EEWeb Pulse - Issue 64

September 18, 2012

EEWeb

PULSE

EEWeb.com INTERVIEW Issue 64

Mike Kappes

President and CEO IQ-Analog

Electrical Engineering Community Visit www.eeweb.com

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Experts Exchanging Ideas Every Day. VISIT DIGIKEY.COM/TECHXCHANGE TODAY! Digi-Key is an authorized distributor for all supplier partners. New products added daily. Š 2012 Digi-Key Corporation, 701 Brooks Ave. South, Thief River Falls, MN 56701, USA

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Mike Kappes IQ-ANALOG Interview with Mike Kappes - Founder, President and CEO of IQ-Analog

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Featured Products Preparing Our Next Generation of Young Engineers for Success

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BY STEVE DARROUGH WITH ZILOG The importance of teaching students the relationship between specialized micro-elements and the total process of product design.

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Homemade Tools - Part 1

BY PAUL CLARKE WITH EBM-PAPST An outline of how to design your own tools that will help you pursue your own unique task.

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RTZ - Return to Zero Comic

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EEWeb PULSE

Mike

Kappes IQAnalog IQ-Analog

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EEWeb||Electrical ElectricalEngineering EngineeringCommunity Community EEWeb

INTERVIEW How did you get into electrical engineering and when did you start?

My uncle is an MIT graduate in Mechanical Engineering and he sparked an interest in gadgetry at an early age. My wish list for birthdays was always loaded with items from Edmund Scientific. I had a natural curiosity about how things worked and the fact that my parents could provide no clear answers made electronics all the more interesting.

I had several science projects in my youth culminating in the permanent dismantling of a personal computer.

What have been some of your influences that have helped you get to where you are today?

My mom was a former biochemist from NASA who would take me on field trips to science labs at local universities. I realized there was still a lot of mystery as to how things worked and that electronics in particular was an exciting field with a lot of mystery. While other kids may have liked Captain Kirk, I was a fan of Spock. He knew everything about everything. Kirk was just bumbling around in the darkness.

How did you decide to start your own company?

I have worked in multiple chip companies— several of them start-ups—and I developed a lot experience in analog circuit design for communications. Along the way, I developed an emphasis on data-converter technology, which was becoming more and more important in these systems. As an engineer, I’ve always aspired to change the world in some small way. I decided I wanted to start a group that developed a new class of data converters that leveraged

digital signal processing to enhance performance with greater efficiency.

When I first started out, it was a little bit of a shock because I went from having a stable salary to no income with only a few months of cushion.

I was lucky to find a short-term project with a local company as a design engineer working on-site for them. After that project was done, I had a technology component that I owned which I could leverage for the next project. From there, it was one project after the other until I had licensed enough intellectual property to other companies to afford to build our team. It has steamrolled in the last 3-4 years to where we have the critical mass to balance our IP licensing business with advanced research and development of the technology need to roll out our own integrated circuit product line.

How many employees do you have at IQ-Analog and how you would describe the culture?

We currently have seven employees.

It’s a fun place to work. We are addressing client problems that are difficult to solve. We are very service-oriented and we all interact with our customers. As a result of the personal relationships we develop, we have heightened responsibility and ownership of our engineering activities.

If the customer’s expectations are not fully met, then there is a personal consequence to that. The oppposite is also true that their is a great sense of satisfaction in solving complex problems for our clients.

What particular technologies are you licensing to other companies?

We develop intellectual property (IP) that is used to perform some form of

analog interface or data converter function on a client’s integrated circuit product. It is all analog hard macro circuit design. We develop the circuit architectures, perform the circuit design and layout and package the IP as a software bundle ready for integration. We are a very hardware-focused company and we like to take our own test-chips into the lab and do testing to validate our performance expectations.

Engineering prowess has created the largest corporation in the world out of humble beginnings in a garage. I don’t think we give [America] enough credit for our contributions to society.

Our company is currently working on the advancement of analog interface technologies, in particular data converters, for 4G base station equipment. Data converters are marching up the signal chain replacing RF components while enhancing data rates and system performance.

We are working to provide more advanced data converters to enable higher performance and lower cost cellular networks.

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EEWeb PULSE What kinds of companies are buying your IP? We have licensed our IP around the globe for a myriad of applications. The trend lately has been toward servicing femtocell and picocell products which are essentially consumer-grade cellular basestations. We have also seen a lot of attention from companies developing semiconductors for wireless transceivers that provide data back-haul from base-station to base-station. Integration has historically been the pathway to enable lower cost wireline communications systems (ethernet, DSL, etc) and the same is holding true for wireless communications. It is a natural evolution enabled both by advances in process technology and the the ingenuity of creative engineers doing more with the transistors made available to them.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

I have over 20 patents in analog circuit designs.

My greatest accomplishment to date has been building IQ-Analog into a company that enabled me to attract worldclass engineering talent.

Our greatest accomplishment together is yet to come.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

The biggest issue I see as an entrepreneur is the scarcity of other emerging start-up semiconductor businesses. This is not a good sign but is indicative of the vacuum left behind when venture capitalists vacated semiconductors about 5 years ago. There has been no source of capital to fill this void. I would like to see a federal government initiative to keep our edge in semiconductors over emerging countries who are

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My greatest accomplishment to date has been building IQ-Analog into a company that enabled me to attract world-class engineering talent.

Our greatest accomplishment together is yet to come.

EEWeb | Electrical Engineering Community

INTERVIEW in a garage. I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for our contributions to society. It is an honorable profession and I think we need to be sure this message gets across to the next generation. ■

Visti IQ-Analog’s website:

investing state dollars and creating an uneven global playing field.

Is there anything that you have not accomplished yet, that you have your sights on accomplishing in the near future?

That’s a big question. Obviously, I want to take my company to new heights and reward our employees for all of the hard work we have invested over the last 7 years. After that I’d like to contribute to our local

community. Qualcomm has been a fantastic corporate role model in the San Diego community. I’d like to follow their lead in an appropriately smaller way.

Do you have any advice for the electrical engineering community?

I believe that America is still the leader in creative and independent thinkers. Engineering prowess has created the largest corporation in the world out of humble beginnings Visit www.eeweb.com

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Isolated 1W DC-DC Converter Murata Power Solutions announced the MEE1 series, a 1 Watt single output PCB mounted DC-DC converter designed for a broad range of industrial, automation and instrumentation applications that require an isolated low-power distributed supply. These highly efficient converters are available in a variety of models accommodating the popular nominal input voltages of 3.3, 5, 12, 15, or 24 VDC and with output voltages of 3.3, 5, 9, 12 or 15 VDC. The MEE1’s isolation allows the converter to be configured to provide an isolated negative rail in systems where only a positive rail exists. For more information, please click here.

DRAM Reduces Power Use SK Hynix announced that it has introduced DDR3L-RS(Reduced Standby) DRAM for mobile solutions using its 20nm class technology. This product significantly reduces the standby power consumption. By using cuttingedge 20nm class technology and efficiently managing standby current, this DDR3L-RS product reduces 70% of standby power compared to existing DDR3L DRAM while it maintains DDR3L performance. DDR3L DRAM which has recently gone mainstream works at 1.35V, while DDR3 DRAM does at 1.5V. For more information, please click here.

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CAN In a Day: Using the RX CAN API

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IR and Bluetooth Connectivity Using the RL78 Development Tools

Direct-drive LCD Using Altia to Design a GUI and Deploy it on Renesas SH7269

Getting Started with Renesas Development Tools

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RH850 & RL78: Introducing the Next Generation of Microcontollers for Automotive Applications

Security Solutions Part 1: Javacard Applet Development Training

Benchmarking using EEMBC Optimizing Performance of RX-based Applications

Security Solutions Lab 2: Secure Host Firmware Upgrade using BoardID Secure Solution

Flat Panel Displays: LCD Technologies and Trends Flat Panel Displays: Touch Panel Technologies and Integration Flat Panel Displays: Beyond the Basics Flat Panel Displays: How to Overcome High Ambient Light Conditions Flat Panel Displays: Exploring a 2D/3D Solution Flat Panel Displays: Advanced Technology Trends M2M and Cloud Solutions Energy-efficient Communications with Wi-Fi Adding Wi-Fi to Embedded Applications Wireless Connectivity for Embedded Systems

Motor Control Power Factor Correction: Why and How? Sensorless Vector Control and Implementation: Why and How Know your Precise Position with RX600 MCUs Field-oriented Control Using a 16-bit Low-power MCU Operating Systems Using ThreadX and IAR Embedded Workbench on the RX Processor Introduction to RoweBots’ Ultra Tiny Linux™ RTOS Embedding USB: Implementation Challenges and Limitations FreeRTOS Lecture Rapid Development on the Renesas RX63N RDK using µEZ® and FreeRTOS Introduction to Python Software Development with an Open Source Real-time Operating System HTML5 HMI Development with QNX Developing Next-gen Automotive User Interface using EB GUIDE 5.3 w/Windows Embedded Automotive 7 and Renesas R-Car H1 Getting Started with Micriµm’s µC/OS-III Kernel Embedding TCP/IP: Working Through uC/TCP-IP Usage Introduction to the .NET Micro Framework System Design Technologies Are all Batteries Created Equal?

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Exploring the Safety Features of the RX210

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Low-power Design Increase the Dynamic Range and Precision of Digital Filters Using a FPU

IGBT vs. Mosfet: Which Device to Select?

RL78 Project Configuration Tips

How to Make Your House Smarter

Sensor Fundamentals

Digital Power: Design and Architectural Trade-offs

Extreme Low-power Design: Tools, Design Techniques and Implementation

Increasing the Performance of PFC and LED Driver IC Applications Optical Isolation, SSR Switching, and Ambient Light Sensing in MCU-based Applications IGBTs for HEV/EV

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Preparing Our N of Young Enginee

Success Steve Darrough

IXYS-ZILOG - VP of Marketing

H

ow can the engineering industry help the next generation of young engineers get prepared for their real-world careers in product design? As we teach the bright young minds of engineering, who may be already be experts in their own specializations, about the micro-elements of components and platform development, it is also crucial to help them understand the relationship between these specialized micro-elements and the total process of product design.

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EEWeb||Electrical ElectricalEngineering EngineeringCommunity Community EEWeb

TECH ARTICLE

Next Generation ers For

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The general complexity of most technology naturally encourages engineers to specialize within their particular areas of system design. Because most technologies are so complex, it often takes a specialized team to work on the particular elements of a design.

An example of this scenario is the hardware element, which can be segmented into areas such as power and control, and even further into more specialties of solar cells, motor control, and data management. Even in addition to these areas, there is a need for design of software applications, development environments, and other elements. All of these elements of a technology can be further segmented into functional areas such as wireless communication, code libraries, and often many other dependences. A young engineer may find it beneficial to specialize in one of these areas, and ignore the work of other areas entirely. However, in order to truly be successful, he still must have some understanding of the overall process of product development, as well as the ability to work with engineers and others involved in product development.

When first entering the workplace, one of the challenges young engineers face is to be tasked with designing new systems; they quickly come up against many different types of challenges as to how they must manage their interactions given these dependencies.

Typically, if one team is working on a power system or a communications transport block, this team may have a different perspective, knowledge set, or understanding (based on their area of focus) than that of another team involved in the development of a different aspect of the same product. Individual teams may witness that each of the other key teams has requirements or processes that are different in some ways than their own. This is why it is critical that new engineers develop a broad understanding of how the company’s groups are each working together toward completing a new product.

Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Fulfillment — each have different SOPs and processes they follow in delivering their teams’ element of focus within the context of the final production result.

Engineers should be taught about the importance of different areas of product development, and offered an overview of their function, preferably before entering the workforce, in order to avoid costly and ineffective mishaps.

One of the ways to help young engineers develop a broader focus is to encourage the many fine engineering universities to educate their students early on about process. Learning about process is great training for the

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Zilog Educatio real world. However, the focus is often put on teaching engineers to be productive as quickly as possible, which may seem to benefit a company quickly, as young professional engineers hit the ground running and begin producing results quickly. However, even if these students are encouraged to begin rowing as fast and hard as they can, the results are empty unless they are rowing together with the group. Most of us engineers who are well into our careers have witnessed a wide variety of experiences and have learned to more-or-less row together, but for those just coming out of school, suddenly being asked to think about process and work with others (rather than simply focus on their one small specialty area) can be quite challenging.

So what can we do about helping prepare and together proactively “invest” in the next generation of talented engineers coming into the workforce? I propose a few ideas – things we all can consider: • Don’t wait. Get involved now with educational platforms that are designed to hit the mark for students.

• Offer up reference designs that are relative to today’s technology trends.

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overview of our university program. The presentation begins by completely examining the developmental stage of product development and proceeds to examine the process all the way through to the launch of the product and even examines the customers will actually be buying the product or service. We next define the entire process and explain how each part of the organization works in tandem to achieve the best result of producing a competitive product. All departmental groups and/or stakeholders are identified as to their contributions so that the big picture is well-defined.

To cement understanding as to why we’re focusing on these process points, we also share examples of missteps or areas in which past programs endured serious setbacks due to lack of understanding, lack of communication, and/or plain old sandbox politics.

onal Platform • Promote special engineering programs that support the schools. Don’t just throw a few dollars at it; instead, get your senior engineers to participate to some extent in those programs.

IXYS and Zilog currently administer an engineering program in the Philippines with 65 young engineers who are looking at entire system designs, and who are designing solutions as teams. Through this program, students build an understanding about “the entire process. “ The goal is to get students to understand that although engineering is a critical part of achieving optimum results, the process of product development works best when all aspects of a project are considered and there is interdependency between different groups. Students in the program learn that a singular, linear development process – as opposed to a parallel process involving interaction with multiple groups – may ultimately slow a project down (and possibly even cause critical areas and loss of key reasoning) and in the end can create new, larger, problems that will hinder the final result.

These days, when Zilog hosts our “meet and greet” presentations to students, we first present a holistic

All of this is food for thought no matter your role, be it Senior Engineering Manager running your own development environment, or Executive Director determining how you will invest in the next generation of talented engineers. Helping new engineering hires come to understand the complete developmental lifecycle as it relates to producing real-world applications will likely improve the success of your own products and businesses. The most important resource in any company is its people. The better engineers, employers, and teachers understand a company’s systems and how much more can be accomplished by working in teams, the need for investment in a broad education will be clear. Hopefully one day we will see the results of such education manifest itself in both the acceleration of new designs and improved end results.

About the Author Steve Darrough is Vice President of Marketing at IXYS- Zilog. Steve joined Zilog in 2008. Responsibilities include management of Zilog marketing presence from brand to product development and driving the strategic campaigns for demand creation and growth.

Steve possesses more than twenty years of technical engineering and marketing management experience, leading branding and marketing programs. Prior to coming onboard with Zilog, Steve held marketing management and technical engineering roles at Intel Corporations for over 14 years where he had several teams driving new technologies directly relating to the current products initiatives, his teams drove worldwide programs in evangelizing new technologies and accelerate adoption. Steve has a Marketing Degree from the University of Oklahoma.

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Get the Datasheet and Order Samples http://www.intersil.com

1.2A High Efficiency Buck-Boost Regulators ISL9110, ISL9112

Features

The ISL9110 and ISL9112 are highly-integrated Buck-Boost switching regulators that accept input voltages either above or below the regulated output voltage. Unlike other Buck-Boost regulators, these regulators automatically transition between operating modes without significant output disturbance.

• Accepts Input Voltages Above or Below Regulated Output Voltage

Both parts are capable of delivering up to 1.2A output current, and provide excellent efficiency due to their fully synchronous 4-switch architecture. No-load quiescent current of only 35µA also optimizes efficiency under light-load conditions. Forced PWM and/or synchronization to an external clock may also be selected for noise sensitive applications.

The ISL9110 is designed for standalone applications and supports 3.3V and 5V fixed output voltages or variable output voltages with an external resistor divider. Output voltages as low as 1V, or as high as 5.2V are supported using an external resistor divider.

The ISL9112 supports a broader set of programmable features that may be accessed via an I2C bus interface. With a programmable output voltage range of 1.9V to 5V, the ISL9112 is ideal for applications requiring dynamically changing supply voltages. A programmable slew rate can be selected to provide smooth transitions between output voltage settings.

The ISL9110 and ISL9112 require only a single inductor and very few external components. Power supply solution size is minimized by a tiny 3mmx3mm package and a 2.5MHz switching frequency, which further reduces the size of external components.

• Automatic and Seamless Transitions Between Buck and Boost Modes • Input Voltage Range: 1.8V to 5.5V • Output Current: Up to 1.2A • High Efficiency: Up to 95% • 35µA Quiescent Current Maximizes Light-load Efficiency • 2.5MHz Switching Frequency Minimizes External Component Size • Selectable Forced-PWM Mode and External Synchronization • I2C Interface (ISL9112) • Fully Protected for Overcurrent, Over-temperature and Undervoltage • Small 3mmx3mm TDFN Package

Applications • Regulated 3.3V from a Single Li-Ion Battery • Smart Phones and Tablet Computers • Handheld Devices • Point-of-Load Regulators

Related Literature • See AN1648 “ISL9110IRTNEVAL1Z, ISL9110IRT7EVAL1Z, ISL9110IRTAEVAL1Z Evaluation Board User Guide” • See AN1647 “ISL9112IRTNEVAL1Z, ISL9112IRT7EVAL1Z EvaluationBoard User Guide”

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VIN MODE EN BAT PG

11

LX1

4

2 LX2 VOUT 1

FB 12

L1 2.2µH V OUT = 3.3V/1A C2 10µF

EFFICIENCY (%)

6 10 9 8 7

GND

STATUS OUTPUTS

5 PVIN

PGND

C1 10µF

95

ISL9110IRTNZ

90 VIN = 5V 85 80

VIN = 3V

VIN = 2.5V

75 VOUT = 3.3V 70 0.01

3

V IN = 1.8V TO 5.5V

0.05

0.25

1.25

IOUT (A)

FIGURE 1. TYPICAL APPLICATION

July 13, 2012 FN7649.2

FIGURE 2. EFFICIENCY

Intersil (and design) is a registered trademark of Intersil Americas Inc. Copyright Intersil Americas Inc. 2011, 2012 All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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Homemade Tools Part 1 Whether you’re a full-time engineer or a hobbyist, it’s important to recognize the value and potential of your tools. Even more useful than simply understanding the value and proper use of tools, however, is knowing how to build your own specialized tools, or ones that will work well for new, perhaps unforeseen tasks. It is also helpful to be able to build your own tools if you are working with limited resources. Homemade tools can be very valuable items, and knowing how to make your own tools can free you from many limitations.

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In the first part of this miniseries, I will outline the process of designing and constructing a tool that will help me pursue a unique task- in this case, remote data logging. I hope to demonstrate that you can use off-theshelf kits to build your own specialized, and possibly more effective, tools.

EEWeb EEWeb||Electrical ElectricalEngineering EngineeringCommunity Community

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Paul Clarke Electronics Design Engineer

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The purpose of this exercise is to focus on the process of building new tools and reusing kits, rather than to focus on the particular product itself. The particular tool I am building is simply a vehicle with which I will demonstrate the process of building new tools.

After determining what your needs are, you should look for a cost-effective platform to build your tool on. For example, if you want to make your own multi-channel logic analyzer, you would probably want to consider an FPGA-based board. In my case, because analog inputs

Figure 1: Magazine Hobby Project My aims are a little extreme for a data logger—what I want is a unit that can monitor analog and digital inputs, but the data that I gather must both be recorded locally and also available for downloading later. I’d also like to be able to do this remotely, and to be able to start and stop the logging at set time intervals. And — of course — all of this has to be done wirelessly.

What I really need is a box that can be dropped anywhere – even a place where power is no available—that can carry out the local instrument recording. Because of these special requirements, I will need to build a tool of my own specifications.

The exact number of inputs for my project does not matter because this is an example project, but considering how many inputs you need is a good place to start when building such a tool.

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and data storage are both important, kits such as the Arduino, AVR, Microchip, and mbed boards jump to mind. All of these have analog inputs, free programming environments, available code to add on, and even welldocumented interfaces for storage devices like USB flash drives.

Kits like the Microchip development boards tend to be focused on an application. Programming directly onto a micro can also be too time-consuming—it will take time to add libraries, debut, etc. For these reasons it’s easy to see that the mbed and Arduino platforms stand out as being quick and easy to work with, and since I want some storage, the mbed seems to be the best choice for this my example project. Not only does it have its local file system that can store data, but it can also be used in conjunction to an external USB Flash drive – it doesn’t

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the same type of Xbee compatible device to talk to my computer – though that shouldn’t be a problem as Xbee compatible devices are easy to make or buy.

My little project is coming together. In Part 2, I’ll take the next step of starting to build the hardware and outlining what else I will need as I proceed.

About the Author

Figure 2: Mbed

Digital Electronics Engineer with strong software skills in assembly and C for embedded systems. At ebmpapst I’m developing embedded electronics for thermal management control solutions for the air movement industry. These controllers monitor environmental inputs like Temperature, Humidity and Pressure and then control the speed of our fans based on various profiles. Our controls also interface with other systems over RS232/485 or TCP/IP as well as a host of other user or control interfaces.

need any hardware besides a physical connector. The mbed is also quite fast, which should make grabbing values from the ADC and digital inputs fast too — how fast is yet to be seen.

Next on my detail list is the need for wireless capability.

There are, once again, lots of different wireless units available that run on various protocols. For example, I could use a network like WiFi, but I think this option would require too much overhead, so instead, a simple serial communication will work just fine. One of the most popular serial communication modules around is the Xbee.

Figure 3: Xbee Xbee modules allow for complex mesh networks, or as my project requires, direct point to point. However, this also means that at the other end of the link, I will need Visit www.eeweb.com

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