Perfectly Awesome

The history, physics, and practical trade-offs behind a number every RF engineer knows.

What is a servo motor? How does a servo motor work? Get the right answers to these and more questions related to servo motors at our Jameco Electronics blog.

Electromagnetism takes touch feedback beyond simple vibrations

Understanding and minimizing discontinuities is increasingly important as serial links become both shorter and faster. Applying the old edge rate to roundtrip relationship to the modern era, Donald Telian in this article offers a rule-of-thumb to help gauge which interconnect structures, and hence discontinuities, to care about – and to what degree.

This deeply researched and thoughtful read by Maxwell Neely-Cohen, a fellow at the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School, explores the past, present, and future of long-term data storage. “If you want to store something for 100 years, what are the best methods for ensuring its survival?” he asks. Neely-Cohen’s sweeping examination of storage […]

This article explores the basic principles of Class F operation and introduces the third-harmonic-peaking Class F amplifier.

If you had to store something for 100 years, how would you do it?

How IGBT and SiC based traction inverters use power from the lithium ion battery pack to drive the motors using sinusoidal pulse width modulation.

THz radiations finds unique applications in astronomy, medicine and communications, but not without its own distinct challenges.

Why you should care about even small amounts of inductance.

A guide to the operating principles, techniques and technology in lidar systems.

In this article, we'll walk through the process of moving an LTspice circuit into QSPICE and learn some QSPICE schematic techniques.

In this article, we analyze the operation of the Class E amplifier and examine the underlying assumptions of its design equations.

An in-depth look at the high-speed data communication standard's benefits and tradeoffs.

From PIN diodes, RF MEMS, MESFETs, and HEMTs to RF silicon-on-insulator technology, how the evolution of a circuit as simple as a switch is much more complex than it seems like on the surface.

In this article, we'll learn the basics of switching-mode RF amplifiers in general and Class D amplifiers in particular.

This article, the first in a four-part series on moving from LTspice to QSPICE, introduces an LED blinker circuit that we’ll simulate with both programs.

In PCB design, using grounded copper pour can be a double-edged sword. Learn how to make smart design decisions on balancing copper layers, preventing dead copper issues, and enhancing PCB performance.

A brief introduction to antennas, superheterodyne receivers, and signal modulation schemes.

This article will help you optimize your switch-mode regulator and driver circuits by explaining important sources of MOSFET power dissipation.

Though both standards have long been used for serial communication, RS-485 offers valuable features that aren't available from RS-232. Learn more in this article.

The full-wave bridge rectifier converts an AC input voltage to a DC power supply voltage. Learn about the operation of this essential circuit.

L4S could fix a problem that even gigabit connections don’t.

Learn what is an Op Amp(Operational Amplifier): Understanding circuits, types, & the Best operational amplifier choices.

In this article, we cover the basic behavior of the MOSFET common-source amplifier with different types of load.

Ethernet is ubiquitous, fast, and simple. You only need two diffpairs (four wires) to establish a 100Mbit link, the hardware is everywhere, you can do Ethernet over long distances easily, and tons …

Learn how bifilar coils can be used to build Gustav Guanella’s classic RF balun.

Gerber layers don’t have to be a mystery. Knowing the names and purposes of each Gerber layer used in PCB manufacturing can improve your designs and ease communication with the board house.

How does a Class B power amplifier work? What makes it more efficient than a Class A power amplifier? Learn the answers in this article.

This article will demonstrate that the AC current density decreases exponentially into a conductor. It will also explain why we can assume that the total current has a uniform distribution from the surface down to one skin depth of the conductor.

This article introduces high-frequency conductor losses in transmission lines caused by a phenomenon known as the skin effect.

One of the biggest computing inventions of all time, courtesy of Xerox PARC.

Feel the real world and the virtual world at the same time

Learn about slot antennas, namely their history, characteristics, and electromagnetic (EM) behavior for low-voltage, small-form-factor electronic devices.

How to stabilize digital supply voltages - and why most of the online advice on this topic is suspect.

Learn how a series RLC circuit with arbitrary component values can be represented as a point on the Smith chart and how an impedance contour on the Smith chart can be used to describe the circuit's frequency response.

Secure Data Recovery found that average failed hard drive spun for 25,233 hours before failing. That’s 1,051 days, or two years and ten months. Failed drive data recovery biz Secure Data Recovery has produced a report giving its experience of hard disk drive life expectancy from 2,007 damaged and defective drives it has received for […]

I wrote a blog post on this topic nearly three years back on the Operator Watch Blog here . That post is very handy as every few months some...

A new technical paper titled “APOSTLE: Asynchronously Parallel Optimization for Sizing Analog Transistors Using DNN Learning” was published by researchers at UT Austin and Analog Devices. Abstract “Analog circuit sizing is a high-cost process in terms of the manual effort invested and the computation time spent. With rapidly developing technology and high market demand, bringing... » read more

The latest wireless protocol ditches radiation and focuses on a new medium: your body.

Learn more about RF wave reflection parameters, namely mismatch loss and mismatch uncertainty.

Achieving better signal integrity in a PCB design can be a challenge. Learn how PCB trace impedance variation plays a role, and how advanced tools can help smooth the way.

Learn about voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), return loss, and mismatch loss, which helps characterize the wave reflections in a radio frequency (RF) design.

Aimed at improving sensing and imaging systems, Princeton University researchers have developed a reconfigurable antenna based on origami.

Learn how to derive the wave equations for a lossless transmission line and look at its infinite bandwidth and phase constant.

The following is a list of my articles on various topics. Besides technical articles, news pieces that might have useful technical information are also included. You can find my articles on FPGA...

Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronics is a visual feast for those who love electronics.

Learn about voltage waves and how they relate to an important basic concept of radio frequency (RF) circuit design: transmission lines.

Using new materials, UPenn researchers recently demonstrated how analog compute-in-memory circuits can provide a programmable solution for AI computing.

Here is a growing list of videos that I’ve created for YouTube channels other than my own.

How do we keep track of time? A deeper look into Quartz timers and the emerging field of MEMS

Changes are steady in the memory hierarchy, but how and where that memory is accessed is having a big impact.

Learn about calculating the activation energy of the aging process and some of the contradictory opinions about the Arrhenius equation's usefulness when predicting a crystal's aging process.

Our analysis of 14 popular consumer devices found most could stop working in 3 to 4 years because of irreplaceable batteries. Here’s how we get the tech industry to design products that last longer — and do less damage to the environment.

This e-book explores microstrip antenna design, highlighting the single-element rectangular microstrip antenna and antenna arrays constructed from single microstrip elements.

Antennas are used to transmit and receive electromagnetic energy. This article covers basic antenna theory.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) vibratory gyroscopes can be a bit mysterious and math-intensive. Let's break the math down, and go over gyroscope basics and structures.

Learn about interrupts for some familiar peripherals: timers, serial communication, and ADCs.

This article explores the Butterworth low-pass filter, also known as the maximally flat filter, from the perspective of its pole-zero diagram.

Antennas allow information to be transferred to distant locations. In the second part of this Antenna Basics series, you will learn more about the physics of how antennas work.

This article explores an alternative, and in some cases advantageous, approach to MOSFET-based implementation of digital logic functions.

This article explains some theory behind piezoelectric sensors and presents an equivalent circuit that you can use when you’re designing sensor systems.

Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University have developed soft magnetic materials that promise to make electric motors up to four times lighter.

This article will discuss how to implement a shift register in Verilog. The register described can be synthesized and downloaded to an FPGA for test in actual hardware.

This article looks at gallium arsenide, comparing it to other semiconductor materials, and explores how different compounds are used in components.

This article presents an LTspice circuit that can be used to explore the behavior of a phase-locked loop.

What are TMR sensors and what applications are they best suited to? This article provides a snapshot of this sensor type and what TMR-based components are available for designers.

For the first time, a beam-steering antenna is integrated into the metal casing of a mobile phone

How does a ground plane reduce noise in a PCB? Learn more in this technical article.

The megapixel myth has treated camera manufacturers well over the years, those ever increasing, and often meaningless, numbers have sold millions of cameras. But consumers are getting wise to it. We've all seen dodgy images from high megapixel cameras and know that after a point, megapixels don't matter for most people – a 16 MP compact isn't ever going to be as good as a 12 MP Full Frame DSLR. What does matter is sensor size!

This article will help the reader understand the different types of power semiconductors: how they work, their key parameters, and trade-offs.

NAND and NOR gates are widely known to be universal logic gates, meaning that any other logic gate be made from NAND or NOR gates. This article discusses other universal logic gates.

Asynchronous Design: Is it time yet? Why exactly did Intel scrap its asynchronous chip, and what's changed since then?

Understanding the Internet of Things Protocols - Download as a PDF or view online for free

This is a list of interface bit rates, is a measure of information transfer rates, or digital bandwidth capacity, at which digital interfaces in a computer or network can communicate over various kinds of buses and channels. The distinction can be arbitrary between a computer bus, often closer in space, and larger telecommunications networks. Many device interfaces or protocols (e.g., SATA, USB, SAS, PCIe) are used both inside many-device boxes, such as a PC, and one-device-boxes, such as a hard drive enclosure. Accordingly, this page lists both the internal ribbon and external communications cable standards together in one sortable table.

Silicon Labs' Infrastructure and Automotive business is now owned by Skyworks. This includes timing, power, isolation, broadcast, and automotive products.

This two-article series provides an overview of circuit symbols, along with some information on the components that they represent.

5G Beamforming Antennas Create Design, Test Problems Assuring quality under changing conditions with shifting standards and use models is a major challenge.

This article introduces a phase-based feedback system that plays an important role in many applications.

Antenna Array Design for ADAS Creating automotive radar applications for mmWave needs special tools.

Does the addition of a feedback divider affect PLL transient response? We’ll look at this question and other frequency-multiplication topics in this article.

Antenna Design Grows Up Modern electronics relies heavily on antennas, but companies still make mistakes. That's about to change.

Lidar is essential for self-driving cars—here’s how some leading lidar sensors work.

This technical brief attempts to dispel some of the fog surrounding the three-character naming convention used to describe ceramic caps.

Learn more about vibration energy harvesting as a source of power for electronic systems.

This article will discuss the basic concepts of clock gating and how it can be used to reduce the power consumption of synchronous digital systems.

The new technology is 10 times as reliable as what's come before for keeping internet-connected devices secure.

This article focuses on using Verilog to describe synchronous sequential circuits.

Reference designs covering essential system elements for millions of products are available at arrow.com. Search our extensive library today.

This article explains how a PLL can be used to produce a high-frequency clock from a low-frequency reference signal.

Review whitepapers written by our expert engineers to help you understand new concepts or implement best practices in your product design and development.

This article introduces the Nyquist plot and explains how to interpret this alternative method of visually evaluating a system’s frequency response.

Learn more on the various capacitors in ASIC design that can improve your chip performance and recude it's cost.

Today, smartphones have made it easier than ever to capture beautiful images and videos. But what makes a good smartphone camera? It’s actually the image sensor. This piece of technology may be small, but it has a big impact on whatever your Instagram selfie is blurry or your Vine video is pixelated. You can see… Read more

Theory and working of a half adder circuit. Realization using XOR//AND gate. Realization of half adder using NOR and NAND logic. Truth table and schematic representation

Overviews of protocols involved in Internet of Things devices and applications. Help clarify with IoT layer technology stack graphics and head-to-head comparisons.

An intuitive tutorial of antennas and antenna theory. This website is designed to present a comprehensive overview of antennas, from design, to measurement and theory. Unnecessarily complicated math is avoided throughout.

CircuitMaker is the best free PCB design software by Altium for Open Source Hardware Designers, Hackers, Makers, Students and Hobbyists.

This is a list of sensors sorted by sensor type.

Electric machineries are based on the basic principles of electromechanical conversion, which use either the electrostatic or the electromagnetic principle. This technical article deals with the magnetic circuit theory for the conversion of one form of energy to another.

Inductor design characteristics are defined in terms of various parameters. Inductor winding is made of a conductor material which may be a single round wire or a unique multi-stranded conductor known as Litz wire. Litz wire has the main advantage of reduced skin effect. Inductor design characteristics are defined in terms of various parameters which are discussed in this technical article.

Millimeter wave frequencies have the potential to provide a solution to the growing demand for bandwidth and high-speed communication needs.

This article introduces the techniques for describing combinational circuits in Verilog by examining how to use the conditional operator to describe combinational truth tables.

This article will take a deeper look at five key power supply problems, how to know when they arise, and the best ways to address or mitigate them.

Modern analog computers offer unique programming challenges which make them challenging compilation targets. How do we automatically program an analog computer to implement a computation?

Here's what we've learnt about networks and the routers that interconnect them in the last 50 years.

NANOG is the professional association for Internet engineering, architecture and operations.

The breakthrough is taking full advantage of the orbital angular momentum properties of a coherent light source, thus enabling multiplexing.

Learn some basic, foundational info about fiber optic communication systems in this primer.

In this series of articles, we’ll explore higher-output-current alternatives to photodiodes.

Easily document cables and wiring harnesses.

The Intel NUC 9 Extreme, code named Ghost Canyon, is the company's most powerful, expandable small form factor gaming PC yet.

Got a lot of digital stuff? Make it available anywhere in your home with your own Raspberry Pi network-attached storage

Presented in an experimental mnemonic medium which makes it almost effortless to remember what you read

Runaway complexity is making it more difficult and critical to deal with signal integrity in a system context.

Quantum machines will deliver the next great leap forward in computing, but researchers building them can’t easily get some of the exotic components they need.

This article continues a series on Nyquist diagrams by explaining Nyquist curves that represent the transfer function of a two-pole filter.

119 votes, 27 comments. 1.2M subscribers in the electronics community. Discussion and news about component-level electronic circuits.

Mouser has solutions to increase productivity, reduce manual data entry and optimize time generating POs with our Electronic Order Automation Services.

DigiKey offers a complete set of APIs to share information and automate the ordering process.

Get a primer on the basics of supercapacitors, their functionality, and which applications they're best for.

In this article, we’ll study the basic structure of a Verilog module, look at some examples of using the Verilog “wire” data type and its vector form, and briefly touch on some differences between VHDL and Verilog.

Accurately determine parasitic effects with the proper set up of two different methods.

Follow the saga of the Computer History Museum's IBM 1401

This article will discuss a well-known technique called “double flopping” to transfer a single-bit control signal between two clock domains.

Low power wireless technologies are adapting to the Internet of Things by including IP connectivity and mesh networking.

Each of the many short-range wireless technologies has unique benefits, requiring careful attention to product complexity, power consumption, and cost.

The multitude of short-range wireless technologies provides engineers with optimized solutions for their applications, but makes careful selection paramount.

The FCC voted last Thursday to relax the rules for retiring copper wiring. This change was specifically aimed at Verizon and AT&T and is going to make it a lot easier for them to tear down old …

Easily search references designs and schematics based on circuit performance in DigiKey’s Reference Design Library. New designs added weekly.