The demand for compact, accurate position sensors in automotive applications will grow substantially to $1.6 billion by 2026, in line with the growth in electric vehicles (Figure 1). These sensors track the rotor’s position inside the motor responsible for traction, power steering, and windows; ensuring control and safety coverage.
The I²C two-wire bus is still as popular today as when Philips originally invented it in 1982. Initially operating at 100KHz, the latest incarnation, version 7 (2021) Ultra-Fast-mode (UFm), now clocks at 5MHz—making it fast enough for most medium-speed peripherals, including digital I/O, GPIO, keyboards, keypads, and sensors.
USB, USB Type-C®, and DisplayPort™ (DP) cables have become so ubiquitous as to even be purchased in low-cost convenience stores. However, while two individual cables may appear identical to the naked eye, they can differ considerably in the quality of performance they provide. Low cost can mean low quality, and alongside instances where cheap cables have caused electronic equipment to malfunction or have corrupted data, they typically cause poor picture quality or slow down the rate of data transfer to well below the multi-gigabit bandwidth offered by the latest USB specification (USB 4).
In the not-too-distant past, it seemed like every electronic device had its own custom power supply, cable, and interface (Figure 1). USB Type-C® (or USB-C®), which implements the USB power delivery (USB-PD) specification, was supposed to solve this problem by introducing a single standard interface that all devices could use.
Today’s PCIe 3.0 switches, which support data speeds up to 8GT/s per lane, combine generous bandwidth and up-to-the-minute power-management and RAS features to meet the needs of mobile and embedded applications.
Piezo sounders create warning or alert noises in many applications, oftentimes in portable, battery-powered, and space-saving products. These devices consist of a ceramic element attached to a metal plate, where the ceramic element uses the piezoelectric effect to distort its shape when a voltage is applied. As it contracts and expands due to the varying voltage, the attached plate vibrates audibly.
The automotive lighting market continues to grow strongly and is forecast by analyst Yolé to reach US$38.8 billion by 2024. Over the past few years, LEDs have taken an increasing share of this market, and LED exterior lights have become a familiar sight on our roads.
The global appetite for data shows no sign of abating and continues to place pressure on service providers to handle more bits, more quickly.
DC electric motors have been around for nearly two hundred years, with a steady series of refinements in that time. More recently, brushless DC motors have become increasingly popular but for many applications brushed DC motors are still the right choice.
The majority of electronics systems encountered at home or work will comprise at least one oscillator working as a clock that delivers accurate timing, synchronizes operations or acts as a frequency reference. Here, we’ll be looking at the many benefits of using quartz crystal oscillators and discussing the choices available.
