC converters. As two synchronous Mosfets, the IRF7470 and
1500µF. Rated working voltage DC-to-DC converter output voltages approach IRF7471. Synchronous buck topologies using
options are 4, 6.3, 10, 16, 25, 35, IV, the Mosfets increase efficiency by up to one the IRW7468 and IRF7470 reach an efficiency
50,63 and 100V DC. Case per cent. The 100V IRF7473 in an SO-8 of 82 per cent in 28V input, 1.3V output
diameters are lOmm for the package is for the primary stage of two-stage converters running at 300kHz. Four additional
highest capacitance parts, falling isolated converters with 48V input, 1.6V output Mosfets (IRF7453, IRF7450, IRF7451 and
to 3mm for devices with lower at 60A. Peak efficiency ratings up to 90 per IRF5801) have reduced on-resistance and gate
values. All capacitors with case cent can be achieved when it is matched with charge and are for 48V input, active and
diameters of 6.3mm or lower the IRF7822 synchronous rectification Mosfet. passive reset, primary-side isolated DC/DC
have heights of 5.4mm, while The IRF7473 can also be used in afull bridge converters below 30W.
the maximum board mounting configuration. The 40V Mosfets in SO-8 International Rectifier
height is 10.2mm. For operation packages work with a28V bus in notebook Tel: 0208 645 8003

FULL BRIDGE Ss t e
HALF BRIDGE
SINGLE FORWARD
TWO STAGE ISOLATED
SYNC BUCK, SINGLE PHASE

between —40 and +85°C, they

have maximum DC leakage
currents between 3and 611A and
ripple currents at 120Hz and
85°C are I inA rms for 0.1µF respectively. It supports up to daughter board is available. event latch-up immunity is to
devices and 700mA rms for the 512Mbyte of SDram and is Built in system monitoring and 83MeV/(mg/cm 2)and single
15001IF parts. based on the Intel 815E chipset. awatchdog timer are included. event upset capability is
Panasonic Industrial Onboard features include dual Portwell 38MeV/(mg/cm 2). It is available
Tel: 01344 853667 10/100baseT Ethernet, FSB up Tel: 01202 813816 in an eight-lead flatpack
www.pieLco.uk to 133MHz and an integrated www.por1well.co.uk package, either as QML class V
3D graphic controller with or Q.
SBC for Pentium Ill or DVMT and 4Mbyte display Intersil
Micro reset circuit is
cache. It is PICMG compliant Tel: 01344 350250
Celeron applications radiation-hardened
and has two UDMA dma 33,66 www.intersil.com
The Robo 678 single board or 100 IDE ports, one disk-on- Intersil has introduced a
computer from Portwell chip socket that supports up to radiation-hardened power-up Simulator software for
provides Intel Celeron or 288Mbyte of flash memory and microprocessor reset circuit. The
Star Power IS705RH can
high-speed networking
Pentium III processing power aPCI connector for expansion.
up to 600 or 850MHz An optional Ultra-160 SCSI monitor power supply voltage Ansoft has announced version
levels and interface with satellite 8.0 of its HFSS structure
control units to ensure proper simulator software. It is a
device operation during power- full-wave finite element
up. It sends areset pulse to the electromagnetic simulator that
microprocessor when the supply lets engineers design three-
reaches anominal operating dimensional structures such as
voltage of 4.65V. This prevents connectors, IC packages and
code execution errors that occur antennas in cellular telephones,
when signals are present on broadband communications
microprocessor inputs during systems and microwave circuits.
power-up. Features include a Models can be generated for
watchdog circuit that verifies physical layer transient
proper reset has occurred and simulations of Gigabit Ethernet
power-fail circuit for monitoring IC packages, boards and
other supply voltages. Single connectors, optoelectronic

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 369

 Please quote Electronics World when seeking further information

devices for broadband fibre for driving the sensors. A framers. Applications in the
modulators, receivers and camera control module consists access and switching
routers, and electronic devices of abuffer and bias board with infrastructure include access
for signal conversion in hybrid avideo logic board and concentrators, routers, and
fibre-coaxial systems. With the interfaces directly with the HV switches. It supports a
full-wave Spice add-on module, clock module allowing combination of channelised and
users can generate frequency- complete control of the CCD unchannelised DS3 signals.
dependent Spice models sensor. The camera Supported channelised formats
automatically from full-wave subassembly is acircuit include M23 and C-bit mode
electromagnetic field assembly where there is no case and supported T1 and J1
simulation. or lens mount. The incident formats include SF and ESF.
Ansoft light is converted directly into Features include performance
Tel: 0208 891 6106 signal electrons and read out monitoring and diagnostics such
www.ansoft.com through aport at normal video as network and local loopback.
frame rates allowing customer It is packaged in a304-pin
Op-amp operates on
Wafer-scale package control of functional modes. HBGA with power dissipations
supplies down to 2.5V Marconi of 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0W.
saves on space Linear Technology has Tel: 01245 493493 Vitesse
The USP-6 plastic moulded introduced the LT1807 dual www.marconitech.com Tel: 001 805 388 3700
package from Torex is about 3.5nV/N1Hz, rail-to-rail single www. vitesse.com
two-thirds the size of an SOT-25 supply amplifier. Gain Multiplexer IC with three
package. Doing away with the bandwidth product is 325MHz Accelerometer cuts
conventional lead frame, it and THD —80dBc at 5MHz. DS3 framers
measures 1.8 by 2.0 by 0.65mm Input common mode range Vitesse Semiconductor has
monitoring costs
and has a0.5mm pin pitch. includes both rails. The output introduced the Timestream Endevco has introduced the
Torex Semiconductor stage swings within 12mV of VSC9675 IC with three Piezopak 56 accelerometer for
Tel: 01509 211992 each rail for supplies down to integrated DS3 framers, M13 commercial and industrial OEM
WWW. torex. cajp 2.5V. Maximum offset voltage multiplexers and 84 T1 and 11 engineering. The device is
is less than 0.5mV, CMRR is
VDSL filters in a 106dB and signal voltage gain
300V/mV. Applications include
single package broadband digital
APC's APC77 110 and communications, data
APC77112 are integrated acquisition and video. Slew rate
hybrid filters for use with is 140V/ps, supply range 2.5 to
VDSL and 10baseS 12.6V and output current
applications. Compatible with 85mA. For operation over the
the Infineon PEB22810, 22811 industrial and commercial
and 22812 chipset, the temperature ranges, it is
components combine common available in eight-pin SOIC and
mode choke, hybrid and MSOP packages.
transmit and receive filters. Linear Technology
Samples are available to let Tel: 01276 677676
users evaluate central office and www.ansoft.com
user modem designs and for
field trials. A Pots ISDN low PC/104 board with Elan-400 CPU
pass filter (APC77101) is CCD products have
The PC/I04 Microspace MSM4865V module from
available to support designs 325MHz bandwidth Digital-Logic is an embedded board based on an AMD 66MHz
using either product. In system Marconi is launching products Elan-400 486SX CPU. Standard interfaces include aPS/2
tests over category five cable, based on its L3Vision CCD keyboard, mouse, printer, floppy disk drive, EIDE hard disc
the components connected at a technology, including scientific and four com ports. A clock-controlled 5to 3.3V DC-to-DC
symmetric data rate of 12Mbit/s sensors, modules, digital and converter has more than 90% efficiency. Power saving
to adistance of 1.21cm, analogue cameras and camera functions make it possible to control power consumption in the
supporting telephony subassemblies. Applications 50 to 710mA range. It operates within atemperature range of
applications. include night surveillance, —25 to +70°C and does not require active cooling. A version
APC industrial monitoring, dynamic for —40 to +85°C is also available. Dram can be extended from
Tel: 01634 290588 bio-sciences, machine vision 4to 32Mbyte. Two flash technologies are available —program
www.apc-pic.co.uk and astronomy. The sensors use memory with capacities of 0.5 to 8Mbyte with aflash file
an output amplifier circuit to system or an IDE hard disk-compatible flash drive that can be
Me. improve vision at low light directly attached to the module. Features include an eight by
levels. Scientific and TV rate 16 key matrix decoder, watchdog and E2PROM for saving the
sensor formats, including 512 setup settings. Graphics support is provided by aChips &
and 1024 pixels, are being Technologies 65548 and 65550 SVGA controller with 1Mbyte
rif qe> ..• developed. Drive circuitry of video memory.
elit .., comes in two compatible Digital Logic
..--
,-, formats. The HV clock module Tel: 00 41 32 681 5800
provides all the inputs required www.digitalogic.com

370 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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(to name but afew).
The aerial consists of an outdoor head unit with a control
2N 2SA 2SB 2SC 2SD 2P 2SJ 2SK 3N 3SK 4N 6N 17 40 AD
and power unit and offers exceptional intermodulation ADC AN AM AY BA BC BD BDT BDV BDW BDX BF
performance: SOIP +90dBM, TOIP +55dBm. For the first BFR BFS BFT BFW BFX BFY BLY BLX BS BR BRX BRY BS
time this permits full use of an active system around the If BSS BSV BSW BSX BT BTA BIB BRW BU BUK BUT BUV
and mf broadcast bands where products found are only BUW BUX BUY BUZ CA CD DX CXA DAC DG DM DS
those radiated from transmitter sites DTA DTC GL GM HA HCF HD HEF ICL ICM IRF JKA
• General purpose professional reception 4kHz-30MHz. KIA L LA LB LC LD LF LM M M5M MA MAB MAX MB
MC MDA JMJE MJF MM MN MPS MPSA MPSH MPSU
• —10dB gain, field strength in volts/metre to 50 Ohms. MRF NJM NE OM OP PA PAL PIC PN RC SSAA SAB
• Preselector and attenuators allow full dynamic range to SAD SAJ SAS SDA SG SI SL SN SO STA STK SIR STRD
be realised on practical receivers and spectrum STRM STRS SV1 T TA TAA TAG TBA IC TCA IDA TDB
TEA TIC TIP TIPL TEA TL TLC IMP TMS TPU U UA
analysers.
UAA UC UDN ULN UM UPA UPC UPD VN X XR Z ZN
• Noise — 150dBm in 1Hz. Clipping 16 volts/metre. Also ZTX +many others
50 volts/metre version.
• Broadcast Monitor Receiver 150kHz-30MHz. * We can also offer equivalents (at customers' risk).
Frequency Shifters for Howl Reduction * Stereo Variable We also stock afull range of other electronic components.
Emphasis Limiter 3 * PPM10 In-vision PPM and chart
recorder * Twin PPM Rack and Box Units. * PPM5 Mail, phone, Fax, Credit Card orders & caller , welcome.
hybrid, PPM9 microprocessor and PPM8 IEC/DIN
VISA Connect
—50/+6dB drives and meter movements

SURREY ELECTRONICS LTD

The Forge, Lucks Green, Cranleigh GU6 7BG Cricklewood Electronics Ltd
Telephone: 01483 275997 Fax: 01483 276477 40-42 Cricklewood Broadway, London NW2 3ET
Ii
Tel:020 8452 0161 Fax: 020 8208 1441

CIRCLE NO.121 ON REPLY CARD

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

NEW PRODUCT
Please quote Electronics World when seeking further information

Firewire controller with

debug indicators
From BVM is the PMC-FW2 three-port PMC
Firewire controller module. Using the Texas
TSB I2LV26 IEEE 1394 OHCI compliant host
controller and the TSB41AB3 three-port
transceiver and arbiter, the module complies v, ith
IEEEI394a-2000. LED indicators for cable
connected, transmit and receive, and throughput
speed are on the back of the module. The
sealed against environmental module supplies cable power from an on-board
contamination, shielded, ground converter powered from the host processor's
isolated and configured with +12V line, sufficient to power up the remote
five solder pads for power and phy ICs on powered-off modules. It enables a
signal connection. It measures hot swap plug-and-play capability for the
20.3 by 15.2 by 5.3mm and can attached peripherals, allowing, for instance, a
be packaged in custom faulty hard drive to be swapped out without
housings. The model is powered powering down the host system. Each front
by 2to 10mA constant current, panel mounted independent port supports
requiring acompliance voltage transfer speeds of 100, 200 or 400Mbits/s,
of +10 to +20V DC. providing an interface from industrial
Sensitivities of 10 and 100mV/g workstations or servers to mass storage devices.
are available providing full- video equipment. scanners and other equipment.
scale measurement ranges of BVM
200 and 20g respectively. An Tel: 01489 780144
optional temperature sensor www.bvmltd.co.uk
with alinear output of 10mV/°C
is available, requiring aseparate
supply from 4.5 to 10V DC. support external line model 57D measures 5.5 by 5.5 crosstalk, propagation delay and
Endevco termination, such as OC/3. by 7.0mm and model 45D 5.5 rise time at frequencies from
Tel: 01438 739020 Features include HA drivers, an by 5.5 by 6.0mm. They can 10MHz to 1GHz.
www.endevco.com IPMI interface, SNMP absorb stress from thermal and Sam feo
management interface and hot mechanical shocks even on Tel: 01236 739292
Packet processing swap capability. A redundant metal substrates such as waw.samtec.com
100baseT Ethernet interface aluminium. Applications
engine for comms
gives the board amultipath include smoothing circuits,
Blue Wave Systems has redundant architecture. It will temperature variable systems.
Enclosure houses Vme64x
extended its family of initially run under the Solaris maintenance free power open system architecture
Comstruct communications 2.8 64-bit operating system and supplies, vehicles and DC to
processing building blocks with Linux. DC converters. The Y5U and A VME64x compatible 19in
apacket processing hardware Blue Wave X7R models are constructed subrack is being introduced by
platform. The CPCUC5441 Tel: 01509 654444 from slightly different materials Schroff. The unit has built in
provides OEMs with up to 672 www.bluews.com to provide ratings of 16 to 100V EMC shielding and an
channels, each of which can and 16 to 630V respectively. integrated chassis monitoring
provide compressed voice or Ceramic capacitors Flint module to control system
fax relay over IP or ATM, in a Tel: 01530 510333 parameters. Applications
CompactPCI slot. It provides
have no polarity
www.flint.co.uk include industrial automation,
telecoms equipment makers Flint's Mega Cap ceramic measurement and control.
with aplatform for applications capacitors in the TDK COK Integrated modules provide
High-speed matched
such as softswitches and IP- series have no polarity, so can power, thermal management
enabled services for wireline be mounted in either direction.
impedance interfaces
and system monitoring. The
and 3G wireless networks. It There are two case sizes — Samtec can supply surface IkW DC power supply tray
uses the programmable mount, micro pitch interfaces plugs directly into the
TMS320VC5441 DSP from for matched impedance backplane from the rear and can
Texas Instruments and Telogy applications. Options include be installed and removed using
Software. The ATM interface edge-mount designs and IET handles. Two fan trays that
makes the device asuitable elevated designs with 16, 19 are accessed from the front of
building block for developing and 22mm board spacings. the subrack each give 500m 3/hr
and deploying voice over ATM These interfaces in the QTE airflow. Thermal management
for DSL applications in the series terminate on 0.8mm pitch includes speed control and
local loop. The device provides and have an integral ground failure supervision. The 6U
direct termination of multiple plane. From 40 to 200 I/Os are high boards fitted from the front
Ti, El, 13 and E3 and can use available. They are tested for 50 of the enclosure plug into a7U
the H.110 interface for in- and 70f2 systems for high backplane that uses SMT
chassis call distribution and to impedance, VSWR, attenuation, technology to provide 21 slots.

372 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 Visit our website I
www.distel.co.uk
THE ORIGINAL SURPLUS WONDERLAND! .4 Surplus always I
THIS MONTH'S SELECTION FROM OUR VAST EVER CHANGING STOCKS wanted for cashl

THE AMAZING TELEBOX IC's -TRANSISTORS -DIODES 19" RACK CABINETS

Converts your colour monitor into aQUALITY COLOUR TV!! OBSOLETE -SHORT SUPPLY -BULK Superb quality 6 foot 40U
10,000,000 items EX STOCK Virtually New, Ultra Smart
TV SOUND & For MAJOR SAVINGS

VIDEO TUNER CALL OR SEE OUR WEB WE www.distel.co.uk Less than Half Price!
Top quality 19* rack cabinets made in UK by
CABLE COMPATIBLE'
VIDEO MONITOR SPECIALS Optima Enclosures Ltd. Units feature
designer, smoked acrylic lockable front door,

mt
The TELEBOX a an attractive fuly cased mans powered unit, contanng al
One of the highest specification full height lockable half louvered back door
elect:albs reedy to plug nto ahost cl vdeo monitors or AV equipment v.rich monitors you will ever see - and louvered removable side panels. Fully
are feted with acomposite video or SCART neut. The composile video output adjustable internal fixing struts, ready punched
vAl also plug directly into most tided recorders, alowng recepen of TV chan- At this price -Don't miss it!! for any configuration of equipment mounting
nels not normally receivable on most television receivers' (TELEBOX ,plus ready mounted integral 12 way 13 amp
Mitsubishi FA3415ETKI. 14" SVGA Muttisync colour monrtor vAth fine
MB). Push bunco controls cm the front panel albw recephon of 8It* tuneable socket switched mains distribution strip make
028 dot pitch tube and resoklion of 1024 x768 A
'off at UFF colour televise', channels TELEBOX MB covers virtually al teen- these racks some of the most versatile we
misty of hpuls Mows comedion lo ahost of °moot- have ever sold. Racks may be stacked side by side and therefore
eon frequenaes VHF and UHF including the HYPERBAND as used by em itclucing BM PC". b CD& EGA. VGA & SVGA
most catie TV operator& Ideal for desktop computer video systems& PIP require only two side panels to stand singly or in multiple bays
modes, BBC, CCOAMODORE (ncluding Amiga 1203),
(pcture npcture) setups. For complete ecmpatbrity -even for monitors wnhout Overall dimensions are: 7714" H x32W D x22' W. Order as:
ARCHIMEDES end APPLE. Many features Etched
sourd -an ntegral 4eett audo ampnfier and bw level Hi FI audo output are OPT Rack 1Complete with removable side panels £345.00 (G)
faceplate, text switching and LOW RADIATiON MPR
prowled as standard Brand new -fully guaranteed speafication. Fully guaranteed, in EXCELLENT she OPT Rack 2 Rack Less si e iane s £245.00 G
TELEBOX ST for composite video input type monitors £36.95
TELEBOX STL as ST but fitted with integral speaker £39.50
used cenclitcn
lllf &Swtvel Base £4.75 Only £119
Order as
(E) MfTS-SVGA
Over 1000 racks, shelves, accessories
TELEBOX MB Multiband VHF/UHF/Cable/Hyperband tuner £69.95 VGA cable for IBM PC Included. 19" 22" & 24" wide 3 to 46 U high.
For overseas PAL versions state 5.5 or 6mHz sound specification
•For cable /hyperband signal reception Telebox MB should be con-
External cables for other types ol emputers available -CALL
Available from stock!!

.
nected to acable type service. Shipping on all Telebox's, code (B) Ex demo 17" 0.28 SVGA Mitsubishi Diamond Pro
32U -High Quality -All steel RakCab
let>
State of the art PAL (UK spec) UHF TV tuner module monitors, Full multisync etc.
.... with composite IV pp video & NICAM hi fi stereo sound Full 90 day guarantee. Only £199.00 (E)
Out puts. Micro electronics all on one small PCB only 73 x 160 Made by Eurocraft Enclosures Ltd to the highest possible spec,
.: (-- -
i 52 mm enable full tuning control via a simple 3 wire link to an Just In -Microvitec 20" VGA (800 x600 res.) colour monitors. rack features all steel construction with removable
IBM pc type computer Supplied complete with simple working pro- side, front and back doors. Front and back doors are
Good SH condition -from £299 -CALL for Into
gram and documentation. Requires +12V & + 5V DC to operate. hinged for easy access and all are lockable with
BRAND NEW -Order as MY00. Only £49.95 code (B) PHIUPS HCS35 (same style as CM8833) attractively styled 14" five secure 5 lever barrel locks. The front door
See www.distel.co.uk/data_my00.htm for picture r lull details colour monitor with De] RGB and standard composite 15.625 is constructed of double walled steel with a
Khz video inputs via SCART socket and separate phono lacks 'designer style' smoked acrylic front panel to
Integral audio power amp and speaker for all audio visual uses. enable status indicators to be seen through the
FLOPPY DISK DRIVES 21
2 "-8"
/ Will connect direct to Amiga and Atari BBC computers. Ideal for all panel, yet remain unobtrusive. Internally the rack
video monitoring /security applications with direct connection features fully slotted reinforced vertical fixing
All units (unless stated) are BRAND NEW or removed from often
to most colour cameras. High quality with many features such as members to take the heaviest of 19" rack
brand new equipment and are fully tested, aligned and shipped to
front concealed flap controls, VCR correction button etc. Good equipment. The two movable vertical fixing struts
you with a full 90 day guarantee. Call or see our web site
used condition -fully tested -guaranteed O n ly POO nn (extras available) are pre punched for standard
www.distel.co.uk for over 2000 unlisted drives for spares or repair.
Dimensions: W14" xH1234' ,h5½" D. (E) 'cage nuts'. A mains distribution panel internal-
315" Mitsubishi MF355C-L. 1.4 Meg. Laptops only £25.95(B) ly mounted to the bottom rear, provides 8 xIEC 3
31
/'Mitsubishi MF355C-D. 1.4 Meg. Non laptop
2 £18.95(B) PHIUPS HCS31 Ultra compact 9" colour video monitor with stan- pin Euro sockets and 1x 13 amp 3 pin switched
51
/"To« FD-55GFR 1.2 Meg (for IBM pc's) RFE
4 £18.95(8) dard composite 15.625 Khz video input via SCART socket. Ideal utility socket. Overall ventilation is provided by
51
/"Teac FD-55F-03-U 720K 40/80 (for BBC's etc) RFE
4 £29.95(8) for all monitoring /security applications. High quality, ex-equipment fully louvered back door and double skinned top section '
51
/"BRAND NEW Mitsubishi MF50113 360K
4 £22.95(1 fully tested 8. guaranteed (possible minor screen bums). In attrac- with top and side louvres. The top panel may be removed for fitting
Table top case with integral PSU for HH 5'4" Floppy /HD £29.95(B tive square black plastic case measuring W10" x H10* x 13W" D.
of integral fans to the sub plate etc. Other features include: fitted
8" Shugart 800/801 8' SS refurbished & tested £210.00(E 240 V AC mains powered. Only £79.00 (0) castors and floor levelers, prepunched utility panel at lower rear for
8" Shugart 810 8' SS HH Brand New £195.00(E) cable /connector access etc. Supplied in excellent, slightly used
8" Shugart 851 8' double sided refurbished & tested £260.00(E) KME 10' 15M10009 high definition colour monitors with 0.28' dot
condition with keys. Colour Royal blue. External dimensions
8" Mitsubishi M2894-63 double sided NEW £295.00(E) pitch. Superb clarity and modern styling...
mm•1625H x635D o603 W. (64" 11 x25" D x23ii" W )
8" Mitsubishi M2896-63-02U DS shmline NEW £295.00(E) Operates from any 15.625 khz sync RGB video:
source, with AGO analog and composite sync Sold at LESS than a third of makers price !!
Dual 8" cased drives with integral power supply 2Mb £499.00(E)

HARD DISK DRIVES 21

2 "-14"
/
such as Atari, Commodore Amiga, Acorn
Archimedes & BBC. Measures only 1344' x 12" x A superb buy at only £245.00 ,G)
11". Good used condition. Only £125 (E)
42U version of the above only £345 -CALL
254* TOSHIBA MK1002MAV 1.1Gb laptop(12.5 mm H) New £79.95
2le TOSHIBA MK2101MAN 2.16 Gb laptop (19 mm H) New £89.50 20" 22" and 26" AV SPECIALS
21/"TOSHIBA MK4309MAT 4.3Gb laptop (8.2 mrn H) New£105.00
2
2f/f TOSHIBAMK6409MAV Cr.1Gb laptop (12.7 min H) New£190.00
Superbly made UK manufacture. Pit all solid state colour monitors, 12V BATTERY SCOOP -60% off!!
complete with composite video d optional sound input. Attractive
2V:" to 3V," conversion kit fcr Pc's, complete with connectors £14.95 A special bulk purchase from a cancelled export order brings you
teak style case. Perfect for Schools, Shops, Disco, Clubs, etc in
3Y-," FUJI FK-309-26 20mb MFM I/F RFE £59.95 the most amazing savings on these ultra high spec 12v DC 14 Ah
EXCELLENT little used condition with full 90 day guarantee.
3e" CONNER CP3024 20 mb IDE IF (or equiv.) RFE £59.95 rechargeable batteries Made by Hawker Energy Ud, type SBS15
3V," CONNER CP3044 40 mb IDE I/F or equiv.) RFE 20"....£135 22"....£155 26"....£185(F) featuring pure lead plates which offer a far superior shelf 8. guaran-
31/'QUANTUM 40S Prodri ve 42mb SCSI I/F, New RFE
2 £49.00 teed 15 year service life. Fully BT & BS6290 approved. Supplied
We probably have the largest range of video monitors In BRAND NEW and boxed. Dimensions 200 wide, 137 high, 77 deep.
5%" MINISCRIBE 3425 20mb MFM I/F (or Kim )RFE £49.95
Europe, All sizes and types from 4" to 42' call for info. M6 bolt terminals Fully guaranteed. Current makers price over £70
51/"SEAGATE ST-238R 30 mb RLL I/F Refurb
4 £69.95
5V." CDC 94205-51 40mb HH MFM UF RFE tested £69.95
5'4" HP 97548 850 Mb SCSI RFE tested DC POWER SUPPLIES each Our Price £35 each (C) or 4 for £99 (E)

5.4" HP C3010 2Gbyte SCSI differential RFE tested £195.00

8' NEC D2246 85 Mb SMD interface. New £199.00
Virtually every type of power
supply you can Imagine. Over
RELAYS -200,000 FROM STOCK
8' FUJITSU M2322K 160Mb SMD I/F RFE tested £195.00 Save Lifts by choosing your next relay from our Massive Stocks
10,0 0 0 Power Supplies Ex Stock
8' FUJITSU M2392K 2Gb SMD I/F RFE tested £345.00 covering types such as Military, Octal, Cradle, Hermetically Sealed,
Many other drives in stock - Shipping on all drives is code (Cl) Call or see our web site.
Continental, Contactors, Time Delay, Reed, Mercury Wetted, Solid
State, Printed Circuit Mounting etc. ,CALL or see our web site
TEST EQUIPMENT & SPECIAL INTEREST ITEMS wbvw.dlateLco.uk for more information Many obsolete types from
stock. Save DZET's
PMTS.). FA3445ETKL 14" Industrial spec SVGA monitors £245 HP6030A 0-200V DC 0 17 Amps bench power supply £1950
FARNELL 0-60V DC C 50 Amps, bench Power Supplies £995 Intel SBC 486/125C06 Enhanced Multibus (MSA) New
Nikon HFX-11 (Ephrphot) exposure control unit
£1150
£1450
COLOUR CCD CAMERAS
FARNELL AP3080 0-30V DC 0 80 Amps, bench Suppy £1850
lkW to 400 kW •40014z 3phase power sources •ex stock POA PHIUPS PM5516 pro. TV signal generator £1250 Undoubtedly a miracle of modern technology & ,
IBM 6230 Type 1, Token ring base unit driver £760 Motorola VME Bus Boards & Components List. SAE /CALL £P0A our special buying power !A quality product fea - 4s
Wayne Kerr RA200 Audio frequency response analyser £2500 Trio 0-18 vdc linear, metered 30 amp bench PSU. New £550 turing a fully cased COLOUR CCD camera at a
IBM 53F5501 Token Ring ICS 20 port lobe modules £750 Fujitsu M3041R 600 LPM high speed band printer £1950 give away price! Unit features full autolight sensing for
IBM MAU Token ring distribution panel 8228-23-5050N £95 Fujitsu M3041D 600 LPM printer with network interface £1250 use in low light & high light
AIM 501 Low distortion Oscillator 9Hz to 330Khz. IEEE £550 Perkin Elmer 299B Infrared spectrophotometer £500 applications. A 10 mm fixed focus
ALLGON 836011805-1880 MHz hybrid power combiners £250 Perkin Elmer 597 Infrared spectrophotometer £3500 wide angle lens gives excellent focus
Trend DSA 274 Data Analyser with 0703(2M) 64 i/o £P0A VG Electronics 1035 TELETEXT Decoding Margin Meter £3250 and resolution from close up to long
Marconi 6310 Programmable 2to 22 GHz sweep generator £6500 LightBand 60 output high spec 2u rack mount Video VDA's £495 range. The composite video output will
Marconi 2022C 10KHz-1GHz RF signal generator £1550 Sekonic SD 150H 18 channel digital Hybrid chart recorder f1995 connect to any composite monitor or TV
Marconi 2030 opt 03 10KHz-1.3 GHz signal generator.New £4995 B&K 2633 Microphone pre amp £300 (via SCART socket) and most video
HP1650B Logic Analyser £3750 Taylor Hobson Tallysurf amplifier /recorder £750 recorders. Unit runs from 12V DC so
HP3781A Pattern generator & HP37112A Error Detector £P0A ADC SS200 Carbon dioxide gas detector /monitor £1450 ideal for security .4 portable applica-
HP6621A Dual Programmable GPIB PSU 0-7 V 160 watts £1800 BBC AM20/3 PPM Meter (Ernest Tumer) +drive electronics £75 tions where mains power not available.
HP6264 Rack mount variable 0-20V 0 20A metered PSU £675 ANRITSU 9654A Optical DC-2.5G/b waveform monitor £5650 Overall dimensions 66 mm wide x 117 deep x 43 high. Supplied
HP54121A DC to 22 GHz four channel test set £P0A ANRITSU MS9001B1 0.6-1.7 uM optical spectrum analyser £P0A BRAND NEW 8. fully guaranteed with user data. 100's of applica-
HI:93130A opt 020 300 MHz pulse generator. GPIB etc £7900 ANRITSU ML93A optical power meter £990 tions including Security. Home Video, Web TV, Web Cams etc. etc.
HP Al, AO 8pen HPGL high speed drum plotters -from £550 ANRITSU Fibre optic characteristic test set £P0A
HP DRAFTMASTER 18pen high speed plotter £750 1365 FTDI Dual sound unit £650
Web ref =LK33 ONLY £99.00 or 2 for £180.00 (a)
EG+G Brookdeal 95035C Precision lock in amp £1800 R&S SBUF-El Vision modulator £775
View Eng. Mod 1200 computerised inspection system £P0A WILTRON 6630B 12.4 /20GHz RF sweep generator £5750 SOFTWARE SPECIALS
Sony DXC-3000A High quality CCD colour TV camera £995 TEK 2445 150 MHz 4trace oscilloscope £1250
Keithley 590 CV capacitor /voltage analyser £P0A TEK 2465 300 Mhz 300 MHz oscilloscope rack mount £1955 N74 WorkStation, complete with service pack 3
Racal ICR40 dual 40 channel voice recorder system £3750 TEK TDS380 400Mhz digital reanime +disk drive. FFT etc £2900 and licence -OEM packaged. ONLY £89.00 os
Flskers 45KVA 3 ph On Line UPS -New batteries £9500 TEK TDS524A 500Mhz digital realtrme +colour display etc £5100 ENCARTA 95 -CDROM, Not the latest -but at this price f £7.95
Emerson AP130 2.5KVA industrial spec.UPS £2100 HP3585A Opt 907 20Hz to 40 Mhz spectrum analyser £3950 DOS 5.0 on 354' disks with concise books c/w ()Basic. £14.95
Mann Tally MT645 High speed line printer £2200 PHIUPS PW1730/10 60KV XRAY generator & accessories £P0A Windows for Workgroups 3.11+ Dos 6.22 on 3.5" disks £55.00
Intel SBC 486/133SE Multibus 486 system. 8Mb Ram £945 CLAUDE LYONS 12A 240V single phase auto volt. rags £325 Wordperfect 6for DOS supplied on 31 /"disks with manual £24.95
2
Siemens K4400 64Kb to 140Mb demux analyser £2950 CLAUDE LYONS 100A 240/415V 3phase auto, volt. regs £2900 shipping charges for software is code B

DISTEL on the web II -Over 16,000,000 Items from stock -www.distel.co.uk

••• ••••• ••••
•
•••
•
•
•
•
•
ALL MAIL TO LONDON SHOP
Open Mon -Sat 9:00 -5.30
DISTEL© ALL 13" ENQUIRIES

0208 653 3333

•••• • • •...•
Dept vtnv, 29/35 Osborne Rd
•
••••
• • •
Thornton Heath
215 Whitehorse Lane Visit our web site
South Norwood
•••• ••••• • : : Surrey CR7 8PD On 68A Bus Route www.distel.co.uk
Open Mon -Fri 9.00 -5:30 (*.ThorntonHeath
FAX 0208 653 8888
-ELECTRO/Y/C5.-
Selhurst Park SR Rail Stations small =adminedistel.co.uk

An press for UK Manand UK customers add 175% VAT to TOTAL order amount. Mnrnum order cla Bara Fide accrant orders accette3 from Government &nook%
Universities and Local Authorities mnimum account ceder £50. Cheques over Elco are subject to 10 working days clearance. Carriage charges (A£3.00, (Al£4.00,

MP' (B(=£5.50, (C)=£8.50, (Cl) £12.50, (D)=£15 CO, (E»£18.00, )F)=0.œ. (G)=CALL MOW approx 6days for shippng -faster CALL Al goods suppled to Ole Standard Ccridtbre
EST

28 al Sale and unless stated guaranteed icr ays. Ail guarantees cm areturn to base basis. Al nets reserved to change paces /spececatcns without p-or notice. Orders abject
UM= YEARS to stock. Decounts Ice velume. Top CASI pad for surplus goods Al trademarks. tradenarnes etc acknoviedged. OD Display Electralcs 1999. E&0 E. 0799.

CIRCLE NO. 122 ON REPLY CARD

 EW PRODUCT
Please quote Electronics World when seeking further information

110 transition 80mm PCBs can

be fitted from the rear of the
enclosure. The integration of
boards corresponds to
IEEE1101.10 and
IEEE1101.11. Front panel
mounted LEDs indicate status.
The subrack has aheight of
IOU and adepth of 460mm.
Extensions include adding a 1U
disk drive tray for HD, FD and
CD-ROM. This is fitted to the
base of the system by removing
the bottom cover.
Schroff NAND flash memory ICs can They operate from a3.3V Power amplifier handles
Tel: 01442 240471 provide the storage for 64 and (±0.3V) supply and have a
300A inrush
www.schroff.co.uk I28Mbyte Smartmedia cards. programming time of 200us per
Based on a0.16µm process, the page. Access times are 5Ons The Harmonics 1000 power
5I2Mbit chip was developed serial and erasing time is 2ms amplifier from EMC Partner
0.16pm NAND flash
with Sandisk. The I Gbit device per block. The packages complies with EN61000-3-2,
offers up to 1Gbit in has two 512Mbit ICs stacked on measure 12.0 by 20.0 by amendment 14 and
TSOP package top of each other. Both can be I.2mm. EN6I000-3-3. It can handle
supplied in 48-pin TSOPs. Toshiba Electronics inrush currents above 300A and
As well as being available as Smartmedia card applications Tel: 00 49 211 52960 comes with Windows Harcs
discrete components, Toshiba's include PDAs, portable audio www.toshiba-europe.corn software. Simultaneous and real
single-chip 512Mbit and I Gbit players and digital cameras. time input and output voltage

SERVICING

Servicing Audio and Hi -Fi Equipment AUDIO Aids

r+

Return to Jackie Lowe, Room 1514, Quadrant House,

•Its readers will benefit from its wealth
of easily assimilated information, and
HI-FI
Ma,
ima"2
EQUIPMENT
The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5AS repairs hitherto thought impossible will
THIRD EDITION
speedily become routine. And the first
may well cover its purchase price.
Please supply the following title:
Congratulations on acomprehensive,
Servicing Audio and Hi-fi Equipment well-written and lucid work' Electronics
Informer.
Tnrc; 'Interesting, entertaining and useful for
both practitioners and teachers. All
Name
round asatisfying book which deserves •Essential bench
Address to be considered as atool rather than an companion for all
ornament collecting dust on the shelf.' service engineers.
Skil!set Newsletter
Service engineers and technicians •New technology such
have come to regard this book as as DVD and expanded
essential to their work. As abench-side material on MiniDisk
companion and guide it has no equal. will ensure another
Postcode Its purpose is to ease and speed up the successful launch to this
processes of fault diagnosis, repair and new edition
Telephone testing of all classes of home audio
equipment: receivers, amplifiers, recorders and playback machines.
Method of payment (please circle)
The mechanics and electronics of domestic audio are examined by
Mastercard/Visa/Cheque/PO Nick Beer in adown-to-earth and practical way, concentrating on
Cheques should be made payable to what goes wrong, how to track down problems, and how to solve
Reed Business Information them.
A symptom index and comprehensive manufacturer and supplier
Credit card no guide allow quick access to specific advice and suggestions.
The third edition is bang up to date with the latest technology -
Card expiry date DVD, CD Recordable, PC audio systems. There is also new material
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 ELECTRONICS
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Douglas Self
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The cream of 20 years of Electronics World
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A unique collection of design insights and

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Scientific electronics based on empirical data
empirical design techniques based on electronic
design principles and experimental data. His
Douglas Self has been writing for Electronics
rigorous and thoroughly practical approach has
World and Wireless World over the past 20 established him as a leading authority on
years. offering cutting-edge insights into
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scientific methods of electronics design.
This book is acollection of the essential Readership: Audio electronics enthusiasts;
Electronics World articles, covering twenty years
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bias towards more recent material. The articles Paperback
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Contents: Introduction; PRE-AMPLIFIERS: An SELF AUDIO

advanced preamplifier MRPI; Total
High-performance preamp MRP4; Precision
Name
preamp MRP10: Moving-coil head amp;
Address
Preamp '96 I; Preamp '96 II; "Overload Matters"
(RIAA overload): Balanced
line inputs and outputs, part 1; Balanced line
inputs and outputs. part 2;
POWER AMPLIFIERS: FETs less linear than
Postcode
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Telephone
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May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

ANALOGUE DESIGN

Current-conveyors HI
In this third and final article on low-voltage current conveyors and
their applications, Giuseppe Ferri et al describe how easy it is to
implement capacitance multipliers using conveyors, and how such
multipliers can benefit filter designs.

I
nthe following, we describe how capacitance can be CCII— are,
multiplied using current conveyors." Figure 1
=a
outlines such amultiplier. It comprises acurrent
VV
conveyor followed by acurrent amplifier Ai.
Ideal input equivalent capacitance is, and,
CEQ =A,C, (1) _L =
This shows that an equivalent capacitance is obtained that
is A/times greater than C5.Deviations from this ideal respectively. Figure 2is the equivalent circuit.
behaviour are mainly due to: Equation 2shows that the impedance ZEQ is the parallel
of two terms. The first term is due to capacitance C,. This
• Voltage and current-transfer inaccuracies in the is multiplied by afactor equal to af3A /and aseries
conveyor and the conveyor's finite output resistance at resistance equal to,
terminal X.
• Bandwidth limitation of the current amplifier and its
GOA,
finite output resistance.
times the output resistance at X terminal. Therefore, this
Equivalent input impedance is, contribution decreases for high values of the current gain
A/.
Va [ I ( I) „ (2) The second term is due to the output resistance of the
LEQ =— = — r r
o, xsCs current amplifier. This contribution can be dominant at
low frequencies.
Here, rx is res'stance at X and r
o is resistance at the It turns out that, in order to have an ideal capacitance, as
amplifier output. Voltage and current transfer errors of the multiplied by Ab r x must be low and r o high. This last

condition is more important because r x is divided by the

gain 4 840
Giuseppe Ferri, Universitá di L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy. Now we will describe some configurations
Pierpaolo De Laurentiis, Universitá di L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy implementing both the CCII and the current amplifier.
Giovanni Stochino, Ericsson Lab Italy SpA, Rome, Italy

378 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 ANALOGUE DESIGN

Conveyor and current-amp solution In this case, taking into account the finite output
Figure 3shows acapacitance multiplier made up using aa resistance at X and Zterminals, r x and r z, and the voltage
second-generation inverting' current conveyor, commonly transfer gain, VxNy=a, you can evaluate the equivalent
called aCCII—, and acurrent-based operational amplifier, input impedance as follows:
or COA. Figure 4is asimplified schematic of the COA
V
used in simulations, while Table 1outlines its EQ (7)
performance. afi sal3C,
Capacitance Cs is the grounded capacitance that has to where the parasitic capacitances at terminals Yand Zof the
be multiplied. Resistances R1and R2 accurately set the CCII have been neglected.
closed-loop current gain of the amplifier as given by, Equation 7shows that impedance ZEQ is the parallel of
two terms. The first term is due to the capacitance Cs,
A = =1+ 1/2 (3) which is multiplied by afactor equal to aft, with aseries
R,
With this solution, high capacitance gain factors can be
readily achieved by simply setting the resistance ratio Table I. Main features of the
R2:R i. current op-amp, or COA, of
In addition, the gain factor can be further increased by Fig. 1.
exploiting the current-gain capabilities of the CCII. For Parameter Value
example, if you choose aCOA current gain, Ab of 102 and Loop gain 62dB
set the current gain of the CCII,13, to 10, an overall GBW 100MHz
multiplication factor of 103 is achieved with alimited PM 64
increase in power dissipation.
Usually, the current gain of aCCII is determined either
by controlling the aspect ratio of the output current mirror, Fig. 3. Capacitance
or by using techniques that allow electronic control of the multiplier using acurrent
current gain. With these solutions, the quiescent current is conveyor followed by a
proportional to the multiplication factor. This current-based op-amp.
means that there's atrade-off between power
dissipation and gain.
Standby current at the conveyor's Z terminal
limits the amount of capacitance gain that can be
obtained. This current, associated with R2,
produces an offset voltage that can saturate the
op-amp's output. For this reason, the CCII needs
an accurate offset contrail -18

Cmultiplier using two conveyors

In order to obtain high and controlled capacitance
gain factors, the second topology shown in Fig. 5
has been developed. It is made up of two CCIIs
and two resistors. These resistors determine the
multiplication factor.
For ideal CCIIs, the following expression gives
the input equivalent capacitance:

C 0 =112 Cs (4) v„
E

This equation shows that an equivalent capacitance R2+R i Fig. 4. Simplified schematic of the low-voltage COA used to simulate the
times greater than Cs can be obtained. performance of the circuit in Fig. 3.
For real CCIIs, the following expression for the input
equivalent voltage can be deduced:
V
ZEQ =
Iy

(5)
[1R +r
x' (r, + — 1 )]//
rZ2

r 2 HrZI SC;
Fig. 5. Enhanced capacitance
R 2

Here,Yis a1i a22 and c; andfli are the voltage and multiplier using two conveyors.
current gains for the ith CCII, respectively. All gains are Two passive resistances determine
nominally equally to 1. the capacitance gain.
This solution allows high gain factors. However, some
limits on the values of RIand R2 have to be considered.
The lower limit of RIis related to the output resistance at
Xiterminal, while the upper limit for R2 is related to the
output resistance at Z1terminal.
Fig. 6. The third
Multiplier using asingle conveyor multiplier
This final multiplier is simple because it does not make topology uses a
use of acurrent amplifier. It uses only acurrent conveyor single current
with aft current gain of greater than 1, as in Fig. 6. conveyor.

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 379

ANALOGUE DESIGN

resistance equal to 1/a/3 times the output resistance at X which is in good agreement with what you would expect.
terminal. This term is predominant at high frequencies and The DC gain of the active filter is —1.1dB instead of
decreases for high values of the current gain Ji OdB. This is due to the partition effect caused by the finite
The second term is due to the resistance at the Z value of rz.

terminal. This term is important at low frequencies. Its

contribution can be made negligible by choosing CCII In summary
implementations with high values of r z. Current conveyors are versatile building blocks suitable
Non ideal situations due to X and Znode resistances for many applications.
limit the circuit's capacitance multiplication range, as Many complex analogue functions are easily
shown in Fig. 7. implemented using current-conveyors. The current
conveyor can give better performance than traditional
Using CCIIs for low cut-off filters operational amplifiers. This is particularly so in terms of
Here we present alow-pass filter design based on a speed and bandwidth, due to the local feedback of the
capacitance multiplier using current conveyors. This is a follower-based structure of the device.
first-order low-pass filter with alow cut-off frequency, of Commercial current conveyors are easily realised in
below 10Hz, Fig. 8.19-22 CMOS technology, and at low cost. In the first two articles
This filter uses aCCII— with current gain, of this review, we proposed some novel low supply
voltage current conveyors for use in portable
instrumentation application. In this final article, we have
also shown how capacitance multipliers are easy to
In Fig. 8, C's is the capacitance to be multiplied. implement using current conveyors. Such multipliers make
Resistance R was set to 1601d1 in order to achieve acut- it possible to produce fully integrated filters that can work
off frequency of 1Hz. Figure 9shows the magnitude at very low frequencies. •
response of the filter. The cut-off frequency is 0.96Hz,

dB

—14
1.0kHz 10kHz 100kHz 1OMHz 10MHz
Frequency

Fig. 8. Schematic of alow Fig. 7. Input admittance of the circuit of Fig. 6for Cs=1 pl and acapacitive gain of 102.
cut-off frequency low-pass
filter implemented using
current-conveyor dB101
technology.

-10

-20

Fig. 9. Magnitude responses for an

ideal RC filter and the one proposed -30
in Fig. 8.

-40
10mHz 30mHz 100mHz 300mHz 10Hz 30Hz 10Hz 30Hz 100Hz
Frequency

380 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 ANALOGUE DESIGN

References Conference of Sensors and Microsystems, IEEE Jour. of Solid-State Circ., Vol. 33 No
I. C.Kim, K.D.Wise, 'Low-voltage Roma, Feb. 1997. 2, pp. 238-236.
electronics for the stimulation of biological 8. E.Vittoz, 'Limits to LV/LP analog circuit 16. E. Bruun, 'A High-Speed CMOS Current
neural networks using fully complementary design', Advance Course on LV LP Analog Opamp for Very Low Supply Voltage
BiCMOS circuits', IEEE Journal of Solid- CMOS IC design —Lausanne, June 1998. Operation,' IEEE Proc. Iscas '94, London,
State Circuits, Vol. 32, No 10, Oct. 1997, 9. Y.Sun, J.K.Fidler, 'Analysis of current- 1994.
pp. 238-236. conveyor error effects in signal processing 17. P. J. Crawley, G. W. Roberts, 'High-Swing
2. G.Weil, W.Engl, A.Renz, 'Integrated circuits', International Journal of Circuit MOS Current Mirror with Arbitrarily High
pacemakers', IEEE Journal of Solid-State Theory and Applications. Vol. 24 No 4, pp. Output Resistance,' Electronics Letters,
Circuits, Vol. SC-5, pp. 67-73, 1970. 479-488, July-Aug. 1996 Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 362-363. Feb. 1992.
3. W.Sansen, 'On the integration of an 10. N.Tarim, B.Yenen. H.Kuntman, 'Simple 18. Y.Sun, J.K.Fielder, 'Current-mode
internal human conditioning system', IEEE and accurate non-linear current conveyor multiple-loop feedback filters using dual
Transactions on Journal of Solid-State macromodel suitable for simulation of output OTAs and grounded capacitors',
Circuits, Vol. SC-17, pp. 472-479, 1982. active filters using CCIIs', International International Journal of Circuit Theory and
4. G.Ferri, 'An Operational Transconductance Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, Applications, Vol. 25 No 2, pp. 69-80,
Amplifier for Capacitive Sensor Vol. 26 No 1, pp. 27-38. Jan-Feb. 1998. March-April 1997.
Applications', Sensors and Microsystems — 11. 0.Toshio: 'Switched-capacitor impedance 19. P. Kinget, M. Steyaert, J. Van Der Spiegel,
Proc. Second Italian Conference of Sensors simulation circuits realized with current 'Full Analog CMOS Integration of Very
and Microsystems, Roma, Feb. 1997. conveyors, 'ISCAS'98, Monterey, May Large Time Constants for Synaptic
5. T.Smith, J.Bardyn, B.DeGeeter, 0.Nys, 1998. Transfer in Neural Networks', Analog
'Low power capacitive sensor interfaces', 12. G.Di Cataldo, G.Ferri, S.Pennisi, 'Active Integrated Circuits and Signal Proc., Vol.
Proc. AACD 1997, Baveno, 1-3 April 1997. capacitance multiplication by current 2, pp. 281-295, 1992.
6. P.Wouters, M.De Cooman, R.Puers, 'A conveyors' —ISCAS'98, Monterey. 20. WHG, Deguelle, 'Limitations on the
multipurpose CMOS sensor interface for 13. G.Ferri, S.Pennisi, 'A 1.5 V current-mode Integration of Analog Filters for
low power applications', IEEE Journal of capacitance multiplier' —IEEE Proc. Frequencies Below 10Hz', IEEE Proc.
Solid State Circuits, Vol. SC-29 No 8, ICM98 Conference, Monastir, Tunisia, ESSCIRC 1988, pp. 131-134.
Aug. 1994, pp. 952-956. 1998. 21. S. Solis-Bustos, J. Silva-Martinez, 'A 4Hz
7. A.D'Amico, C.Di Natale, M.Mariucci, 14. T. Kaulberg, 'A CMOS Current-Mode Low-Pass Continuous-Time Filter,' IEEE
G.Baccarani. M.Faccio, G.Ferri, Operational Amplifier,' IEEE Jour. of Proc. ICECS'98, Lisbon, Sept. 1998, pp.
F.Maloberti, P.Malcovati, G.Stochino, Solid-State Circ., Vol.28, No. 7, pp. 849- 169-172.
'Active capacitance multiplication for 852, July 1993. 22. G.Ferri, S.Pennisi, S.Sperandii, 'A low
sensor application' —Sensors and 15. G. Palmisano, G. Palumbo, S. Pennisi, voltage CMOS 1-Hz low pass filter' -IEEE
Microsystems —Proc. Second Italian 'High-Drive CMOS Current Amplifier', Proc. ICECS 99 Conference, Cipro, 1999.

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May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 381

CIRCUIT IDEAS
Fact: most circuit ideas sent to Electronics World get published
The best circuit ideas are ones that save time or money, or stimulate the thought process. This includes the
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Send your ideas to: Jackie Lowe, Room L514, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5AS

Battery pack short-circuit protector

T his circuit provides short circuit changed by adjusting the value of which takes the output low. This turns
protection to aremovable battery Rsense. Quiescent current consumption off Q2,thereby disconnecting the
pack of up to IIV. It could be fitted in on a3.6V battery is 5pA maximum for battery from its load. The latch can only
the battery pack as stand-alone the MAX835EUK, plus 0.4pA to be cleared by apulse taking the CLR
protection. Or it could be included as 2.8µA —roughly proportional to current input (pin I) above 2V for at least Ims.
part of the electronics if gas gauging or load —for current sensor The reset pulse is provided by apush
SMbus charging control circuit is The core element is the tiny 5-pin switch —typically, membrane type —
embedded. SOT-23 MAX835EUK latching which is AC coupled into the CLR
The circuit can be used with a voltage monitor. It has arail-to-rail input. The AC coupling prevents the
working battery terminal voltage range output at pin 5, which is normally high, user from disabling the protection by
between 2.5V and IIV. It is suitable for turning on the N-channel MOSFET Q2 keeping the switch permanently
NiCd or NiMh batteries from 3cells and so allowing load current to pass pressed!
(where the lowest working limit of from the battery to the external load. The value of R4 (101d1) is
0.9V per cell gives 2.7V) to 6or 7cells, Transistor Q2 is aTemic TSSOP deliberately quite low to give high
depending on the worst case fast charge packaged transistor, chosen because it noise immunity to the switch input.
terminal voltage. It is also suitable for has amaximum rd.,((,„) of 40m.0 with a Resistor R3 (I Mil) can be high
one or two Lithium Ion cells. of 2.7V. When the input signal to resistance because its purpose is just to
As drawn, the circuit trips at 2.7A pin 4drops below the internal reference discharge C2 after the switch is
current, but this limit can be easily voltage of I.2V, an internal latch is set released, and noise pickup at this point

.„.Cellpack

Cl
Push to
> Cellpack
) clear fault
B. ground
au CLR 02
C2 10n V„ OUT
TSSOP
10k 'c l
1M R3 3.6V
T1On
Li-ion ". Latch
I GND
IN

MAX835EUK

10M R 1M R

----------
o,
BCV
61C

OR02

R Ser1S13

382 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 CIRCUIT IDEAS

cannot reset the latch. condition. Now Qui (diode connected) switch at aslightly lower current than
The intrinsic body diode of Q2 has 10Mil R1in its collector, whereas calculated.
(cathode to drain, anode to source) is Qui has a Imn R2 load. The higher the supply voltage, the
used to advantage. If the battery is Transistor Qui semitter current is smaller the error is because the
totally flat, then Q2 cannot be turned lower than that of QtA by virtue of this difference between aVe„, and 1.2V as a
on. However the pack can still be collector load disparity, and so its fraction of the supply voltage reduces.
charged because the body diode working Vbe is lower than the working The table shows the latching currents
allows reverse (charging) current to Vbe of Qm. Hence Qu3 is essentially for several supply voltages:
flow. turned off when no battery load
Supply voltage Switching current
When the pack is charged current is flowing.
5.0V 2.88A
sufficiently, the protection latch can be Now consider an increasing load
3.6V 2.75A
cleared and the battery pack used in current through R„„„. This resistor
3.3V 2.69A
the normal way, will incur an increasing voltage drop,
2.7V 2.56A
Dual transistor (2i, aSiemens which has the effect of taking Q' s
BCV6I, amplifies the very small emitter negative with respect to QIB 's Also, the switch point varies with
current sense voltage of 60mV up to emitter. This in turn increases the Vb, temperature because absolute
IC's trip threshold of I.2V. A of Q. and at some point of increasing temperature, T. is in the equation. This
transistor pair was selected because it load current through k,Q's %/be isn't as bad as it first appears. The
is low cost and small, in aSOT-143 will be large enough for the collector working temperature range of apack
package. The transistors are voltages of Qui and Q2A to equate. may be from as low as —20°C up to
monolithic, so thermal coupling and Voltage across R„„,,, at which this +40°C, which is avariation of ±30K
V,,, matching is intrinsically good. occurs is 0.026xlog(R 2+R I)=60mV at around amean of +10°C or 283K. So
To understand the current sense room temperature. The IC will the variation in trip point is about
amplifier's operation, first consider the actually switch when the collector of ±10% with temperature.
case where no current is flowing QL4 drops to I.2V, so there is asmall Tim Herklots and Dave Watson

1
through R„„„. The Vbe voltages of the inaccuracy in the switch point MAXIM Integrated Products UK Ltd
two transistors are the same in this calculation —the circuit will actually D82

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May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 383

CIRCUIT IDEAS

A microcontroller-based signal generator wit

T he circuit of Fig. 1 uses a converters and abuilt-in power- AN I. The conversion reference
Microchip 8-pin PIC12C671 as reset circuitry, no extra components voltage is the controller's power
avoltage-controlled audio- are required to form the signal supply Vdd. Voltage Vf controls the
frequency oscillator. Since the generator. output frequency while Vd
I2C671 has an internal 4MHz The PIC12C671 reads two determines the duty cycle of the
oscillator, 4-channel 8-bit a-to-d analogue inputs through ANO and output signal. Frequency and duty

LIST P-12C671 movlw Ox49 ;A/D input from AN1

movwf Ox80
TMRO equ OX01 opt ion ADCONO
STATUS equ Ox03 call delay ;data
GPIO equ OX05 acquisition
INTCON equ Ox0b bsf ADCONO, 2 ;start A/D
PIR1 equ Ox0c conversion
ADRES equ Oxle loop_l btfsc ADCONO,2
ADCONO equ Oxl f =goto loop_l
ADCONI equ Ox9f movf ADRES, 0
OPT equ OX81 movwf period
port-dir equ Ox85 rrf period, F
period equ Ox21 rrf period, F
cnt-I equ Ox22 rrf period, F
cnt - 2 equ Ox23 movlw Oxlf
temp equ Ox24 andwf period, F
incfsz period, F
equ o bcf GPIO, 2 ;output low
equ 1 get_frequency
equ movlw Ox41 ;AID input from ANO
O
equ movwf ADCONO
call delay ;data acquisition
org Oxo bsf ADCONO, 2 ;start AID
goto . main conversion
org Ox4 loop_2 btfsc ADCONO, 2
decfsz cnt_l, F goto loop_2
goto send-out movf ADRES, 0
movwf cnt_2
get_range bcf STATUS,
movlw Ox20 rrf cnt _2,
movwf cnt_l movlw Ox7c
movf GPIO, W addwf cnt _2,
movwf temp movf cnt _2,
rrf temp, F movwf TMRO
rrf temp. F Bcf INTCON, 2 ;clear TMRO
rrf temp. F interrupt flag
movf temp. W retfie
andlw Ox07
addlw send_out
get-duty-cycle movf cnt _2, W

384 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 CIRCUIT IDEAS

voltage-controlled frequency and duty cycle

cycle are independent: changing the controller's clock and timer 0. When Yongping Xia
frequency will not affect the duty A=B=C='0', the measured frequency Torrance
cycle and vice versa. is from 114Hz to 1.41kHz. When California
Output frequency can be further A=B=C= I'. output frequency range USA
controlled by 3-bit input A-C. These is between 0.9Hz and 11Hz. See E72
3bits set apre-scaler between the Tables 1and 2below.

Fig. 1.
+5V
movwf TMR0§
movf cnt_l, W
subwf period, W
1 8
Vdd Vss
btfsc STATUS, C
;output high GP5 ANO Vf
bsf GPIO, 2
bcf INTCON, 2 ;clear TMRO interrupt
4 Gp
p43 Ap
G N21 Vd
flag
G 5
retfie A Output
delay
movlw Ox03 ;
movwf temp ;
dly_lpdecfsz temp, 1
goto dly_lp ; Table 1 (A=B=C=0)

return
Vf Vd
OV 1V 2V 3V 4V 5V
main
114Hz 114Hz 114Hz 114Hz 114Hz 114Hz
clrf GPIO
OV 3.7% 22% 41% 62% 92% 96%
movlw OX01
139Hz 139Hz 139Hz 139Hz 139Hz 139Hz
movwf cnt_l
1V 3.8% 22% 45% 63% 81% 96%
clrf cnt_2
179Hz 179Hz 179Hz 179Hz 179Hz 179Hz
decf cnt_2,
2V 4% 23% 41% 62% 79% 96%
movlw OX80
257Hz 257Hz 257Hz 256Hz 2S6Hz 256Hz
movwf period
3V 4% 23% 41% 62% 80% 96%
bsf STATUS ,5 ;bank I
413Hz 413Hz 413Hz 413Hz 412Hz 412Hz
movlw Ox80
4V 5.1% 23% 44% 63% 81% 95%
option
1.41kHz 1.41kHz 1.41kHz 1.41kHZ 1.41kHZ 1.41kHZ
movlw Oxlb ;
5V 10% 26% 42% 61% 77% 90%
movwf port_dir
movlw Ox04 ;
movwf ADCON1 ;
bcf STATUS, 5;bank 0 Table 2

movlw Oxa0 ; C B A Output frequency

movwf INTCON ; 0 0 0 f/1

loop ;endless loop 0 0 1 f/2

goto loop 0 1 0 f/4

0 1 1 f/8

end 1 0 0 f/16
1 0 1 f/32
1 1 0 f/64

1 1. 1 f/128

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

Antennas and propagation for wireless
communication systems
This will be a vital source of information on • Narrowband and wideband channel
the basic concepts and specific applications of modelling and the effect of the channel on
antennas and propagation to wireless communication system performance
systems, covering terrestrial and satellite Methods that overcome and transform
radio systems in both mobile and fixed channel impairments to enhance performance
contexts. Antennas and propagation are the using diversity, adaptive antennas and
key factors influencing the robustness and equalisers
quality of the wireless communication It will be essential reading for wireless
channel and this book includes: communication engineers as well as for
Illustrations of the significance and effect of students at postgraduate or senior
the wireless propagation channel undergraduate levels.
Overview of the fundamental Distinctive features of this book are:
electromagnetic principles underlying iF Examples of real world practical system
propagation and antennas problems of communication system design
Basic concepts of antennas and their and operation
application to specific wireless systems • Extensive worked examples
Propagation measurement, modelling and • End of chapter questions
prediction for fixed links, macrocells, • Topical and relevant information for and
microcells, picocells and megacells about the wireless communication industry

Post your completed order form to:- Fax your completed order form to
020 8652 8111
Jackie Lowe, Room 1514, Quadrant House, UK Price: £42.50 Europe £45.00 ROW £47.50
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 CIRCUITS IDEAS

12V battery voltage level detector

T his circuit was designed for a
,)
I Peltier-effect cold box on asailing
Supply +12v RL2
boat but could have other
applications, for example, in a
caravan. Load current of the cold box
is about 4A and this is alarge burden R3 560
when sailing, but it can easily be met R1 3k9
R7
from the engine's alternator when D3 RL1
under power. 150k
1N4002
The circuit detects the rise in the 6
R6 IC1
12V supply when the battery is being
4
charged. When this is about 14.2V VR1 1k 10k
isA741 4 18
(set by VR 1)RL1closes and connects 02
the load. When the supply falls (to
Cl 4 7F.1 2N3053
about 12.7V) on stopping the engine, Dl awe 6.8v
1N4148
o
RL 1opens and the load is removed. R2 4k7 R5 560
Supply to cold box
The threshold between the two
voltages prevents 'hunting' and can
o o
be changed by adjusting R7 (see
Common
graph). RL 2 h
The normally closed contact on RL 1 External +12v
connects an external 12V supply.
o
This is for use in harbour when a RL1 12v sprit 10 amp RL2 12v spdt
mains connection is available. The
external 12V supply also opens RL 2 2.5
and inhibits the detector. As the
mains supply also feeds aseparate
battery charger, without RL2 the
detector will operate whenever the
battery charger brings the battery
voltage up to the threshold level and
thus switch away from the external
supply. The need for this relay was
discovered in practice!
n
The detector should be installed as k—

near to the battery as possible, to

avoid the voltage drop in the cables to .
the cold box causing malfunction.
Tony Mea cock 100 150 200 280 300 350 400 450 SOO 150

Norwich R7(k0)
Norfolk

LDR-stabilised Wien-bridge oscillator

This sine wave oscillator uses feedback via an LDR to stabilise
Ri
I the output amplitude. The circuit arrangement of / CIshould
Cl
be familiar: if RI=R 2=R and C1=C2=C then f=1÷(2xxxRxC). 100k I In
With values shown, the frequency will be 1.59kHz.
Op-amp /C2 provides current to the LEDs according to output

C
IC
amplitude thus modifying the resistance of the LDR. Resistor R3
should be just greater than twice the value of 124. Adjust
2 LEDs

T
min R2
R3
amplitude by modifying the value of R5. The circuit will work in 100k
22k 1% LDR
from 0Hz to 10kHz with 358 op-amps and values shown. Using
rail-to-rail output amps and low voltage red LEDS, the circuit will
work from a5V supply.
The LEDs and LDR should be put in alight proof box such as a R4 IC 2
10k 1%
black pill bottle cap. No claims are made for aperfect sine wave
but it is adequate for exciting atransducer etc.
Some LDRs have avery slow response, which helps with /R 5
distortion, especially at low frequencies. 2k2
Andy Little
Penzance
Cornwall

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

CIRCUIT IDEAS

+12V =pin7, OV =pin4

Use LED as photo-diode

Sensor
+12V LED 3 V1 TL081
6

L
ight emitting diodes are cheap producing about 50mV into 1Mfl. It
and readily available. They can is reasonable to suppose that LEDs
also act as photo-diodes, an example would also operate on the current-
being in the circuit shown. mode, which provides awide
Some sixty LEDs, of various dynamic range with response
colours, were tested in the photo- linearly related to intensity of
0V voltaic mode, and all acted as photo- illumination.
diodes. Testing was done using a Colin Pye
Amplifier gain 100, plus 2.4V 0.5A lamp over-run on 3V. Coventry
low-pass fitter Yellow/orange LEDs worked best, E67

Precise single-supply baseline clamp and

baseline measurement circuit
T lie circuit shov‘ n, right, accurately
clamps the baseline incoming
waveform to within acouple of millivolts
Base
of zero volts. Subtraction of the clamped
line
signal from the original measures the low In
point of the incoming waveform. Using
two series analogue switches reduces
baseline ripple to almost zero. Clamp
Bootstrapping the switches with the out
output signal reduces the switches' off-
state leakage and keeps the DC component
stored on C1,, from drooping between
cycles. Capacitor C1„was chosen to allow
processing of signals from I kHz down to
0.1Hz. For higher minimum frequencies, a
lower capacitance value can be chosen.
Alex Birkett
London
E68 Gnd

Linear pot gives logarithmic gain control

T he volume control of an amplifier is gain of Qia is xl but attenuation to (Jib is Instead of this op-amp, acurrent conveyor
generally logarithmic and sets the output now 1.14(10+1.1) or —20dB. The like the OPA660 will do an even better job.
to about 12% in the its position. Apart from potentiometer scale will be almost linear in Here, V„„,=Vai xR 2/P i,so (R 3+R.4)+R 5 for
expensive models though, the tracking of decibels, covering —20 through 0to +20dB. clockwise and R3+(kt+R 5)for counter
these potentiometers is far from ideal. This is accurate enough for audio clockwise, hence the circuit of Fig. 2
There are good linear potentiometers with applications. performs as Fig. I. •
1% or better accuracy, but in general they Increasing R3_ 5 to 4.7kil will give arange Ivan Doorn
are not suitable as volume controls. of —10 to 0to +10dB. In fact you can set the Amersfoort
However the circuit of Fig. 1will give you zero dB point anywhere, e.g. at 3o'clock to The Netherlands
acalibrated output signal with again give arange of —15 to 0to +5dB. E66
depending on the value of the resistors Fig. 1.
R1
used.
'eleet CW
The input has avoltage divider R1and R2; 01b
Ola R4
if Ri=lt, the OdB signal of aCD player will
give IV ac to the + input of (2 1a .With Input 1R 2 C2
R5
Output
101d2 potentiometer R4 at mid position and
resistors R3 and R5 of LILO, the gain of
•
Qi a is (5+1.1)+1.1. But there is an equal
signal attenuation to buffer Q ib ,hence the
Fig. 2.
output signal will be IV ac or OdBV also.
With R4 fully clockwise the gain of Qi a is
(10+1.1)+1.1=x10 or +20dB. This is -->
connected directly to celb; hence the output
Input
R5 R4
R3
Butter
2 Output
signal is +20dB also.
We'CW
However with R4 fully counter clockwise, • •

£75 winner
388 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001
Letters to the editor
Letters to "Electronics World" Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 SAS
e-mail jackie.lowe@rbi.co.uk using subject heading 'Letters'.

High-voltage power amp

EMC and the individual all the parts are CE marked" and acopy of a
am v,riting in response to aletter from Ged
Landon in the march issue on high-voltage In the April 2001 issue, Leslie Green certificate (2 years old) for the monitor from an
amplifiers for electrostatic loudspeakers. commented on EMC standards and spread untracable Korean test house.
Back in 1985. Idesigned and built apush-pull spectrum. While Iagree with most of his Robert Atkinson, G8RPI
transistor amplifier with a5kV HT supply as comments, his statement that an individual can Via e-mail
my master thesis while Iwas at Chalmers make aPC without CE certification is
University of Technology in Gothenburg. Idid incorrect.
not use CRT deflection transistors, as atypical All electronic equipment built and put 'into Mr Green is somewhat wide of the mark with
beta specification of the devices available at the use' must comply with the EMC directive, The his response to Mr Melia's undue anxiety over
time was >2! maker is responsible, and there's no distinction a'dithered' switch-mode power supply.
Iused video transistors instead, with avoltage between individuals or companies. As far as Britain is concerned, no proposals
rating of 350V and abeta of greater than 40. In theory, all equipment should be tested or have been made to change the CISPR receiver
Some 18 Darlington connected pairs were used have aTechnical Construction File —even one and the emission requirements, in order to bear
for each leg. offs that are used in house and not sold. down on dithered devices. The reason that is
Ami Ingvarsson With Trading Standards enforcing the that the subject has been investigated by the
Linkoping regulations, it is difficult to see how anyone Radiocommunications Agency.
Sweden could be caught unless they actually caused A voluminous report concludes that there is
interference and acomplaint resulted. The only no need for achange. This is because the
On skill and training exception to this rule is that radio amateurs — results of the existing tests are afair measure
Iwas very interested to read Malcolm Lisle's one presumes licenced ones —may construct of the threat posed by such devices to the
letter in the March issue —'An Unskilled equipment as long as it is not sold reception of radio signals.
Generation' —on the lack of training in the commercially. Mr Green is quite right in saying that a
electronics industry. Every time Ihave taken asystem for EMC modification to the CISPR receiver
I'm under the impression that all the testing that included aready built CE-approved specification might well be costly for every
graduates get jobs in the software sector or in PC, the PC has required work before it would owner. The FCC may have decided on that
electronics design. pass on its own. ground, but in Britain, the subject has been
Iwork in the field of automated functional Lower cost monitors also tend to fail investigated in some depth.
test of populated circuit cards and I'm keen to emissions tests. Enquires or complaints to the John Woodgate
employ some intelligent, motivated trainee PC suppliers just get responses such as "well Via e-mail
not necessarily graduates.
How do Ifind them?
I've tried Job Agencies, Job Centres and the Valve substitute Phono preamp
local Tec with no results. Ilead with interest Dase Allen's article on his Norman Thagard is not the first person to use a
It occurs to me that some of readers of MOSFET replacement for a6V6. two-stage preamplifier design in order to avoid
Electronics World probably fit the bill, having a His idea was certainly ingenious, but Idisagree calculating the full RIAA network. This seems
good knowledge of electronic circuitry, that spare valves are difficult to get hold of, or an extraordinarily negative approach to circuit
experience of software writing —possibly as a very expensive. For example, Langrex Supplies design.
hobby —and who are addicted to electronics. Ltd, which advertise in this magazine, seems He does not draw attention to the massive
Alistair Gee able to supply just about anything at very loss of headroom caused by his amplify-then-
Worthing reasonable prices. Maplin has amuch more attenuate structure. This loss starts at 1dB at
limited range, but this includes the 6V6 IkHz, and rises to 20dB at 20kHz.
More choice on FM More generally, there are some good web sites The unwanted zero produced by the single-
As the audio broadcast FM band is so much to interest the vintage wireless enthusiast. For amp version, because the gain cannot drop
bigger than the AM MW and LW bands, it instance, try http://www.vintage-radio.com. below unity, is easily cancelled out by placing a
seems apity that it is has so few stations — Incidentally, Iseem to remember that solid- passive HF pole after the amplifier, as Ihave
especially as Radio 1decided to have anarrower state valve replacements were made pointed out many times.
appeal. commercially in the early seventies. Does It did indeed come as asurprise to learn that
Digital radio doesn't seem much use. anyone know anything about them? most of the noise comes from the resistive part
Presumably this is because it takes alot of Ranulph Poole of the cartridge impedance —because it is not
processor power to decode and hence digital Via e-mail true. RIAA inputs can be made with JFET op-
personal radios will not sip batteries like amps, bipolar op-amps, discrete FETs or
conventional AM/FM personal radios. A true dome tweeter discrete bipolars, but in every case the major
Iread that 30kHz AM was considered for the John Watknison's interesting treatise on dome noise contribution is either the amplifier or the
FM band before 200kHz wideband FM was tweeters was flawed on one minor point. A 471(11 input resistor.
chosen: Iwondered if narrow-band FM could be pulsating hemispheric tweeter has been Mr Thagard overlooks that the modest
used to squeeze in extra channels —and could it developed and has been available commercially resistive component of atypical moving-
be backwards compatible? Could narrowband for several years. Irefer to the fascinating Audaz magnet cartridge is completely dominated by its
FM be combined with adigital helper signal? HD-3P —anovel and unique application of piezo huge inductance. To this he adds a10mH choke
Even if in mono, extra stations would be good. polymers. in series with the input; this seems like avery
Alan Bradley Trevor Wilson high value for EMC purposes.
Via e-mail Via e-mail For aShure M75ED II, the relevant values are

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 389

LETTERS

610f1 and 0.47H. Over most of the audio the actual preamp operating in my system resistance figures that tused. But Ihave tried
spectrum, the total cartridge impedance is much (Martin-Logan ReQuest loudspeakers), Ican't the preamp with aStanton 681EEE, which
higher than the resistive part. So the noise imagine why this is worth much discussion on audibly has much higher sensitivity.
generated by the 471d1 input resistor is not any but the theoretical plane. Too many Again, to address this issue by reference to
shunted away, but goes into the amplifier input. designers spend too much time and money the application note: "It should be noted that
For the best noise performance it is necessary chasing the ultimate when much less would give most real cartridges are very limited in their
to design for amuch higher impedance than the the same subjective, if not objective ability to track such large ("superdisc" record-
cartridge resistance; IOW to 20k1. 2is about performance in audio. In commercial work, my words) velocities, and will not generate
right. over design is almost as heinous as under preamplifier output levels above 1 V rms even
It is agreat pity that no information was given design: under high groove velocity conditions."
on noise and distortion performance. If this argument is insufficient, Iquote from Again, Isee little justification to design to a
Douglas Self AN-346: "In contrast (to the inverting op amp- non problem. In fact, this is one of the most oft-
Huntingdon my words), the 471d1 damping resistor in figure repeated concerns about phono preamp design
Cambs 2(a) is in parallel with the source, and is a and yet seems to have almost no practical
significant noise contributor only when the significance.
Dr Thagard replies... source impedance is high. This will occur near Folks, the cartridge will very likely distort due
Imade no claim for originality of the two-stage resonance, when the source is amoving magnet to inability to track before its output will exceed
concept. To the contrary, Iwrote that tused a cartridge." the preamp's output limitation! The very same
National Semiconductor abstract as the basis of Resonance, according to the author, will occur loud passages that were distorted when played
the design. The only new feature was the single- between 15 kHz and 20 kHz. Iwas, therefore, through my Dynaco and Krell preamps still
stage op amp, but this was also based on atext not unaware of the point that Mr Self makes. distort through my circuit. The ones that don't
book example. However, Ido dispute the significance since the distort through the Dynaco and Krell don't
The 10mH choke was per 'The Art of application-note author goes on to say that the distort through mine, either.
Electronics' recommendation. Iwent so far as to shunt location of the 47kfl resistor has a13-18 Irecently read an article involving aformer
explain the effect of adding the choke. Reduce dB noise advantage over the series placement. designer of phono preamps. He stated that, in
the choke to 2.5 or 5mH or eliminate it entirely, Now Ihave to choose whether to believe Mr testing various design variations for listener
if it offends your sensibilities. Iprefer to keep it Self or Kerry Lacanette, the author of the impression, accuracy of RIAA tracking
because the reception of radio stations through a application note. PSpice favours the application correlated most closely with afavourable rating.
phono preamp is less desirable than the note author. If that is true, then using adesign such as mine
negligible alteration in frequency response. Idon't have an ac voltmeter sufficiently with accuracy of ±0.1dB would seem to be one
Anyhow, the original articles for all three of sensitive for noise measurements. Noise of the best approaches, notwithstanding the
these references were appropriately cited in the measurement results were published for the concerns cited by Mr Self.
footnotes. application note circuit, which used LM833 op- Idon't try to reinvent the wheel. Mr Self
Iran the article circuit on PSpice along with amps in lieu of my "single-stage" op amps. needs to take up his quarrel with the authors
circuits such as the inverter that places the 471d1 Unweighted signal/noise referred to a1kHz, whose articles Iused in reference and as my
resistor in series with the input rather than in 5mV input was 82dB while 'A'-weighted S/N design basis. If my article or circuit is in error, it
shunt. Idid not overlook the "huge inductance" was 87 dB. These are certainly respectable. is because Imerely followed the wrongful ways
(of the cartridge). Iwent so far as to model If there is aheadroom problem with the of some pretty astute designers.
balanced phono preamps, but could never get rid preamp, it is not obvious. It tests ok, and sounds Ihad afriend with apretty good set of ears
of the input resistor noise, as the 23.5k0 (1/2 fine using some pretty high-output cartridges in give the preamp a"thumbs up," too and Ihave a
47k.0) gate resistors are in series with the inputs. the face of any likely output from any cartridge. lot more confidence in him than any theoretical
The Shure V15xMR 1k12 dc resistance and Ipersonally use aShure VI5xMR, whose data considerations that would seem to have little
425mH inductance were modelled as well. 1also sheet is where Igot the inductance and practical applicability in the present case. •
had and used the PSpice models for the input
JFETs, types 2SK389 and 2S1109. The only
devices in the model that differed from the Obituary —Karl-Heinz Lipschutz
prototype devices were the current mirror BJTs. We have learned of the death of Heinz Lipschutz at the age of 80, after many months of poor
Even there, tedited their instance models to health. He left no family.
more closely conform to the dual ITS transistors Heinz was known in several fields of interest: aviation, electronics (radio and audio), combustion
of the prototype. engine design and building and, perhaps most of all, he was well known for the 44 years he spent
Unless PSpice is wrong, the cartridge in trying to persuade the MoD to show some interest in his design for asubmersible craft, the U-
resistance is the greatest source of noise plane. Other navies have now taken it up.
throughout the audio band. The preamp, as I In electronics, he first came up against officialdom in 1939, when he presented to the Air
stated in the article, contributed little additional Ministry the design of anavigation aid for bombers (EWW, May, 1992). It used radio direction
noise. Iwrote the disclaimer in the article that, finding in anovel arrangement and was capable of extension to provide an inertial navigation
"If the model is correct, the preamp, itself, adds system. Again, the development was turned down, even though it had been built and successfully
little to the total noise output." Obviously, I tested.
acknowledged the basis of my claim for good He was born in 1920 in Germany to aJewish family and fortunately went with his family to
noise performance. Palestine, having matriculated in 1936. He worked at several stop-gap jobs until 1939, when he
Idon't believe that Iam even the first author was taken on by the British-controlled Dept of Civil Aviation at Lydda (Lod) Airport, in
to cite the cartridge dc resistance as the biggest meteorological work and air traffic control, later working with the RAF.
source of noise, but admittedly, Icannot recall He became involved with designing and constructing broadcasting equipment for the British
the citation. Mediterranean Broadcasting Station and, in 1948, was co-founder of Kol Israel, the Voice of Israel
For an inverting input stage, most of the noise broadcasting station.
comes from the 471d2 resistor. Idon't pretend to Aviation interests took him to El Al, where he was aFlight Radio Officer, and later to Cambrian
understand everything about PSpice, but in Airways in Cardiff as aCaptain (he had taken out aprivate pilot's licence in 1939 and had built
general it gives similar results to the breadboard several light aircraft).
circuits based on the computer-modelled He will be missed by many friends at Cambrian and in other fields, not least this one.
circuits. Philip Darrington
In any event, since no noise is audible from

390 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 NEW
THO IGHTS
ON
EMC
D
uring the last half-century, the
subject of electromagnetic
Ian Darney Fig. 1. Ground-plane and image
conductor.
compatibility, or EMC for
short, has become increasingly
presents a new
complex and confusing. It now
presents an onerous burden to the
approach to EMC
conductor
system designer.
EMC is just another functional
with a view to
conducting plane
requirement on asystem, and can be demystifying the
treated as such. All that is needed is
an understanding of the coupling
subject.
mechanisms. Given such an
understanding, afew simple
guidelines can be formulated.
Many books and learned articles
have been published. None of them
adopts the approach outlined here. The ground plane
A widespread belief exists in the Image conductor
Circuit modelling engineering profession that the
It is not unreasonable to suggest that construction of an equipotential Vc,onductor
any EMC problem can be analysed ground plane is an essential feature of
in terms of circuit modelling. any good EMC design. This is less
A wealth of analytical tools is likely to be successful than the search 1-conductor=Limage
available to anybody who has for the Holy Grail, because there is
completed acourse in basic circuit no such thing as the equipotential
design. Just as circuit diagrams can ground plane. Vpiane
be used to describe how the signals Figure 1illustrates the concept of Fig. 2. Circuit model of wire and conducting plane.
in asystem are processed, so they the conducting plane and the image
can be used to define the conductor. The plane lies on the x-z
interference coupling mechanisms. axis and the conductor is routed parallel to the z-axis, the voltage
A circuit diagram gives the whole above it, parallel to the z-axis. When varies continuously.
picture. an alternating voltage source is As far as the electromagnetic field
There is no point in trying to connected at one end, and ashort is concerned, replacing the
understand how amultivibrator circuit placed at the other, acurrent conducting plane with the image
works by focussing attention on the flows. conductor makes absolutely no
properties of resistors, or capacitors, It is true that, along any line on the difference. Figure 2is acircuit
or transistors. Analysing the electric surface parallel to the x-axis, the model of the upper conductor and its
and magnetic fields at different voltages are all the same. But it is not image. Since the image has identical
locations is just as futile, when true that the entire plane is an physical properties, it must also have
assessing the EMC of asystem. equipotential surface. Along any line identical electrical properties. The

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 391

EMC

ground plane can be represented by follows that the voltage drop along The purpose of Fig. 4is to analyse
an inductance, and the value of that the ground plane is also equal to that the effects of the magnetic field
inductance is the same as the signal in the signal conductor. Most surrounding the three conductors.
conductor. definitely, the voltage is not zero. Values must be calculated for the loop
Since the return current is the same However, this does not mean that currents 1¡brew and / vi„„, before
i

magnitude as the signal current, it the ground plane has no practical spurious voltages at the interfaces can
value. When implemented as one be determined. Such acalculation is
signal 1current laj,er of amulti-layer printed circuit only possible if all components of Fig.
A board, it acts as adedicated return 4are defined. If any detail is omitted,
structure conductor for every signal track on analysis is impossible.
the adjacent surface. So, every loop of the circuit under
signal 2current The return current is concentrated review must be completely defined.
D
in that region of the plane
immediately adjacent to the relevant Inter-system problems
Fig. 3. Two separate wires along the structure. signal track. Crosstalk between Where the source of interference is
signals is minimised. outside the control of the designer, it
is still possible to predict the response
Za signal 1wire RI Li Intra-system design of the circuit-under-review.
Figure 3illustrates an intra-system Figure 5illustrates aproblem.
Vsig1 'threat problem. During normal operation, Equipment units A and B are mounted
structureL.1Ai 4-
signal Iis carried from A to B, and on aframework which is subject to
Vthreat signal 2is carried from C to D. Both lightning strikes. A single wire is used
zc use the structure as the return to carry asignal from A to B, with the
signal 2wire
1N, conductor. structure used as the return path. What
R3 L3
Coupling between the two signals level of protection is needed at the
Fig. 4. Circuit model of coupling between two loops. can be analysed using the model of interface circuitry to ensure that the
Fig. 4, where it is assumed that signal system survives astrike?
Iis the threat, and signal 2is the Figure 6shows the circuit model.
'threat
wire victim. If it is initially assumed that Component values are determined as
A
signal 2is zero, then any voltages in before.'
I
VICI I
r11
N'<ti the victim loop must be due to A waveform is assumed for the
structure interference. lightning pulse, and acurrent
Component values for the circuit generator is created to simulate that
Fig. 5. Effect of lightning strike.
model can be derived from the current. Carrying out acircuit analysis
physical construction of the assembly, of the model enables currents and
or from electrical measurements made voltages at Za and Zb to be predicted.
Rwire Lwire with general-purpose test equipment.'
When values have been assigned to Predicting EMC test results
Za fl Zt,
all components of the model, then Figure 7illustrates the set-up for a
Rstructure Lstructure 4 circuit analysis can be used to typical conducted susceptibility test.
determine the level of interference in A toroidal injection transformer is
Vthreat the victim loop. Spicycle 2 makes this used to induce apredefined voltage
Ithrea—t)
4
task easy. into the loop formed by cable and
The results can be compared with structure. The circuit model is shown
Fig. 6. Circuit model of lightning strike conditions. the characteristics of signal 2, an in Fig. 8. Here, V„.„ simulates the
assessment made of system voltage applied by the test equipment.
performance, and an informed Again, frequency response analysis,
decision made on the design of the or transient analysis, can be used to
interface circuitry for C and D. predict how the system will respond
There are other options. Interface A to an externally induced signal.
or interface B could be redesigned to If the prediction is favourable, the
minimise the interference created by system can confidently be submitted
Injection the threat current, or the layout of the for formal EMC testing. If
transformer
single wire cables could be altered. unfavourable, modifications can be
carried out, and the cost of failure will
Circuit loops be avoided.
Circuit diagrams normally show a
Fig. 7. Set-up for conducted susceptibility test. section of asystem, with the various Correlating results
inputs and outputs displayed as open- A linear network that contains one or
circuit terminals. The interconnections more voltage or current sources can
RwIre Lwire between circuit sections are seldom be replaced by asingle voltage source
depicted either. Few people are and aseries impedance. (Thevenin's
hest Zb
interested in drawings of parallel theorem). Hence, the set-up of Fig. 7
rrr,
-
4 lines. can be correlated with conditions
4-- Rstructure Lstructure When electromagnetic coupling is during alightning strike (Fig. 5) or
Vtest being analysed, the focus of attention with interference from another circuit
Fig. 8. Circuit model of conducted susceptibility test. is reversed. The function of circuit in the equipment under review (Fig.
sections is largely irrelevant. 3).

392 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 EMC

In fact, any number of interference configuration is shown in Fig. 10,

sources can be treated as asingle where it is assumed that the return signal

voltage source in series with the conductor is grounded at both ends. A

structure. The inductors Led and L, act as a return
potential divider to reduce the voltage
The structure as ashield induced in the inner loop. As aresult. structure O
4—
structure
The first line of defence of any system the differential current, /dio-, is
Vthreat
from external electromagnetic fields is significantly less than the common-
the outer conducting shield. This mode current / cm .The effect of Fig. 9. Adding areturn conductor.
could be the metal of an equipment interference on the system is reduced.
box, an aircraft fuselage, or the If the wires are close together, 418
framework of abuilding. and L„, are less that Lg„ d, improving V s,g

External electromagnetic energy is common-mode rejection.

converted into transient currents in the If in Fig. 10, the voltage source Ridg Lsig 1
Zb
shield, rather than in the functional were in series with Za,and Vm „„, was za 'MD
Rret Lret
circuitry. Transient voltages will be zero, then / cm would be less than /de
4—
developed along the paths that the Emissions from power supply wiring Vtransler

current takes, due to the shield would be reduced.

0
inductance. Rgnd Lgnd
—

From the point of view of circuitry Ground loops Vthreat

inside the shield, the source of It does not take long to deduce that
the inclusion of return conductors Fig. 10. Circuit model of three-conductor configuration.
interference is avoltage generator in
series with the inductance and will create innumerable ground loops
resistance of the shield. in anormal system. This is no bad
In this context, the terms 'shield', thing. Fear of ground loops is akin to the common-mode current becomes
'ground', 'earth', 'structure', and being scared by bogeymen. zero. There is minimal emission.
'framework' are synonymous Every ground loop provides a So, if the circuit design ensures that
measure of common-mode rejection. there is current balance in the signal
Return conductors and return .conductors, then maximum
Up to this point, it has been assumed Current balance common-mode rejection and
that all signals use the structure as the If the two conductors of Fig. 10 were minimum emission can be achieved.
return path. It has been shown that identical, then the resistance and
any such configuration is subjected to inductance values would also be Screened cable
the full threat voltage. (V,h„„,) equal. If the common-mode current Another way to improve common-
If this 'single-wire' configuration is were to be shared equally, then mode rejection is to use ascreened
adopted, then every interface must be would be equal to V,„„„e„ There cable, as illustrated in Fig. 13.
designed to withstand that level of would be no interference. Figure 11 The circuit model for this
threat. illustrates this concept. configuration is shown in Fig. 14.
A significant degree of protection In Fig. 12, this circuit is viewed Here, the transfer impedance between
can be provided, by routing areturn from the point of view of its normal the common-mode loop and the
conductor alongside every signal function. Current in the signal differential loop is just the resistance
conductor, as illustrated in Fig. 9. conductor is balanced precisely by of the screen. At low frequencies,
The circuit model for this current in the return conductor, and common-mode rejection is minimal,

39 3
May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD
EMC

but as the frequency increases, the rejection is minimal. Damping resistors

impedance of Lg„,1increases, I c„, Even so, performance of ascreened As well as providing an explanation
decreases, the voltage across Rso cable is better than the single wire or to the problem of resonance,
decreases, le- decreases, and so does wire-pair configurations. transmission line theory offers a
the level of interference at the solution. Terminate each line with a
interface circuitry. Floating configuration. damping resistor, ideally, with the
By removing the link between unit B characteristic impedance.
Capacitive effect and structure, that interface can be Fig. 18 shows how voltage
Taking capacitance into account, the made to float, giving rise to the reflections can be avoided at a
circuit model changes to that shown configuration of Fig. 16. The circuit floating termination, by adding
on Fig. 15. Carrying out an analysis model now becomes as shown in Fig. damping resistors. Since there are
of the frequency response reveals 17. It is obvious that for the floating two loops involved, there are two
that the common-mode current will configuration, common-mode transmission lines to be terminated.
drop to aminimum, then rise again to rejection is excellent at low Values for Rem and Rdiff can range
apeak. At this peak, common mode frequencies. There is virtually no from less than 50(.2to 377f1,
common-mode current. depending on the configuration.
However, as the frequency Fig. 19 shows one way of
screened cable increases, the impedance of Cg„ d terminating awire-pair when the
decreases, / cm rises and so does return conductor is grounded at both
A _O V„„„ sf„. Interference level rises at ends. A common-mode transformer is
lcm
20dB per decade. Then the situation used to insert aresistance in series
ground O ground
worsens. Inductance Lod comes into
play, and the slope of the curve
with the cable. As far as differential
signals are concerned, the transformer
Vthreat
increases, and continues to increase is transparent; any voltage across the
Fig. lb. Screened cable -floating. until the response reaches aresonant signal winding is matched precisely
peak. It would be unwise to expect by avoltage across the return
much more than 10dB of common winding.
mode rejection at that frequency. 3 The performance of this
configuration is better than that of the
Transmission-line common-mode choke, which looks
considerations like an open-circuit at high
When the loop formed by cable frequencies. As with the floating
screen and structure is treated as a configuration, an open-circuit causes
transmission line, abetter resonant peaks.
explanation for the performance of A common-mode resistance can be
Rgnd I-gnd 4
the floating and grounded inserted into ascreened cable without
2 2 Vth reat configurations emerges compromising the integrity of the
When the floating configuration is screen. Just wind afew turns of cable
Fig. 17. Circuit model of screened cable -floating. used, and the frequency of the onto aferrite core and add aresistive
interference reaches that loop.
corresponding to the quarter-
wavelength of the line, voltage Conclusion
reflection occurs at the open-circuit A method of analysing various types
termination, with current reflection at of interference problems has been
the short-circuited termination. The introduced. Ihave demonstrated that
amplitude of the current at the circuit modelling can be used to
grounded termination builds up to a provide aclear understanding of the
peak and ahigh level of interference coupling mechanisms. A number of
is observed in the differential loop. 3 simple guidelines have been
When both ends are grounded, and formulated.
Fig. 18. Damping voltage reflections at afloating
the frequency of the interference Designing circuits to minimise
interface.
corresponds to the half wavelength interference is not particularly
RCM of the line, current reflections occur difficult. •
at both ends of the line. Again, the
common-mode transformer level of interference in the inner loop
fn-filar wound
reaches apeak value. 3
signal The inevitable conclusion is that
neither the grounded configuration References
nor the floating configuration can I. Ian Darney, 'Bench testing for
give aconsistently good performance EMC', Electronics World,
across the entire spectrum. Even, so, February 2000.
they offer avastly improved 2. Spicycle, Those Engineers Ltd, 31
ground groun
4-- performance on the 'single-wire' Birkbeck Road, London. NW7
Vthreat configuration. 4BP
Fig. 19. Damping current reflections at agrounded If the length of the line is defined, 3. Ian Darney, 'The common-mode
interface. the frequency of resonance can be resistor', Electronics World,
predicted. August 2000.

394 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

 The biosensor:
Biological
materials
combined with

electronics meets
traditional
transducers allow
substances to be

biology
analysed much
more rapidly than
is possible using
conventional
laboratory

A
dvances in materials and solution's acidity. An important class
techniques have made sensors of this type of electrode is the ion- techniques. David
smaller and more sensitive selective electrode, which can be Clark looks at a
than ever. Despite that, sensors still made sensitive to aparticular ion
rely on the same principles of physics through the use of amembrane that is device set to
and chemistry that were used to make only permeable to ions of acertain
size. These membranes are often
flourish in the
the measurements of physical
parameters in the early days. made of glass, Fig. 2. twenty-first
Now though, there is anew class of The new generation of sensors now
device coming into wide-scale use. It coming into widespread use takes this century -the
is based on biology and biochemistry development astage further. These biosensor.
—fields of science until now largely sensors combine 'traditional' physical
unexploited in instrumentation and or chemical principles with those of
control. biochemistry and biology. article takes alook at how biological
These sensors will determine the Interestingly this has come about materials can be connected into the
concentration of many of the because of abetter understanding of electronic world, the interface that
substances found in industry, the how biological materials work on a makes all these applications possible.
environment and living organisms — chemical and physical level. This has
including humans —that previously enabled biological molecules to be The biosensor
were not measurable electronically. linked directly to electrochemical and A biosensor consists of three main
Furthermore they will do this with a physical sensing devices. components: abiologically active
selectivity and sensitivity normally To date, the main use of these agent, atransducer for generating a
unachievable with standard sensors. devices has been in the health-care non-biological output that can be
The device is the biosensor, which area, where measurements of the connected to some form of
the dictionary describes as "a device levels of gases, ions and metabolic instrumentation and afixing
that uses aliving organism or products in the blood are often the material. This fixer keeps the agent
biological molecules, especially best indicators of apatient's state of
enzymes or antibodies, to detect the health. Using these devices in Inverted glass bottle with
presence of chemicals". conjunction with some electronic
open-mouthed neck
indication can give amuch quicker
Early days and more cost-effective result than a
Perhaps the first sensor ever laboratory analysis.
manufactured was Galileo's These instruments are also making Air
thermometer Fig. 1, made around their way into high-street stores.
1592 AD. This was followed half a Perhaps the best examples are the Fig. 1. Galileo's
century later by Torricelli's blood glucose level indicators thermometer. The
barometer; both were instruments for available from chemists' outlets to liquid level rises and
measuring physical parameters of aid sufferers of diabetes in the control falls as the temperature
course. of their blood glucose levels. of the air inside the
It took until the nineteenth century However, these devices are now of bottle changes.
however before the rise of the science growing significance in the relatively !Level change
of electrochemistry. The increase in new biotechnology industries. There,
knowledge in this field was primarily they are used as monitoring and
due to the work of Michael Faraday. control sensors in the large-scale
It eventually led to the development production of materials in fields as
of sensors capable of measuring the diverse as brewing and drug
presence and concentrations of atoms manufacturing.
and ions in solution. They are also finding applications
Perhaps the best known of these is in industrial-process effluent control,
the pH electrode, used for measuring in monitoring for gases in the mining
the concentrations of hydrogen ions industry and in pollution monitoring
in solution, ameasure of the in the general environment. This

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD

 MEDICAL ELECTRONICS

in position, provides amedium for The transducer. With perhaps one the output of the biological agent.
keeping the agent stable, allows the notable and fascinating exception - Depending on the agent, this output
reactant access to the agent, and surface plasmon resonance, described can be electrical, physical or optical.
links the agent's output to the later -the transducer part of a Electrical transducers can be
transducer, Fig. 3. biosensor operates on the same amperometric, i.e. current measuring,
The next sections look in more principles as the traditional physical potentiometric, i.e. voltage
detail at each of these three and electrochemical sensors. The measuring, or even field-effect
components. transducer must of course respond to transistor (FET) linked. Here the gate
A of an FET is in intimate contact with
Fig. 2. the biological material. Changes in
Ion-selective charge distribution within a
Housing -......._....i.
electrode. A biological material occur as aresult
potential of chemical reactions. These changes
difference, related Electrode in charge directly control the FET. It
Reference electrode
in value to the is relatively easy to make the FET
concentration in Buffer solution part of the signal-processing
solution of the ion electronics associated with the sensor.
being analysed, Outputs that can be categorised as
develops between physical include the microscopic
Aand B. Specialised glass changes of mass, conductivity,
wall allows dielectric strength and temperature
diffusion of the Solution

u
under that can occur when reactions take
on of interest -4---.
analysis place. These effects can be monitored
directly or converted to electrical
measurements using fairly
straightforward techniques.
Optical outputs might involve
monitoring via fibre optics. Changes
Biologically in transparency, i.e. change in light
active transmission properties, can be
agent monitored optically. Many organic
Transducer compounds absorb very specific
Fixing wavelengths of visible and ultra-
material violet light. Bioluminescence -the

Fig. 3. Basic biosensor

comprises three main
i direct conversion of chemical energy
to light energy by biochemical means
-can also be monitored optically.
parts -abiologically Processing
Output detection using surface
active agent, a —•- Output --•- and result
plasmon resonance can also be
transducer and afixing display
considered an optical technique.
material to hold the two
together. The fixer. One of the main problems
in using biological material as part of
asensor is in fixing it in position as

u
part of the sensor. As well as holding
the material in position, the method
Adsorbed onto the chosen must also maintain it in an
surface, i.e. held by environment in which it remains
active. Of course the fixing method
electrostatic interactions
must also ensure that the material is
accessible to the substance which it is
measuring.
There are four ways of achieving
this. The material can be fixed by
Physically held behind
being: adsorbed onto asurface, held
a membrane material
behind amembrane, held within a
matrix or chemically bonded, Fig. 4.
The most dramatic advances that
have come about in this sensor
technology however have occurred
due to the recent developments in
Held within a
knowledge of how biomaterials work
matrix material ie a gel at molecular level.

The biological agent. Currently there

Fig. 4. Methods of are four main classes of biomaterial
fixing biological used in biosensors. These are:
material. enzymes, antibodies, receptor
proteins, and whole cells and tissues.
Chemically bonded
In the future, it is possible that even

3
9()
ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001
 MEDICAL ELECTRONICS

whole organisms could be used as

biological detectors.
Reactant specific to the enzyme
The most useful aspect of
biological materials is that many only
react with specific materials.
Enzymes are perhaps the best-known
example. They are the catalysts of the
Enzyme specific for the reactant
biological world; without them life as
we know it would not exist.
Enzymes function by reducing the
energy necessary for areaction to
begin, the activation energy, and
achieve this at biological molecule
level by having astructural shape that Reactant and enzyme uniquely
'fits' —like alock and key —with the
combine to allow reaction to occur
molecules taking part in the reaction,
Fig. 5.
As aconsequence, enzyme action is
very specific, each type catalysing
only one reaction. As aresult, it can
be used to detect single substances in Fig. 5. Enzyme action.
an environment where many may be

0c?
present. Product substances
A good example of this class is the
glucose oxidase enzyme, which can
be used in biosensors for measuring
glucose levels in blood. Here the Enzyme ready to catalyse
shape of the glucose molecule is such
another reactant substance
that it fits into binding sites on the
enzyme molecule.
The interaction affects the energy however the property change that
levels associated with the bonds occurs as the antigen binds to the Antigen
between the atoms, and gluconic acid antibody is measured with an
and hydrogen peroxide are produced associated transducer.
as the glucose reacts with oxygen. The activity of antibody-based
This means that the concentration of sensors means they are primarily
glucose can be determined by useful in amedical context.
measuring one of three changes —the
reduction in oxygen concentration, Receptor proteins. The receptor
the increase in acid concentration or protein is avery flexible class of
the increase in hydrogen peroxide biomaterial for biosensor use. There
concentration. are receptor proteins for many
There is asimple electrochemical different types of biologically active
transducer for detecting each of these materials including hormones and
three substances —the pH electrode neurotransmitters, the chemicals that
for example will measure the acid mediate the activity of the nervous
concentration very simply. system. Fig. 6. Antibodl action.
Drugs also usually act via receptor
Antibodies. The second class of proteins. In biological cells the
biomaterial is the antibody, or binding of the appropriate molecule
immunoglobulin protein; this is also to the receptor protein triggers the
the second most frequently selective, active transport of another
encountered biomaterial used in substance across the cell membrane, a Specific antibodies bind tightly
biosensors. normal, vital part of cell function. to specific matching antigens
The antibody is afundamental pan Figure 7shows how the receptor
of the body's immune system. There protein works.
is adifferent type of antibody for For abiosensor this action means
every type of particle the body that areceptor protein can be chosen
recognises as 'foreign', an example to give adetector that only responds
of which is an infective agent like a to the hormone, drug, etc., of interest. could respond to the presence of
bacterium. These foreign particles are The use of whole cells and tissue in those molecules.
known as antigens. The antibody biosensors is more complex, Another, non-technical, complexity
binds tightly to the antigen for which primarily since living tissue needs a in this area is of course an ethical one
it is specific, just as an enzyme binds supply of nutrient and oxygen. concerning the source of this living
to areacting molecule. Figure 6 Nevertheless the principle is the material, whether animal or perhaps
gives an indication of the action of same; in the nose for example, 'cloned'.
antibodies. particular tissues respond to the Surface-plasmon resonance
In the immune system, this triggers particular molecules that 'have' a Changes that occur in biological
afurther process that attacks the particular smell. So abiosensor with molecules are subtle and often the
foreign particle; in the biosensor some of this tissue as the detector reactions only involve one or two

May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD 397

 MEDICAL ELECTRONICS

fluctuation can be considered to act

like an electron particle, and this type
*<--- Specific reacting chemical eg drug or hormone
of 'quasi'-particle is known as a
plasmon. Just as atomic particles
fixed in alattice can vibrate and have
aresonant frequency associated with
Outside cell them due to the energy of the bonds
holding them, plasmons too can
vibrate and have aresonant frequency
associated with them.
Cell membrane
At the surface of amaterial, for
example athin film of gold, these
plasmons can be excited by asource
Inside cell of energy, for example photons of
light. These energy interactions affect
Receptor protein the reflection of that light.
If athin layer of biological material
is attached to the gold surface, the
Fig. 7. Receptor protein action. energy interactions between the
biological and gold materials will
give aparticular resonant frequency
and angle of reflection for light
directed at the surface. If the energy
interactions are then modified, for
When the receptor-chemical example by the biological material
complex forms, further changes binding to something else on its
'outer' surface, the resonant
are triggered within the cell
frequency and the angle of reflection
will change.
So, by simply directing abeam of
polarised light at the gold film-
molecules. This gives biosensors technique is called surface plasmon biological material interface and
their sensitivity advantage over resonance, Fig. 8. measuring the change in the angle of
conventional sensors as well as the The atomic and molecular reflection, ahighly sensitive method
advantage of their selectivity. It does structures, and hence properties of of detecting asubstance that
however mean that the associated materials, are determined primarily specifically binds to the biological
transducer also needs to be sensitive by the electrostatic forces between material is obtained.
enough to convert the biological the charges on the atoms and
effect to one that can drive processing electrons that compose that material. Prevention better than cure
and display instruments. Quantum theory explains that the Medical treatments are tending to
Specialised techniques can be used distribution of these charges is not become increasingly based on
to detect the small changes in fixed, as in the classical description prevention through routine clinical
voltage, current, temperature etc. that of electron orbitals. Rather, it is testing, followed by early
are used in conventional transducers. subject to random fluctuations, the intervention when potential problems
However an exciting new technique electron orbitals for example being are recognised.
has been developed that enables the the 'places' where the electrons are Similarly, better environmental
monitoring of the activity of most likely to be found at any instant. protection is based on preventing
biological molecules directly, one A 'packet', or quantum, of energy contaminants reaching the
that operates at sub-atomic level. This associated with this charge environment in preference to cleaning
pollution up after it has occurred. The
need for increasingly specific and
Optical sensitive detectors for the relevant
Light substances is therefore becoming
sensor
source greater.
array
Fig. 8. Surface plasmon Scientists are rapidly developing
resonance detector. the ability to 'engineer' biological
materials to specific requirements.
Technological advances are enabling
in many cases the agent and fixing
fi
lm Gold To processing
medium to be screen-printed onto an
and result
electrode. This will allow the mass
display
production of inexpensive biosensors,
and it means that these devices are
Biological _-' likely to be making greater and
greater inroads into everyday life in
agent
the coming years, making a
significant contribution to an
increasingly healthy society and
Chamber containing substance being analysed 'green' environment. •

398 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

TiePieScope HS801 PORTABLE MOST

ABRITARY WAVEFORM GENERATOR,

STORAGE OSCILLOSCOPE-
SPECTRUM ANALYZER
MULTIMETER-
TRANSIENT RECORDER

•The sophisticated cursor read outs have

21 possible read outs. Besides the usual
read outs, like voltage and time, also
quantities like rise time and frequency
are displayed.

Measured signals and instrument

settings can be saved on disk.This
enables the creation of a library of
The HS801: the first 100 Mega samples measured signals. Text balloons can be
per second measuring instrument that added to asignal, for special comments.
consists of a MOST (Multimeter. The (colour) print outs can be supplied
Oscilloscope, Spectrum analyzer and with three common text lines (e.g.
Transient recorder) and an AVVG (abritary company info) en three lines with
waveform generator). This new MOST measurement specific information.
portable and compact measuring
instrument can solve almost every
measurement problem. With the •The HS801 has an 8bit resolution and a
integrated AVVG you can generate every maximum sampling speed of 100 MHz.
signal you want. The input range is 0.1 volt full scale to 80
volt full scale. The record length is
32K/64K samples. The AVVG has a 10 bit
The versatile software has a user-defined resolution and asample speed of 25
toolbar with which over 50 instrument MHz.The HS801 is connected to the
settings quick and easy can be parallel printer port of a computer.
accessed. An intelligent auto setup
allows the inexperienced user to perform
measurements immediately. Through the •The minimum system requirement is a
use of asetting file, the user has the PC with a486 processor and 8 Mbyte
possibility to save an instrument setup RAM available. The software runs in
and recall it at a later moment. The setup Windows 3.xx /95 /98 or Windows NT
time of the instrument is hereby reduced and DOS 3.3 or higher.
to a minimum.
•TiePie engineering (UK), 28 Stephenson
Road, Industrial Estate. St. Ives.
When aquick indication of the input Cambridgeshire. PE17 4VVJ. UK
signal is required, a simple click on the Tel: 01480-460028; Fax: 01480-460340
auto setup button will immediately give a
good overview of the signal. The auto TiePie engineering (NL).
setup function ensures a proper setup of Koperslagersstraat 37, 8601 VVL SNEEK
the time base, the trigger levels and the The Netherlands
input sensitivities. Tel: +31 515 415 416: Fax +31 515 418 819

Web: http://www tiepie.n1

CIRCLE NO. 124 ON REPLY CARD

WEB I ECTIO
ACQUIVISION radio scanning and reception solutions • DANIEL MCBREARTY EQUINOX TECHNOLOGIES
Broadcast • Media • Monitoring •
http://www.acquivision.com Professional Amateur Radio communications http://www.danmcb.demon.co.0 UK LTD
AcquiVision solutions. including XV - k/eng.html http://www.equinox-tech.com
Plotting. Oscilloscopes (with FFT), Data BEDFORD OPTO Experienced engineer based in London,
Logging and Custom Software, have been TECHNOLOGY LTD specialist in audio and control systems.
iefhter leferreerettfforefed

getting the most from computers since Available for design. project engineering fIehoene to the hrhe pat?, of

1994. Download software. Telephone

http://www.bot.co.uk
or general consultancy. Background of 111
(01903)830502. Optoelectronic products UK design high-quality work. «Op
1110X
development manufacture standard and
custom. LED bargraphs. circuit board
AQUILA VISION DESIGNER SYSTEMS CO. e
indicators, stand offs,
http://www.aquila-vision.co.uk transmissive/reflective switches, baseefa http://www.designersystems.co.
optocouplers tubular and surfacemount, uk C. 9•11n1140.11.
à. OA II aâ pannel mount LED assemblies. /Se 1
, /minne

Met Wm — •=W
.
Equinox Technologies UK Ltd., specialise
CONCEPT ELECTRONICS trthhfrte thhooh Sarheor
in development tools for the embedded
microcontroller market.

II
lose

Ovulgere f
f
ei http://www.conceptkey.co.uk
FELLER UK
To*
mar*
Mawr
etc
Concept Keyboards are specialists in
.frer
the design and manufacture of
http://www.feller-at.com
customer specified membrane panels

FM -
Sbea
Feller (UK) Ltd. manufacture Fully
Meer and keyboards, and electronic design.
*blur approved cordsets (Moulded mains
Concept's membrane manufacture is
odarfale

earl
Yob
I supported by afull electronic
plugs and connectors) and Power
Supply Cables for all industrial
production facility to provide a
••••••••••...•••••• Countries to National and International
complete turnkey keyboard and
Mr 1
Standards
anwilfa
electronics service, fully accredited to
IS09001.
Aquila Vision specialises in supplying and FLASH DESIGNS LTD
Electronic product design company with
supporting Embedded Microprocessor http://www.flash.co.uk
Development products from PICs to CONTROL SOLUTIONS over adecade of experience promoting
it's own product range and designing
DSPs. We also stock robotics boards, www.controlsolutions.co.uk Flash supply low cost AVR ISP
and manufacturing innovative products
Linux and general interest CD-ROM's. programmers (£39). MINI-ICE starter
Data acquisition and control for for client companies/individuals.
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emulators (from £199). ICE Adapters
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ASHWELL ELECTRONICS
aFlash?
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e-mail: info@cooke-int.com GOOT PRODUCTS
Ashwell provide technical support for
Apex Microtechnology op-amps and http://www.kieagoot.co.uk
DC/DC'S: Aeroflex: EMP filtered
connectors: M SKennedy: Mintech
ECM
obsolescence: NSC Mil/Aero; Teledyne
Relays and isocom mil/optocouplers.
SELECTION

ARCOM
http://www.arcomcontrols.com/ew' For the pick of the UK's Top High-Tech
Software and Hardware career opportunities
Stockists of Quality Used Electronic -from fresh Grad/PhD to Senior
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Service Manuals.

CROWNHILL ASSOCIATES LTD EDWIN PCB DESIGN

http://www.crownhill.co.uk
SOFTWARE Kiea Trading Company is the sole agent of

Crownhill supply low cost development

http://www.swifteurotech.co.uk Goot products. We specialise in supplying
the soldering and desoldering product
tools for use with Micro-Controllers and Swift Eurotech supply the best-selling range manfactured by Goot Japan for the
Smart Cards. Products include Smart EDWin CAD/CAE system for PCB design. UK market. Goot uses advanced
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Micro Development tools and Bespoke design. Discounts up to 60% for non-
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COMPUTING PRINCIPLES
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BROADERCASTING FILTER DESIGNER -Advanced analog and
Studying electronics or computing or just digital filter design software for the PC. -
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS want to keep up-to-date in an easy and Standard and Professional versions.- Free
enjoyable way, then this fully interactive download of Evaluation version.
www.broadercasting.co.uk software is for you.
WINRADIO now brings you acomplete
choice in personnel computer controlled

400 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

To reserve your web site space contact Pat Bunce
Tel: 020 8652 8339 Fax: 020 8652 3981

HTB ELEKTRONIK for those working with electronics and RADIOMETRIX

engineering technology. Visit our site for a
http://www.htb-elektronik.com free catalogue and downloads. http://www.radiometrix.co.uk
We are selling second-hand test 8,
measurement equipment and accessories NORCALL Radiometrix specialises in the design
Er-Sea—. •
and manufacture of VHF & UHF, RF data
for over 10 years.from all leading http://www.norcall.co.uk modules. We offer abroad range of PCB
manufactures.
Suppliers and repairers of MOBILE RADIO mounted miniature transmit, receive and 10

transceiver modules for OEM use. ;ZEUZ.,

è"aisk
LEVY/LATHAM GLOBAL equipment
SALES
http://www.levylatham.com HIRE RADIO-TECH LIMITED
U.S. Military Surplus meters. plug-ins, REPAIR
http://www.radio-tech.co.uk
test sets, oscilloscopes, power supplies, Huge stocks of used radios and spares
signal generators, spectrum analyzers and Pye Philips Simoco lcom Kenwood Radio modules, modems, telemetry, audio SESCOM, INC.
radio components from Tektronix, Hewlett Standard Cleartone Maxon Yaesu Key transmitters, pagers, antenna, remote http://www.sescom.com
Packard. Sony. Phillips and more! Midland. controls and much more. All UK designed
WE CAN PROGRAM ANYTHING and manufactured. SESCOM. INC. is a30-year manufacturer
24hr Service of audio problem solvers" and
LOW POWER RADIO RALFE ELECTRONICS transformers. We also offer easily-
fabricated aluminum enclosures for small
SOLUTIONS OMEGA RESEARCH LTD
production runs and prototypes.
http://www.lprs.co.uk http://www.omega-research .co.uk
LPRS markets low power radio "SMD prototyping adapters. Unique, STAFFORDSHIRE
transmitters, receivers and transceiver flexible, low cost adapters to allow bench
modules manufactured by ourselves.
working with SM devices. Range suits WIRELESS COMPANY
Radiometrix, Circuit Designs. RDT and most devices down to 0.5mm pitch." http://www.staffs-wireless.com
Micrel. Applications for telemetry.
Wireless, communication, test
video and remote control. PCA:PHILIP COLLINS & professional test &measurement equipment. bought and sold for very

MATTHEY MICROFILTERS ASSOCIATES PTY. LTD www.ralfe-electronics.co.uk competitive prices visit our web site or
telephone John on 01889 569928 or
http://www.microfilters.net http://www.pca.cc 0973 296461.
PCA manufactures Radphone 2000DX RD RESEARCH
remote control systems for shortwave SUPRA AUDIO CABLES
http://www.looking.co.uk/spice
A/licrofilters broadcasters and government agencies http://www.jenving.se
wanting worldwide control of Memo« lee* à Mudding

communications receivers and 82 SF*. Lii Logic •••7 Jenving Technology AB is the
transceivers from any tone phone. manufacturer of Supra Audio Cables. OEM
Umr productions are also accepted.
•••••••
,maufma. Mete %KYOH
POLY-FLEX CIRCUITS LTD
http://www.polyflex.com
Design, manufacture and population of
30 years experience in the design and printed polyester flexible
manufacture of high quality passive filters circuits, including Flip Chip on Flex
and delay lines. Used in Broadcast. providing practical. low cost,
reliable solutions for today's small Analogue and digital SPICE modelling
Telecommunications, Medical,
lightweight products. software. Full details available on this site Eel;
Multimedia. and Computer industries.
Available on a30 day evaluation basis.

MATRIX MULTIMEDIA LTD QUASAR ELECTRONICS RS COMPONENTS LTD

www.matrixmultimedia.co.uk www.quasarelectronics.com http://rswww.com
TEMWELL CORPORATION
rswvvvv.cem http://www.temwell.com.tw
Manufacturer & Exporter of Heelical BPF
••••• ,
Filter, 30 Watts BPF Power Filter and
rea- Handset/Base Station Duplexers

TEST EQUIPMENT
SOLUTIONS
Matrix Multimedia publishes anumber of
highly interactive CD ROMs for learning
electronics including: Complete
¡ill a,'1;--.:7
o
, --e, -..
.1.1401

-.-;-:.'
.-
.„ 111.•••••

1
1
-$e

i
rr-•
-
'
http://www.TestEquipmentHQ.com
n 'àr

Quality second user test equipment with

electronics course, Analogue filter design, "n• -- "Aar full warranty and support. All types of
and PlCmicro(R) microcontroller Over 250 electronic kits, projects and equipment from all leading manufacturers
programming (C and assembly). ready built units for hobby, The award winning on-line service from RS including general purpose.
educational F. industrial applications. -110,000+ products available communications and industrial test.
NEWNES -BOOKS FOR THE TEL: 01279 306504. FAX: 07092 203496 -Technical data library
ELECTRONICS WORLD or EMAIL: ewsalesCquasarelectronics.com -Stock availability check
-Integrated on-line purchasing — I TUT SOUIPWIT
http://www.newnespress.com OUILLER ELECTRONICS -Order by 8pm -with you tomorrow. SOLUTIONS ,
Over 300 books and information packages
http://www.quiller.com — •
SOFTCOPY Speciaiists in the supply
100+ pages of detailed technical
Newnes information on Schrack Relays, MEC
http://www.softcopy.co.uk
As aPC data base or hard copy. Soft Copy
of quality refurbished
Test Equipment
Switches, Hirose Connections.
can supply acomplete index of Phone: +44 (0)1763 596000
Electronics World articles over the past
Email: InlogrestEquIpmentFIGI corn
ten years. Photo copies of articles from
back issues are also available.

401
May 2001 ELECTRONICS WORLD
WEB IRECTIONS
TELNET TOTAL ROBOTS VANN DRAPER this aone-stop shop for ahuge amount
of information
http://www.telnet.uk.com http://www.totalrobots.co.uk ELECTRONICS LTD
lop quality second-user Test and Robot Kits and Control Technology http://www.vanndraper.co.uk UK MAILING LIST GROUP
Measurement Equipment products. including 00Pic the first
Test equipment from Grundig. http://www.egroups.com/list/uk
eMail telnetkm©msn.com Obiect-Oriented Programmable
Kenwood. Hitachi. Fluke, Ayo,
Integrated Circuit. Secure on-line
Glassman. Advance in acomprehensive
tvrepair
THOSE ENGINEERS LTD ordering and fast delivery.
site including oscilloscopes. Following on from the newsgroup
http://www.spiceage.com multimeters, power supplies. discussion last month there is aUK
generators, counters, soldering digital
TRIDENT tv etc.
Email group for TV technicians where
you can send an Email to everyone in the
MICROSYSTEMS LTD group. There's lust over 30 people in the
http://www.trident-uk.co.uk VUTRAX PCB DESIGN group at present. For more details and

Visit the Trident website for details and

SOFTWARE how to register look at the egroup home
page. Just ageneral comment though -
datasheets on their entire LCD and printer http://www.vutrax.co.uk
you do have to be careful who you give
product range Download data and subscribe
your Email address to so that you can
for our regularly updated newsleter avoid spamming -that is getting lots of
unwanted Email about dubious Russian
TOWER HILL site (amongst others).

Working evaluations of SpiceAge mixed- TECHNICAL SERVICES

REED CONNECT
mode simulator. Spicycle PCB design http://www.towerhillaerials.com
tools and Superfilter demo (synthesises http://www.reedconnect.net/
passive, active. digital fitters). Tech
support, sales links and price list. Another free Internet access site, this
II•••••••••• lemtill ••••.•••••.•••••••••»•••
11.1m•••••••
time from Reed Business Information.
.1•110, •••ffl...•••••••••••••••••••

THERMOSPEED However the site possesses auseful UK

People and Business Finder, with an e-
http://www.thermospeed.co.uk mail search. There's also business news
• and local information, and some good
links to directory sites.
VUTRAX electronic schematic and pcb
design system for Windows 95. 98 and REPAIRWORLD
NT. Limited Capacity FREE version
downloads available. all upgradeable to
http://www.repairworld.com
various customised levels. Repairworld is asophisticated US based
fault report database which is updated bi-
Everything you need for DIY Satellite weekly. It operates on asubscription
TV aerial installation. The one stop WOOD & DOUGLAS basis and describes itself as an
shop for TV. FM. Satellite. Amateur http://www.woodanddouglas.co.uk 'affordable solution for all technicians'.
Radio PMR Aerials. Distribution You can see some samples of the
Equipment. Cable 8. Accessories. Wood 8. Douglas Ltd is the leading material for free. monitors, VCR. DVD
independent British designer and and Camcorders being of particular
manufacturer of quality radio products relevance to UK users. The site also
TECHNICAL AND for International telemetry, data.voice provides a chat room'.
SCIENTIFIC SUPPLIES video wireless communications.

http://www.technicalscientific.com
Temperature and pressure, control and UK ELECTRICAL DIRECT Pat Bunce on
instrumentation. Full on-line purchasing. Suppliers of pre-1985 equipment and
•Overnight ex-stock delivery components. http://www.uked.com 020 8652 8339
•Create your own hotlist -Test/Measurement equipment
For acomprehensive on-line directory.
or fax on 020 8652 3981.
•Download datasheets -Valves and semiconductors
buyers guide and resource locator for or e-mail:
•Full technical support -Transducers and pressure gauges
-Scientific books and catalogues the UK Electrical Industry look at this pat.buncerbi.co.uk
-Manuals and data sheets site. Many of the companies listed have
links to their own web sites, making

Put your web address in front of 21000 We understand that cost is an important a full year, which equates to just £29.17 per
electronics enthusiasts and experts. factor, as web sites are an added drain on month.
Electronics World acknowledges your budgets. But we are sure you will agree that This price includes the above mentioned
company's need to promote its web site. which the following rates make all the difference: information, plus a 3cm screen shot of your
is why we are now dedicating pages in ev ery site, which we can produce if required.
issue to announce your FOR 12 ISSUES:
WEB ADDRESS. To take up this offer or for more
Lineage only will cost £150 for a full year just
This gives other readers the opportunity to £12.50 per month. information ring:
look up your company's name, to find your This includes your company's name, web Pat Bunce on 020 8652 8339
web address and to browse the magazine page address and a 25-word description. or fax on 020 8652 3981.
to find new sites. Lineage with colour screen shot costs £350 for or e-mail: pat.bunce@.rbi.co.uk

Company name Web address

402 ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

Fully Warranted Bargain Test Equipment call 020 8943 4477 NOW!

AMPUFIERS &ATTENUATORS FREQUENCY COUNTERS

— BIRD PHILIPS
8323 100 Watt 500 MHz Attenuator f275 PM6652 Counter £500
8343-200 100 Watt 1GHz RF Attenuator f300
KALMUS OSCILLOSCOPES
225LC 0.01 to 200MHz 25 Watt Power f1750 FLUKE
Amplifier PM199 200 MHz 2.5 G/S Digital Scope £1500
PM33948/084 4Channel 200 MHz Combiscope £3250
DATACOMS &TELECOMS IWATSU
ACACIA 6612 60 MHz Oscilloscope £350
Clarinet-Book ISDN SO/El Protocol Analyser f16500 8606C 60 MHz Oscilloscope £250
ADTECH 8608 100 MHz Oscilloscope £300
SX12-1 100bps to 2Mbps Data Channel Simulator £11000 LECROY
AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES (HP) 9314AM 4Channel 300MHz Oscilloscope £3000
37717C PDH/SDH Transmission Test Set £3000 TEKTRONIX
CONSULTRONICS TDS 3014 100MHz GSM 4Channel DPO with battery £2450
Auto lims III Automatic Data Line Analyser £3500 TDS3014 100 MHz GSM 4Channel DPO (no battery) £2250
FIREBERD
6000FE Communications Analyser 2522 with option 4 f4950 POWER SUPPLIES
ICT AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES (HP)
Victoria SDH/PDH STM-1 1310 Analyser £9500 E3632A 15V/7A, 30V/4A Single Output £450
SUNRISE APC
SUNSET EIO 2Mbitis PCM/DATA Channel Analyser £4500 Smart UPS600 600W backup PSU £450
WAVETEK WANDEL GOLTERMAN% EMERSOr,
ANT-20 STM-1/4 1310/1550nm litter TX &FtX £22000 1000 GXS UPS f250
DLA-9D Data Line Analyser £4500 2500 GXS UPS £450
PA-41 2Mbps Frame and Signalling Analyser £5500 GXT 2000 2KVA on line UPS £600
PFA-35 Communications Analyser £4000 FARNELI
PDD3010A Power Supply f300
OPTICAL FLUKE
•
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E6000A/05A 850/1300nm Mini OTDR £5750 MERIN GERIN
FUJIKURA Prowatt 15001 12V DC to AC Power Inverter £300
FSM-165 Fusion Splicer Single Mode £5750 PULSAR
ESV20 2KVA UPS £550
POWER METERS THLJRLBY- THANDAR
BIRD CPX200 Powerflex Dual 0/P PSU £400
43 2.7GHz 10 KVV Thruline Wattmeter f350 PL3300DP Dual PSU 0-32V 0-3A £350
4304A 1GHz 500W Thruline Wattmeter f325
4410A 2.3GHz 10KW Ihruline Wattmeter £150 • VOLTMETERS & MULTIMETERS
FLUKE
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86568 Signal Generator £950 e RECORDERS & DATA ACQUISITION
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IFR (MARCONI) Dash 1V 4Channel Thermal Array Recorder £3000
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2022 Synthesised Signal Generator £950 WR8000-8 8Channel Thermal Array Recorder f2750
2305 Modulation Meter £700 WR8500 8Channel Thermal Recorder £4000
WR9000 8Channel Thermal Recorder f5950

• TV BROADCAST
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301OR Calan Sweep/ Ingress Analyser £3500
DL-708
LR4100/25
8Channel
2Channel
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PHILIPS LR4100 /35 3Channel Recorder with Disk Drive £2250
PM5639/00 Handheld TV Colour Analyser £2500 LR4100/45 4Channel Chart Recorder £2500
TEKTRONIX OR-341 4Channel Handy Recorder £2000
DMA 120 Demodulator Analyser PUA

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AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES (HP) PP1 Power Platform PQ plus Mains Analyser £6500
3586C Selective Level Meter £500
5000 3Phase Power Demand Analyser £1950
CALIBRATORS & STANDARDS
• £550
2000 Multimeter
DPI 601 0to 2bar Digital Pressure £400
Calibrator 07001 *Ducter Digital Ohm Meter £1250
DPI 601 I /S Pressure Calibrator (0-20 bar) £650
DPI 601 I /S Pressure Calibrator (160 Bar) £700 ANALYTICAL & ENVIRONMENTAL TEST
DPI 601 1/S Pressure Calibrator (400 Bar) £750 AIRFLOW DEVELOPMENTS
!-!,WEN AUTOMAT! r, AV2 Vane Anenometer £400
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DIGITAL DESIGN &TEST

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5006A Signature Analyser £550

Livingston
GOULD
K50 Logic Analyser f550

CIRCLE NO.125 ON REPLY CARD

 ficcurate recruitment
information when you need it.
Simple Really.
now to gu

Jobs
ut our comprehens
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L Our appointments service ts
g avast archive o'
g„, t: online electronics enginee
regularly, the - marliot

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EledronicsKEKLY
Hyper4c-rwE
www.electronicsweeklg.co.uk
 -1111e-
Manufacture and Test Ill
l
ie
Email: nathan@soljobs.com Website: www.soljobs.com Email: j
amesc@soljobs.com
r r Website: www.soljobs.com
Solution Technical Recruitment. The Tower House. Solution Technical Recruitment. The Tower House.
High Street Aylesbury Bucks HP20 ISQ High Street Aylesbury , Bucks HP20 ISQ

Tel: 01296 336036 Fax: 01296 336037 Tel: 01296 336036 Fax: 01296 336037
- - 311
SOLUTION SOLON

MANUFACTURING ENGINEER ANALOGUE ELECTRONICS ENGINEER

North West circa L28k + Bonus Cambridgeshire L Excellent + Benefits + Stock
One of the UK's foremost communications companies is looking to recruit Thu consultancy spin-out is looking for an analogue electronics engineer with a broad
Manufacturing Engineers working sent, the most advanced telecommunications experience of designing in analogue electronics to work in an exciting new field
products You will be responsible for the introduction or new product and the Previous expenen« could include power supply design. DC-DC converter design.
development of the PCBA processes by investigating and introducing new equipment control and servo system design The interfacing of electronic and/or electro-
materials and the latest processes The ideal candidate will have agood working mechanical systems to microprocessor based control systems is amust. Being used to
knowledge of SMT processes and machines as well as being able to problem solve and designing high performance electronics for aggressive cost control will be vital as will
implement process improvements in ahigh volume manufacturing environment being used to working unsupervned on Mtn OWn as well as being part of avery
incorporating small and major step improvements Ideally you will have at least an committed team The rewards are superb (relocation available) as es the technology
HNC in amanufacturing discipline or electronics. bus experience and aproven track involved
record within the inducir yis essential Ref 4909

SENIOR HARDWARE ENGINEER

Yorkshire up to cL40k + Benefits + Stock

AVIONICS TECHNICIAN This market leading client requires senior engineers to work on design test and
Northern Home Counties circa L24k + Oft + Bonus approvals of hardware for Advanced Set Top Boxes Experience of Embedded
This Avionics service centre based near Heathrow has repair. overhaul, modification Microprocessors and design issues such as Design for Manufacture and EMC
and transcription capability. backed with enginee-ing support and training facilities They constraints, as well as Board-Level Layout. Schematics and Analogue Design
currently are looking to recruit three enerienced anionic technicians ideally with a Educational requirements B Sc/HND in Electronics or similar with postgraduate
minimum five years in de repni, to component level of airborne navigation. experience required Essential technical requirements Microprocessor hardware -
communication and radar products.The sight candidates can expect to earn an memory etc. High Speed Digital board level design (interfacing, loading. tracking.
excellent salary as well as Oltime.A0G Bonus and Life Assurance detoupling), board debug/commissioninetrouble shooting, some analogue design.
Additional skills RISC. CPUs cg Hiatt, MIPS.ARM. Modem. xDSL. cable hardware.
Ethernet hardware. Power supplies.Veribest schemato capture tools. Design for
Manufacture. EMC. High VolurneWereless technology cg DECT Get involved wish
tfthe
08
best and get well rewarded in salary and benefits (relocation available) R
MAINTENANCE TECHNICIAN
Middlesex up to L24k SENIOR AND JUNIOR FPGA DESIGN

Our client develops and licenses novel LCD technologies and creates actsanced opto - Hampshire Superb + Benefits
electronic products and soluuons A vacancy has now ansen for aCleanroom This well established company currently has avacancy for electronics design engineers
Maintenance Engineer to support the continued growth of their product and service to design high function Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAsi including functions
sales The key responsibility will be to maximise the teame of fabrication facilities and such as data processing, pattern recortuon, memory management and PCI
equipment, which is likely to involve management of service contractors. first•line implementation Experience required suntar 18 months. (superb training available).
trouble shooting and repair as well as routine testing and maintenance The role will senior 4 years0 of electronics and ASIC or FPGA development experience Also high
involve working with vacuum deposition. air-conditioning and other electro -mechanical speed logic design skills using VHDL. ability to communicate well within asmall, highly
systems The successful applicant will ideally have experience of preventative skilled team, ability to estimate accurately time required to develop and debug FPGA
maintenance and repair in aproduction environment, although field service experience designs and to work to aggressive time scales Expenen« useful of network
would also be considered This experience should have been gained over aminimum technologies, including one or more of the following Gigabit Ethernet. Past Ethernet
of five years Experience of working in acleanroorn environments is highly desirable ATM, SONET Excellent rewards and benefits Ref 2562

TNese are hxst afew of our comen tpermanent oeportunfues for more details on these and other OPPORTUNITIES, OPPORTUNITIES, OPPORTUNITIES, OPPORTUNITIES
posruons ca , Nathan Davn for ar informal elouuss.on None of the above appeal' If you are aHardware Engineer then inave a«de range dot:goo-tuna», in
the UK and Republic ol Ireland one of ehoch could te the one for you and your career Telephone or
en., it. with details cl what you want and leave toe rest to me Thu aafree service to yo.

SENIOR APPOINTMENT — HEAD OF UMTS DEVELOPMENT TECHNICAL AUTHOR

Central London LOutstanding + Benefits Yorkshire Excellent

A dynamic and fast moving organisation, with an impeccable reputation with the digital This leading Telecommunications Company are looking for aTechnical Author The ideal
audio broadcast market. is seeking ahigh calibre candidate to become Head of WITS candidate will prepare technical customer documentation for new products for both
Development You will lead ateam of development staff, and take responsibility for the conventional publishing ¡user manuals) and web distribution To maintain and update
quality and functionality of assigned software products from initial concept to existing documentation. prepare technical documentation for internal use in sales.
customer delivery A strong management background is crucial, along with aminimum marketing and service To prepare and maintain graphic and text source database The
exposure period of six pean to protect life cycles and prole« scheduling A degree in candidate should have adegree in atechnical field (electrical engineering, electronics.
computer science. engineenng or mathematics is required with aisonirnurn 2 Ipass telecommunications. physics, computer sciencel or two years equivalent experience
You will have related software develocidnent experience in Cou, real orne. COM. UML. Ho/she should have excellent communication skills, aworking knowledge of office and
OCA D and have experience of digital communications Salary and package will reflect drawing applications in the Windows environmer tusing tools such as Adobe
this senior position FrarneMaker and Corel Draw The cand.dme be prepared to travel occasionally in
Ref 4328 Europe An excellent salary and care, r ire on offer

DSP SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

TEST DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER
Hertfordshire E Market Leading + Benefits Package
South Wales Excellent
This outstanding organisation designs and manufactures arange of products that
Our client develops and manufactures leading edge technology Power Amplification
exploit wireless GSM technology Due to their rapidly growing client base and
products for the wireless telecommunications arena They are looking for aTest
respectability, they currently require DSP Software Engineers with ambition, self
Development Engineer with aminimum of five years experience in the Test
motivation and the hunger to rise to new challenges Expenence in developing and
Development field which should have included creating test specifications and general
debugging real-time systems is essential, along with at least one year's practical use of
test documentation. producing test systems and integrating them Into production
DSP assembler language toot fun using C compiler), two plus years practical use of
Designing for test LabviewrLabWindows programming with supporting docurnentauon.
C44 is also essential, along with familtancy with DOSÍVVIndows/scrpting languages leg
The candidate should have working knowledge of RF (instrumentation field would be
PERO Basic knowledge of digital hardware, good knowledge of Digital Signal
best) and should be strong willed self motivated with an ability to work unsupervised
Processing Theory (Nyquist sampling, GMSK Modulation. Channel Coding. etc I and
An excellent package and salary is on offer
DSP algorithm design (preferably in communications systems) will be required to
succeed Market leading talents and packages wil be offered to the successful
applicants Ref 4424 VALIDATION ENGINEER

Berkshire LExcellent
PROTOCOL CONSULTANT Our client specialises in the Semiconductor Industry and is currently looking for a
Validation Engineer The ideal candidate will need at least five years expenence in a
Cambridgeshire 150-100k + Benefits role with exposure to complex digital hardware products, such as neeroprocessors or
An excellent opportunity within adynamo and fast moving company with adistinct DSP devices and their associated software tools Knowledge of complex simulation
vision of the future of mobile communications.An evcepoonal engineer is required. techniques and toolsis essential. He/she should have knowledge of configuration
who has been exposed to the latest technologies such as GSM. GPRS.VVAP UMTS and management techniques emulation technology programming en high and low level
Bluetooth You will have at least 10 years strong C coding expenence in aproduct languages although this is not essential The candidate should have adegree in either
development environment. along won designompernentation using RTOS for multi- Electronics or aComputing subren. but if adegree is attained in adifferent subiect.
tasking applications. experience of GSFOGPRS/UMTS protocol type approval process, then the degree must be of ahigher pass.The candidate must also be prepared to
use of SDL and message sequence charts. direct experience of L2 and L3 mobile travel This will suit aperson seeking arole that requires amix of hardware and
comms protocols This senior position will be challenging, as you will have complete software skills, applied in acompany that is developing the latest microprocessor and
technical authority on the requirements.archneaure, design and implementation of compiler technologies The candidate should be flexible and pragmatic, with good
L2'L3 GSM.GPRS.UMTS terminal protocols Ref SMRU attention to detail An excellent salary and package is on offer for this challenging and
prosperous role
These ore lost ahandful of our current opportunities for Soles. Market:rig and Applications
professionals For more information and an informal discussion please content Andrew These are cane fete of our current Aerrnanent opportunities. for more details on tue» and
Raymond on 01296 33603e or e-mail Non at ondyepsolte<11 co. uls other positrons cell Jimmy Fletcher for on informal discussion

Software eb# Test and Development

Email: mayurr@soljobs.com Website: www.soljobs.com Email: jimmy@soljobs.com Website: www.soljobs.com
Solution Technical Recruitment. The Tower House. Solution Technical Recruitment. The Tower House.
High Street. Aylesbury. Bucks HP20 ISO High Street. Aylesbury. Bucks. HP20 ISQ

Tel: 01296 336036 Fax: 01296 336037 4 _ Tel: 01296 336036 Fax: 01296 336037
SOLUTION
SULU? ON
 APPOINTMENTS

Submerge yourself in arole

with adifference
Analogue Electronics Design Engineer •Competitive package •Hainault

Kelvin Hughes, the marine and naval arm of the Smiths Group plc. financial and technical project management, analogue advice on
is internationally renowned for pioneering developments in future developments, general technical support to other RF services
navigational technology. With naval and commercial marine and key costing proposals.
customers worldwide, we provide a range of products from
integrated bridge systems, nautical charts and books to navigational On a personal level, you will bring high levels of initiative, time
management and teamwork. The last of these is particularly important
radar and radio communications systems. We are now looking for a
in light of our new value-streaming work patterns where fluid
talented and experienced professional to take on the rare role of
multi-divisional groups are set up to learn from each other.
Analogue Electronics Design Engineer.

A proven RF all-rounder, with 5years' experience in analogue design, In addition to the opportunity to drive what is a truly unique and
you will bring with you an in depth grounding in one of the following: dynamic position, we are offering excellent prospects for progression,
together with acompetitive rewards package.
• 60MHz IF log receivers.
To apply, please write with your CV, to: Margaret Bundy, HR Department,
• Magnetron modulators.
Kelvin Hughes, New North Road, Hainault, Ilford. Essex IG6 2UR.
• CRT-based display monitors.
Closing date: 19th April 2001.
• Solid-state motor control.
For more information please visit our website at www.keMnhughes.cosuk
Your reward will be a role with considerable latitude in this field and
genuine opportunity to broaden your horizons. We are talking about We positively welcome applications from suitably qualified individuals
a remit that includes Production and Manne Services support, irrespective of racial origin, sex or disability

KELVIN HUGHES
Kelvin Hughes Limned Is the Naval and Manne Division of Smiths Aprosnace

ThE SUCCESS iS Yours

ire \N% --
#011fare &Optical
• Cheltenham Induction Heating Limited
ASIC Consultants Project/Principal RF We require a

Berks/Bristol to £6011 Engineers POWER ELECTRONICS

UK base and multi national links. Design of
digital and mixed signal ASIC plus
Glos/Avon/Cambs L30-50K DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER
application engineering. Travel to USA. Real i•ngineering not packaging: Let your
design skills roam over several projects from who has experience of medium to high power switching applications
Knowledge of Mentor useful. Bonus,
relocation and several company perks. miniature transmitters to satellite systems. (like SMPS, motor drives and induction heating).
Excellent conditions and housing in an
email: gordon_shorteers.co.ng Duties will include:-
attractive and low cost are,.
Ref: GS1400 • New product conception
email gordon shorteers.co.uk
Ri GS1402 • Turn the concept into reality
High Speed Optical Design • Design and test of prototype circuits
Engineers III-V Device Technoloy ) • Evaluate and debug pre-production design
• Development of existing technology
mnrialist
Northampton/London!
Reporting:- As a key member of the Development Team, the
Oxford/Southampton to f.451(+ Development Engineer will be directly responsible to the
Northampton/E Anglia/Oxford
Yoll will be responsible tor the organisat...• Group Technical Director.
planning and control of the tedIlli, to fil0K+
developnwnt of applications and test nwthods t•Xilt•Flt•IICV prise» techniiiii.
\
Salary:- >£25k depending on experience and ability.
for Optoelectronic Components and Sub you will take the lead role in developing to Location:- Cheltenham (relocation assistance if appropriate).
Systems. Experience of Opto components in processes and will support new and exiting
systems, electronics and circuit design plus a R&D projects. Great benefits, internal
C.I.H. Ltd manufacture high power, load resonant inverters (induction
good understanding of modern wideband opportunitie ,.relocation and stock options. heaters). We have a worldwide reputation for supplying quality
tptical layout and simulation tools and products for use in industrial, scientific and medical applications.
email: paid _gururfeerS.c0.11
advantage. Superb opportunity at this multi
Ref PG1403 We have licensing agreements in several countries, including the
national.
USA. whereby products of our design are manufactured under our
mail paul gurney@ersto.uk license.
Rit :PG1401
Telephone/fax/eman CV's to We use FET and IGBT power technology typically working in the 3kHz
to 1MHz range and we produce equipments with continuous output
Gordon direct tel: 01442 847426 Paul direct ici 01442 8474c powers of one kW to hundreds of kWs.
In the first instance, please send a current CV and covering letter to
at ERS Communications Andy Davies, Managing Director of:
r
etj Communications 575 599 mama item 1112 ax
toad Home Neenpsteàd
Cheltenham Induction Heating Ltd
Fax 01442 215486
wensite wwvv.ers.co.uiricommunications Saxon Way, Battledown Industrial Estate. Cheltenham.
Gloucestershire GL52 6RU
Ils C091111•91(.100. II anumber of the (mull ,
. 11(1111111."11 Serum elf ornan 91 tram'«
www.cih-group.co.uk

ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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ELECTRONIC UPDATE
DAQ DesignerTM
These compact, light recorders
2001
have 2 or 4 analogue channels National Instruments new DAD
with isolated inputs, PC card Designee" 2001 is a FREE CD that
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They are ideal for a variety of Designer"' 2001 includes the
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Web: www.ni.com/uk

CIRCLE NO.126 ON REPLY CARD CIRCLE NO.127 ON REPLY CARD

ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001 407

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ADVERTISERS' INDEX
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DATAMAN OBC SEETRAX 371

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JOHNS RADIO 365 TELNET IFC

JPG ELECTRONICS 361 TEST EQUIP SOLUTIONS 339

LABCENTER ELECTRONICS 375 TIE PIE 399

LANGREX 361 WEB PAGES 400, 401, 402

H); ELECTRONICS WORLD May 2001

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 'Electronics and Computing
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