Volume 44 — February 2010

Timely Information

Application Notes

New-Product Briefs

Pre-Release Products

Technical Articles

Webinars and Tutorials

Timeless Information

Analog Devices

Analog Diablog

Potpourri

Signal Chains

Technical Books

eNewsletters

myAnalog

Feature Articles: Products, Applications, Technology, and Techniques

Driving PIN Diodes: The Op-Amp Alternative

PIN diodes, which sandwich a lightly doped intrinsic region between heavily doped P and N regions, are used extensively in RF and microwave applications. PIN diode drivers--which provide a controlled forward bias current and reverse bias voltage--use discrete designs or specialized ICs. As an alternative, widely available op amps can be used. Op amps in this class feature wide bandwidth, high slew rate, and enough steady-state current to drive PIN diodes.

ADIsimPower Provides Robust, Customizable DC-to-DC Converter Designs

Designers of dc-to-dc converters are faced with an overwhelming number of options for power management ICs. Finding the best combination of features, performance, integration level, and price can be difficult enough, and the actual design work can be daunting. ADIsimPower™ simplifies the IC selection process and provides the information required to build an optimized dc-to-dc converter.

...Recent Feature Articles

The Back Burner: Design Ideas, Tutorials, Measurement Techniques

New Touch-Screen Controllers Offer Robust Sensing for Portable Displays

Touch-screen displays are replacing mechanical buttons in smart phones, MP3 players, navigation systems, laptop computers, and other devices. First generation devices suffered from low accuracy, false detection, and high power consumption. New devices--which offer improved accuracy, lower power consumption, and result filtering--can also sense temperature, supply voltage, and touch pressure.

Termination of High-Speed Converter Clock Distribution Devices

When using clock distribution devices or clock fanout buffers to clock ADCs and DACs, two main sources of signal degradation need to be dealt with: PCB traces behave like low-pass filters, attenuating clock signals and distorting clock edges as they travel along the trace; and reflections can cause undershoot and overshoot, severely degrading the signal and the overall clock performance.

...more Back Burner