www.edn.com October 14, 2004 | edn 15

Freescale Semiconduc-tor’s 16-bit MC9S12NE64microcontroller, based onthe Motorola HCS12 core,includes an IEEE 802.3-compliant, 10/100-MbpsEPHY (Ethernet physicallayer) and EMAC (Ether-net media-access con-troller) in a single package.The device enables Web-server functions. At $9(10,000) for the MC-9S12NE64CFU in an 80-pin TQFP-EP and $9.30(10,000) for the MC9-S12NE64CPV in a 112-pinLQFP, these devices offer a single-chip Ethernet im-plementation for applica-tions that need a reducedcomponent count and pack-age size.

The microcontroller sup-

ports full industrial-tempera-ture-range operation of �40to �85�C, and it is currentlyavailable in sample quantities.The DEMO9S12NE64 dem-onstration board is available

for $74.95; the EVB9S12-NE64 evaluation board isavailable for $249.

The MC9S12NE64 sup-ports 3.3V operation at 25MHz and includes 64kbytes of flash; 8 kbytes ofstatic RAM; a 10-bit, eight-channel ADC; a clock-gen-eration module with aPLL; two serial-communi-cation interfaces; and on-chip in-circuit emulation.Freescale partners offerflash-based TCP/IP-stacksoftware licensing thatsupports TCP/IP appli-cation protocols using

the IPv4 and IPv6 protocol standard.��Freescale Semiconductor,1-800-521-6274, www.freescale.com.

The lanyards you made at campcome in handy“A lanyard comeswith them. You’re go-ing to wear it, and, ifyou’re going wear it,you want it to becool. Why hide it?”

—Ellen Lupton, curatorof contemporary design

at the Cooper-HewittNational Design Museum,

on the growing trend ofwearing USB-flash drives,

in The New York Times,Sept 23, 2004

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Intel and competitors’ core-logic chip sets will in-evitably someday support second-generation serial-ATA features (see “Speedy simplicity,” EDN, Jan 22,2004, pg 33). Until then, Silicon Image fills the gap withits $7 (10,000), dual-port SiI 3132 controller. Availablein an 88-pin, 10�10-mm QFN package, the SiI 3132implements dual-drive RAID 0 and 1 configurationsalong with RAID 5 and 10 for setups with more driveswhen you also employ an external port multiplier, suchas the SiI 3726. Its system interface, a one-lane, 2.5-Gbps PCI Express bus, unfortunately doesn’t removethe bottlenecks inherent in earlier generation bridgechips that link 1-Gbps PCI to 1.5-Gbps SATA, because

the company has boosted the mass-storage interface to3-Gbps signaling rates.

The SiI 3132 supports all SATA II extensions, includ-ing native-command queuing, enclosure management,selectable output strengths, and hot-plug capability. Italso supports the optional FIS (frame-information-structure)-based switching-port multiplier mode foroptimum throughput over each SATA link, along withATAPI commands for optical drives. Now available forsampling, the SiI 3132 should enter volume productionin the first quarter of 2005.—by Brian Dipert��Silicon Image, 1-408-616-4000, www.siliconimage.com.

What’s hot in the design

community

Edited by Fran Granville

Single chip delivers processor with full Ethernet supportBy Robert Cravotta

The single-package, 16-bit MC9S12NE64microcontroller integrates an EthernetPHY that consumes approximately 50% ofthe total die area.

SATA controller speeds, supplements mass-storage links

16 edn | October 14, 2004 www.edn.com

Eventually, all video-encoding, -decoding, and-display equipment in

folks’ homes will interconnectvia loss-free, copy-protecteddigital schemes, such asFireWire and HDMI (HighDefinition Multimedia Inter-face). A near-term scan ofmost living rooms, dens, andclosets, however, will reveallots of analog-interface gear:camcorders, DVD players andrecorders, game consoles, set-top boxes, TVs, and the like.Video decoders, which con-vert from analog to digital, arethe bridge from the analogpresent to the digital future,and Techwell’s $8 (10,000)TW9918 exemplifies today’sstate-of-the-art technology inthis arena.

The TW9918 accepts com-posite, S-Video, component,and SCART (Syndicat desConstructeurs d’AppareilsRadiorécepteurs et Télévis-eurs) video-analog inputs invarious combinations, and itssix 9-bit A/D converters withanalog clamping circuitstranslate them into a VMI 1.4-compatible 4:2:2 YcbCr digi-tal output over an 8- or 16-bit,ITU-R 601 or ITU-R 656datapath. It automatically de-tects NTSC, PAL, or SECAM

formats, and it provides a 3-D adaptive comb filter forNTSC (its primary advance-ment over Techwell’s earliervideo decoders, which reliedexclusively on a 2-D comb fil-ter) (see “A crash course incolor conversion,” EDN, June7, 2001, pg 46). Other TW-9918 features include a 4-H(four-horizontal-delay), 2-Dcomb filter for PAL; a multi-tap, polyphase-decimation-filter-based down-scaler; im-age-enhancement features,such as 2-D peaking control,3-D noise reduction, and col-or-transient improvement;and synchronization circuitryfor stable pictures with non-standard video signals, such aswith VCR fast-forward,rewind, and pause operations.The 3.3V part, which has 5V-tolerant I/O buffers, comes ina 128-pin LQFP and is now inproduction.

Once your video is in thedigital domain, your compat-ibility struggles aren’t neces-sarily over. What happens ifyour video-output devicesupports MPEG-1, and itsmatching video-input coun-terpart speaks only MPEG-2or MPEG-4? What if yourwired or wireless interconnectchannel has a limited bit rate,

either on an ongoing basis ortemporarily due to interfer-ence, or if your storage mediahas limited capacity? What ifthe video output requiresdown-scaling before displayor further processing?

ViXS’s XCode II streaming-video processors, which sup-port both MPEG audio andvideo, can help. They upcon-vert MPEG-1 to MPEG-2 andMPEG-1 and MPEG-2 to ei-ther MPEG-4 simple or ad-vanced simple profiles. Theycan also convert between ele-mentary, program, and trans-port-stream layers and be-tween variable- and constant-bit-rate formats; handle dein-terlacing and telecine—thatis, film-mode—and inverse-telecine functions, and, likethe Techwell part, they sup-port 3-D motion-adaptivecomb filtering.

ViXS a year ago unveiledthe initial $35 (10,000) XCodeII processor, which can simul-taneously output four videostreams. The company nowfollows with the dual-stream,$25 XCode II-L; the low-pow-er, dual-stream, $25 XCode II-N; and the single-stream, $20XCode II-E. The companyalso offers a point-to-pointclient/server-reference design,

a software-development kit,and both single- and dual-tuner PCI add-in-card refer-ence designs.

—by Brian Dipert��Techwell, 1-408-435-3888,www.techwellinc.com.��ViXS, 1-416-646-2000,www.vixs.com.

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DILBERT By Scott Adams

��According to the US Department of Commerce, US companies last year paid $77.4 billion for outsourced services from foreign companies,including those that staff call centers and do data entry, up from $8 billion in 2002.—The Boston Globe, Sept 23, 2004

RJ-45 CONNECTORPROVIDES THE MISSING POE LINK

POE (power over Ethernet) isa hot design area, bolsteredby the IEEE 802.3af standard,but, to use it, you need a con-nector that matches the POErequirements. Tyco Electronicsclaims that its Mag45 is thefirst LAN connector incorporat-ing necessary POE functions,integrating magnetics andpower-management siliconfrom PowerDsine.

The 12-port RJ-45 connec-tor, with the same paneldimensions as older legacyconnectors that also sport tworows of six connectors, sup-ports and scales for data ratesof 10, 100, and 1000 Mbps,depending on the version youselect. Other options for thisconnector, which sells for$2.50 to $6 (1000) per port,include single-color and bi-color LEDs.—by Bill Schweber��TTyyccoo EElleeccttrroonniiccss, www.tycoelectronics.com.

You need a POE-compliantRJ-45 connector if you wantto implement IEEE 802.3afrequirements; the TycoMag45 fills the bill.

Chips smooth out digital-video speed bumps

18 edn | October 14, 2004 www.edn.com

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width of 13 GHz—more than50% greater than that of anyother real-time-samplingDSO—and 20 to 80% risetime of 23 psec—one-thirdless than that of the fastestcompetitive unit. The priceincreases to $153,500 whenyou add a popular comple-ment of options and acces-sories: two 12-GHz differen-tial probes, a deep-memoryoption, and analysis packagesfor jitter- and serial-dataanalysis. Hintze says that theprice is in line with going ratesin the ultra-high-perform-ance-real-time DSO market,in which scopes cost on aver-age $10,000/1 GHz of band-width and compatible probesaverage $800 to $1000/1 GHz.

Moreover, Agilent hasseemingly—albeit not actual-ly—defied a law of physics:Amplifier noise is well-knownto increase with increasingbandwidth, yet the 10-GHz-bandwidth, $94,000 DSO-81004A exhibits rms inputnoise that is typically half thatof its 8-GHz-bandwidth com-petitor. The ratio of the 8- and10-GHz scopes’ input noisedepends on the input-voltagerange you use; however, onthe widely used 100-mV/divrange, referred-to-input noiseis 3.3 mV versus 6.9 mV onthe competitive unit. More-over, the Agilent scope pro-

vides a 5-mV/div range,whereas the competitivescope’s most sensitive range is10 mV/div.

The magic, says Hintze, is inthe combination of a silicon-germanium preamplifier anda CMOS digitizer that inter-leaves the outputs of 80 bit-slice ADCs to make conver-sions at 20G samples/sec. Thescopes contain one such digi-tizer/amplifier device perchannel. But achieving the40G-sample/sec conversionrate necessary for real-time

digitization of signals thatcontain frequency compo-nents greater than 8 GHz re-quires interleaving the out-puts of two of these ADCs, soyou must operate the four-channel scopes in the two-channel mode when you needto perform real-time sam-pling of signals whose band-width exceeds 8 GHz. Thescopes do offer a random-equivalent-time-samplingmode that, for repetitive inputsignals, permits four-channeloperation at the full band-width, but this mode—inwhich the effective samplinginterval is a mere 0.5 psec—provides a maximum recordlength of only 125 nsec.

One area in which the newscopes don’t excel is in mem-ory depth. Even with thedeep-memory option, themaximum record length isonly 50 �sec at the highestreal-time-sampling rate.Without the deep-memoryoption, the maximum recordlength is one-fourth as great.Moreover, the optional mem-ory is unavailable in the ran-dom-equivalent-time-sam-pling mode. Competitivescopes with 6-GHz band-width are available with mem-ory as deep as 100M sam-ples/channel—100 times thatof the 81000 series scopes withthe deep-memory option. Ac-cording to Hintze, this limita-tion effectively rules out usingthe new scopes in at least twoareas: high-resolution FFTsand development testing ofdisk drives. Nevertheless, hesays, people who need thewide bandwidth, fast rise

time, low noise, and real-timesampling are more than hap-py to accept the memory lim-itation.

The probes, which extendthe bandwidth of the recentlyintroduced InfiniiMax line to12 GHz, include many electri-cal and mechanical options.Of these, the units that accepttrue differential inputs arelikely to be invaluable to EEswho develop ultra-high-speedserial-bus hardware, nearly allof which now employs differ-ential signaling.

—by Dan Strassberg��Agilent Technologies, 1-800-829-4444, www.agilent.com.

As Agilent product manager Lon Hintze

puts it, the cost of the company’s new DSO-

81304A real-time-sampling scope—$122,500—is

not for the faint of heart. The unit boasts band-

Real-time-sampling DSO achieves 13-GHz bandwidth,23-psec rise time, lower noise than 8-GHz units

��Forrester Research predicts that 3.4 million US jobs and $136 billion in wages could move offshore by 2015.—The Boston Globe, Sept 23,2004

One option of the 12-GHz probefor the DSO80000-series scopes isthe square unit at the center. It isa differential amplifier equippedwith SMA connectors on semirigidcables. This amplifier mates withconnectors on your unit undertest. Because the offset cablesrotate through 360�, you canmate the cables with pairs of con-nectors having widely variedspacing.

MAKE THE USB-TO-PCMCIA/IEEE-488LINKNew controllers from CapitalEquipment Corp can help youconnect to valuable, still-use-ful, and probably expensive-to-replace IEEE-488-based testequipment using the now-ubiquitous USB port or usinga PCMCIA (PC Card) slot forcontrol. These IEEE-488.2units let you control as manyas 14 programmable instru-ments, using Windows-baseddriver software that is compat-ible with many application-software packages from majordata-acquisition-softwaresources. The USB controllersells for $495, and the PCM-CIA controller sells for $595(one to four).

—by Bill Schweber��CCaappiittaall EEqquuiippmmeenntt CCoorrpp,www.cec488.com.

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it generates during an initialbattery-charge/discharge cy-cle—part of a cell-characteri-zation step during pack man-ufacturing. Although gaugingprovides results superior tothose of straight voltage-lim-ited cell management, it ig-nores several important andrelatively accessible pieces ofinformation.

First, few portable devicespresent a constant load to thebattery. Be it the spin-up cur-rent for a hard-disk or CD-ROM drive, the power-ampli-fier current in a Wi-Fitransmitter, or the peak-torque current in a portablepower tool, load currents inmany battery-powered de-vices are anything but con-stant. Battery capacities aren’tconstant, either. In fact, a bat-tery’s charge capacity is para-metric in load current, tem-perature, and charge-cyclecount, to name just three. Fuelgauges that only count thecoulombs are bound to mis-estimate the number ofcoulombs available to count,resulting in increasing gaug-ing errors as the peak-to-av-erage current ratio or thepeak-current duty cycle in-crease, as the battery ages, andas the temperature varies.

The bq20z80 from TexasInstruments monitors current

and operating temperature intwo-, three-, and four-celllithium-ion and -polymerpacks. It also monitors cellvoltages through a compan-ion bq29312 analog front endand calculates cell imped-ances. The $1.20 (1000) bq-29312, available in a TSSOP-24, serves as the chip set’shigh-voltage interface andprimary protection device. Italso provides a 3.3V, 25-mAlow-dropout amplifier.

According to preliminaryinformation from TI, the chipset provides as much as 99%gauging accuracy over a packlifetime. The impedance mea-surement, which can vary by afactor of 10 over a dischargecycle and a factor of 1.5/10�Cover the operating-tempera-ture range, enables thebq20z80 to compensate cell-voltage measurements, result-ing in significant improve-ments in state-of-chargecalculations throughout thecharge cycle.

Battery packs incorporat-ing bq20z80-based gaugingsubsystems provide key ad-vantages to both pack manu-facturers and end users. Thechip eliminates the need for atraining cycle during packmanufacture. Pack makerscan avoid, therefore, the longdischarge and charge intervals

that can create production-line bottlenecks in the face oflimited pack-conditioning ca-pacity.

End users enjoy a pack thatallows longer operating timeper charge cycle due to thegauge’s ability to compensatefor battery-life, operating-temperature, and current-flow profiles resulting fromvarying use patterns. Theyalso get better protection fromsudden interruptions due tooverestimates of a battery’s re-maining charge as a portableproduct approaches the endof a discharge cycle.

In addition to managinglithium-based battery packs,you can also use the bq20z80gauge with nickel-metal-hy-dride and nickel-cadmiumchemistries. Additionally, thecompany is developing a sim-ilar gauge for single-cell ap-plications, such as mobilephones, digital still cameras,and PDAs.

The bq20z80 provides anintegrated resistor-program-mable timebase, targeting fre-quency stability rather than

frequency precision. Resistor-temperature coefficients of 50to 75 ppm/�C suffice for mostapplications. For tighter toler-ances, the timebase operateswith an external crystal. Dur-ing power-up, the timebasedetects whether a resistor or acrystal is present, and theclock circuit configures itselfaccordingly.

The self-calibrating gaugefeatures a 16-bit delta-sigmaconverter for voltage and tem-perature measurements.A 16-bit integrating converter pro-vides charge flow measure-ments with a 0.65-nAh reso-lution.Auto calibration main-tains the current-measure-ment’s channel typical offseterrors to lower than 1 �V di-vided by the sense resistance.

The $4.35 (1000) batterymonitor, available in aTSSOP-38, also drives three-,four-, or five-segment LEDdisplays to indicate the pack’sremaining capacity.

—by Joshua Israelsohn��Texas Instruments,www.ti.com.

Battery fuel gauges help portable products

squeeze the most out of a charge cycle and the

most number of cycles out of a battery lifetime.

They achieve this goal in part by using Q-V data

Smart-battery fuel gauge corrects for dischargerate, temperature, state of charge, and age

��Although the current penetration of home-media-server products is modest, In-Stat/MDR projects that worldwide unit shipments of me-dia-server products will almost double in 2004 to more than 6 million units.

The bq20z80 monitors operating temperature in two-, three-, and four-cell lithium-ion and -polymer packs. It also monitors cell voltagesthrough the bq29312 analog front end and calculates cell impedances.

22 edn | October 14, 2004 www.edn.com

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RESISTANCE MAY BE FUTILE, BUT YOU CAN STILLMEASURE ITExtreme values of resistance,as with so many physicalparameters, are difficult tomeasure. Easing the task, theQuadTech (formerly, GenradInstruments) Model 1868Aand 1868D instruments makeinsulation resistance measure-ments at 1 k� to 1 P�(petaohm). The similar unitsdiffer primarily in their finaldrive capability; the A version

provides current to 80 mA forfast charging of capacitive ele-ments before measurement,and the D version providestest voltages to 5000V dc forhigh-voltage test require-ments.

Accuracy is within 2%, andyou can program the pre-charge, delay, and measuretime. Interconnection is via RS-232, IEEE-488, and otherremote-connection interfacestandards. You can run testsequences and use the inter-nal PCMCIA interface of thesemegohmmeters for uploadingand downloading test setups.The 1868A and 1868D sell for$8900 and $9500, respectively.

—by Bill Schweber��QQuuaaddTTeecchh IInncc,, 1-978-461-2100, www.quadtech.com.

streaming video for set-top-box designs. The device sup-ports decoding HD videostreams in MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and Microsoft’s WMV9(Windows Media Video 9)formats at 720p resolution.The integrated peripherals in-clude three 20-bit HD-capa-ble video ports; a 10/100-Mbps Ethernet MAC (media-access controller); 256 kbytesof L2 memory; a 32-bit hostinterface; a 66-MHz PCI port;and a 64-bit, 133-MHz SD-RAM interface. The TMS320-

DM640 and TMS320DM641operate at speeds as high as600 MHz, offer lower process-ing performance and featurefewer integrated peripheralsand memory. They supportD1 (720�480-pixel) encod-ing and decoding at 30frames/sec of MPEG-2 MPand MPEG-4 SP or D1 de-coding at 30 frames/sec ofMPEG-2 MP, MPEG-4 SP andASP, H.264 BP and MP, andWMV9 MP and AP.

The 720-MHz TMS320-DM642 is currently available

for sampling and sells for$59.99 (10000). The 600-MHz TMS320DM642, TMS-320DM641, and TMS320-DM640 are available in vol-ume production, and pricesbegin at $19.95 (10,000) forthe 400-MHz TMS320DM-640. The DM642 EVM (eval-uation module) costs $1995,and the digital-media devel-oper’s kit, which includes theDM642 EVM, sells for $6495.Set-top-box reference designsand audio/video codecs, suchas H.26L, H.263, AC-3, AAC,and MP3, are availablethrough Texas Instruments’third-party supplier net-work.—by Robert Cravotta��Texas Instruments, 1-800-336-5236, www.ti.com/dm642720pr.

Texas Instruments’ TMS320DM642 digital-

media processor, operating at 720 MHz, com-

bines the peripheral-set and processing perform-

ance necessary to deliver HD (high-definition)

DSP delivers high-definition performance

The R-Series of position sensors from MTS Sensors resolves two contradictory user de-sires: to have access to internal functions for adjustment and calibration and to maintain asealed and rugged package. It fulfills these needs using an infrared link, such as a basic TVremote control, to communicate your desired adjustments, plus a red and green LED pairfor basic operational indication, such as all OK, out of range, or magnet not detected, with-

out diminishing package integrity.Targeting use in harsh production and industrial en-

vironments, the sensor has resolution down to 1 micronwith output nonlinearity better than 0.01% and re-peatability to 0.001% of full scale. You can get analogvoltage or current output, as well as a variety of serialdigital outputs and even network-compatible outputs,supporting CANbus, Profibus, and DeviceNet. To giveyou further peace of mind, the package resists shock to100g and vibration to 25g at 10 to 2000 Hz and offersreverse-polarity, miswiring, and overvoltage protection.The $500 to $600 device may at first seem expensive,but it may be a bargain in applications requiring relia-bility, accuracy, and little downtime.—by Bill Schweber��MTS Sensors, 1-952-937-4000, www.mts.com.

Precise position sensor gets IR adjustments

Don’t let extreme resistancestop you from making insula-tion-related ohm measure-ments with the 1868A and1868D units.

High resolution combines with arugged, sealed, yet internally accessi-ble package in the MTS TemposonicsR-Series position sensor.

��Firewall and virtual-private-network-security-appliance shipments grew at 27% in 2003, according to In-Stat/MDR. The enterprise-cus-tomer segment is fueling this growth, as corporations move from product trials to mass deployment. With a substantial concentration oflarge enterprises with more than 1000 employees each, North America currently represents approximately 49% of the market. However,Asia will dominate this market over the next few years.

24 edn | October 14, 2004 www.edn.com

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IMAGE PROCESSINGGETS ITS TOOLSGOINGWith the increasing availabilityof low-cost videocameras, plusgeneral-purpose processorsand DSPs to handle the video-stream output, designers stillneed tools to develop theirever-more-sophisticated algo-rithms. The Video and Image

Processing Blockset from The Mathworks lets you buildmodels, simulate algorithms,assess system behavior, devel-op your C code, and verify thesoftware and design perform-ance. The C code you developwith this package can be infixed- or floating-point mode,and you can migrate betweenthese two data types in thesame model. Applicationsinclude image extraction andrecognition, object edgedetection, and image comple-tion and assessment. The$1000 package runs onWindows, Unix, Linux, andMacintosh platforms.

—by Bill Schweber��TThhee MMaatthhwwoorrkkss, 1-508-647-7000, www.mathworks.com.

older Radeon 9600 architec-ture, the X700 is a more con-temporary derivation of theX800 graphics-processing unit(see “Dueling graphics jugger-nauts trade announcement,improvement jabs,” EDN, July8, 2004, pg 22). The companyplans at least three prolifera-tions of the device: a baseX700 ($149 for a 128-Mbyteboard) with a 400-MHz coreclock and a 350-MHz memo-ry clock, the X700 Pro ($199for a 256-Mbyte board) with a420-MHz core clock and a432-MHz memory clock, andthe X700 XT ($199 for a 128-Mbyte board and $249 for a256-Mbyte board) with 475-MHz core and 525-MHz

memory speeds.Because all X700 variants

interface to DDR (double-data-rate) memory, the peakdata transfer rate is two timesthe memory clock rate. Allboards, according to ATI, arenow in production, and allchip proliferations embedeight pixel pipelines (versus12 or 16 in the high-end X800series), six vertex pipelines,and a 128-bit interface to theframe buffer (versus 256 bitsin the X800, which will beavailable this fall in a $499,256-Mbyte All-In-WonderXT-board variant). ATI man-ufactures the Radeon X700 ona 0.11-micron process andplans AGP-based X700-board

variants, employing a separatePCI Express-to-AGP “re-verse”-bridge chip.

Prospects for 3-D gamingon cell phones and PDAs arebright, say the analysts. And,commensurate with thoseforecasts, Nvidia is rolling outits first GoForce chip thathardware-accelerates 3-Dgraphics functions: the aptlynamed GoForce 3D 4500. Thechip, containing 1.3 Mbytes ofembedded memory and tar-geting phones costing $199 to$249, carries forward the 2-Dgraphics features and the still-image and video-encodingand -decoding functions ofearlier GoForce devices (see“Graphics advancements spanPCs to cell phones,” EDN,June 24, 2004, pg 14). It addsa geometry processor; a pro-grammable pixel shader; a 40-bit color pipeline; an early Z-buffer processor; support forsix simultaneous textures andtexture compression; and oth-er features that promise to de-liver high-quality, high-frame-rate entertainment toyour next handheld design.

Nvidia targets three pri-mary APIs for support: theKhronos Group’s OpenGL-ES, Microsoft’s Direct3D-Mo-bile, and the Java-based M3G,with general and custom ex-tensions as appropriate. Thecompany also plans to offerhardware-evaluation andsoftware-development kits.

—by Brian Dipert��ATI Technologies, 1-905-882-2600, www.ati.com.��Nvidia, 1-408-486-2000,www.nvidia.com.

Whereas ATI technologies’ earlier mainstream

PC-graphics chip, the Radeon X600, was little

more than a PCI Express-inclusive spin-off of the

Graphics progression boosts capabilitiesof mainstream PCs, high-end cell phones

You can build, simulate,model, test, and C-code yourimage-processing algorithmswith the Video and ImageProcessing Blockset from The Mathworks.

128-BITGDDR3 MEMORY INTERFACE

EIGHT PARALLELPIXEL PIPELINES

SMOOTHVISION HD

SMARTSHADER HDDISPLAYINTERFACE

2-D ENGINE

PCI EXPRESSBUS

INTERFACE

VIDEO-PROCESSING

ENGINE

SIX VERTEX PIPES

HYPER Z

SETUP ENGINE

CPU

GRAPHICS MEMORY

The Radeon X700 squeezes a tremendous number of functions onto achip that costs less than $150 in 128-Mbyte board form.

��Market demand for WLAN equipment and services in China is heating up, according to In-Stat/MDR. The company expects WLAN equipmentrevenues in China to increase at a nearly 33% compound-annual-growth rate from about $54 million in 2004 to almost $160 million by 2008.

www.edn-europe.com October 2004 | edn europe 7

Whether you need toexclude wireless serv-ices from a particular

physical area or confine themand provide service onlywithin a defined boundary,one option you have isscreening. You may want toprovide a wireless-LAN serv-ice only within an office or abuilding, or you might needto exclude cell-phone signalsfrom a sensitive area, such asa hospital intensive-careunit. Existing screening solu-tions have tended to bestraightforward metallic bar-riers—for example, the con-ductive coating applied tothe windows of some traincarriages to create mobile-phone “quiet zones.”

Now, UK technology com-pany Qinetiq has developed

a way of producing largesheets of printed frequency-selective screens—in effect,frequency-selective “wallpa-per.” The company producesthe base screen pattern usinga metal printing process; itprints the pattern onto aflexible or rigid substratewith industry-standard pro-cesses and “grows” metal byimmersing it in an electrolessbath, a process the companysays is a very scalable. Thetechnology was originallydeveloped to produce largesheets for use in radar appli-cations and as part ofa millimetre-wave security-screening device. It shouldnow find use in producingRFID tags at very low costand in the application ofmetallic finishes to plastics,

including RFI shielding ofplastic enclosures, as well asfor RF wallpaper.

—by Graham Prophet��Qinetiq, �44 8700 100942, www.qinetiq.com.

Passive matrix offers selective RF-area screeningBy Graham Prophet

A passive printed screen can con-fine or exclude signals in a definedradio band when used to surrounda space.

pressures on the LCD busi-ness. He noted the developingtrend of camera functions inmobile phones that moreclosely approach the perform-ance of stand-alone digitalcameras. This trend, com-bined with mobile phones’ in-creasing multimedia capabil-ities, implies a demand for

better display quality. Sharp isusing its CGS (continuousgrain silicon) silicon technol-ogy in phones and expects tosoon offer transflectives—forbetter performance in sun-light. At the other end of thescale, Huber acknowledgesthe price pressure in the LCD-television sector, with plasma-technology suppliers continu-ing to offer competition in thelargest screen sizes. Sharp saysit has the only “sixth-genera-

tion” LCD production facilitycurrently running; it handles“mother glasses”—the sub-strate on which the active de-vices for the display areformed—of 1500�1800 mm.Because the glass thickness isonly 0.7 mm, you cannot ma-nipulate these glass sheets byhand. Therefore, the manu-facturing infrastructure tohandle the glass represents asignificant investment in au-tomated production.

Huber also acknowledgesanother pressure on the dis-

plays business: the Reduc-tion of Hazardous

Substances direc-tive. Its greatesti m m e d i a t eimpact ondisplays is in

the provision ofbacklighting, which

manufacturers have predom-inantly carried out with cold-

cathode fluorescent tubes. Be-cause these tubes aremercury-based, manufactur-ers must replace them. Thetwo main candidate technolo-gies for use are Xenon-basedlamps and white—or colour-balanced cluster—LEDs. (Ex-hibitors at Electronica will of-fer both solutions.)

Sharp continues to developits System-LCD concept. TheCGS process allows the for-mation of semiconductor de-

vices of good performance(speed) directly on the sub-strate glass along with the ac-tive transistors of the LCDmatrix itself. Drivers, con-trollers, and power-supplyfunctions can be integratedon to the periphery of theglass panel, reducing compo-nent count, size, and weight ofthe complete display. Thecompany’s Advanced TFT de-sign uses the metalisation ofthe conductive tracks inter-connecting the thin-film tran-sistors as a reflector to returnincident light through theLCD matrix and to increasebrightness in high ambientlight.

At Electronica, Sharp willintroduce a 10.4-in. display forthe industrial market, theLQ104V1DW01, with 380-cd/m2 brightness and a 500-to-1 contrast ratio. It employsthe ASV (Advanced SuperView) generation of transmis-sive-technology display paneland provides good viewing an-gle with no colour inversion.

Supporting its range of dis-play products in the mobilemarket, Sharp also expects toaugment its series of referencedesigns for PMPs (portablemedia players). Existing de-signs support low-end prod-ucts at QCIF resolution(176�220 pixels) with anamorphous-silicon 2.2-in.display and an ARM9-based200-MHz controller IC, aswell as a medium-resolutionplatform with QVGA (320�240-pixel) resolution and,again, the LH7A404 con-troller. Expect the next step tobe a high-end reference designwith digital video record and

playback capability that willprovide mobile video at VGA(640�480-pixel) or D1 (720�480-pixel) resolution, for A/Venthusiasts and professionalmarkets.

—by Graham Prophet��Sharp, www.sharp-sme.com.

8 edn europe | October, 2004 www.edn-europe.com

Reference designs boost display quality for portable products

With Electronica approaching, the presi-

dent of Sharp Microelectronics in Europe,

Maximilian Huber, recently charted some of the

Reference designs support the upgrading of display quality for portablemedia products, at a range of price and performance points.

edgeleading

10 edn europe | October 2004 www.edn-europe.com

edgeleading

Totally testing TETRA

With its IFR 3900 mo-bile-radio test set,Aeroflex has intro-

duced a configurable test plat-form for professional mobileradio that will aim to cover allstandards other than thoseused for the public cellularservice. Accordingly, the first“personality”that it is offeringon the set is for the TETRA(terrestrial trunked radio)standard.

TETRA is by no means theonly standard for applicationssuch as emergency services,but it is gaining ground inthose applications. It offers“cellular-like” calling conven-ience with many features thatsuit the emergency services,such as economical use ofbandwidth, fast and deter-ministic call setup, and push-to-talk and group-calling facilities. It is a digital-modulation, TDMA servicewith 25-kHz channel spacing.The various calling options,together with the different RF structure, differentiateTETRA from mainstream cel-lular radio in terms of its testdemands.

Aeroflex has designed the3900 for R&D, manufactur-ing, and field support. As asignal analyzer, it covers 1

MHz to 1 GHz; its architec-ture is RF front end followedby a completely digital IF. IFbandwidth is 5 MHz, withA/D conversion at 14 bits at64.8M samples/sec. ThreeTexas Instruments C6711processors, each backed by 64Mbytes of RAM, provideDSP; the overall instrument-control processor runs Linux.A ruggedised case, a sunlight-readable display, and the factit can handle 125W inputpower from a base-stationtransmitter back its in-fieldcredentials.

The TETRA package sup-ports all call and messaging(voice and data) modes, andthe unit can simulate a basestation with registration andcall setup in either direction.Once established, a full set ofparametric measurementscan be carried out on the calltraffic. Transmitter tests in-clude signal burst powermeasurements over a dynam-ic range of 70 dB. The unit candisplay digital-modulationinformation in the conven-tional phase and constellationdiagram formats. The unitalso supports the “loopback”test mode in which it gener-ates test data, feeds it via theair interface to a mobile, and

inspects the returned data(using bit-error rate) from themobile for errors arising any-where in the signal path. Oth-er facilities include audioquality and fully scripted au-tomatic test modes. Further

“personalities” will configurethe 3900 for alternative PMR(professional mobile radio)standards.

—by Graham Prophet��Aeroflex, �44 1438772087.

With the 3900 mobile-radio test set, you can apply a complete suite oftests for the TETRA standard.