Electronic products defense spending on the radar AI, robotics, big data, cybersecurity, and resilience top priorities april 2018

APRIL 2018

DEFENSE SPENDING

Also in
this issue

on the RADAR

AI, robotics, big
data, cybersecurity, and
resilience top priorities page 8

System integration
considerations for
heart rate sensing
designs p13
AI alters auto design
challenges p16
Modern portable
devices require a new
breed of LDOs p18
Advanced battery
packages empower
next-generation
systems p21

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2 CONTENTS

Vol. 60, No. 9

April 2018

14

26
EDITORIAL STAFF
Bolaji Ojo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Global Editor-in-Chief
Richard Quinnell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editor-in-Chief,
• electronicproducts.com
Majeed Ahmad Kamran . . . . . Contributing Editor

FEATURES

Patrick Mannion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contributing Editor

8

COVER STORY Mil/Aero Electronics
Defense spending opens door to system technology innovations

13

Discrete Semiconductors
System integration considerations for heart rate sensing designs

16

Automotive
AI alters auto design challenges

21

Giulia Fini. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Graphic Designer
Giulia Fini. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover Design

Batteries
Advanced battery packages empower next-generation systems

SHOW WRAP-UPS

Embedded World

The expanding IoT: a visit to Embedded World

25

APEC
APEC’s growth reflects the health of the power industry

Product Trends: Packaging, Cabinets & Enclosures
27
Product Roundup: Electromechanical Components
29
New Products:
31

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31 Power Sources

32 Packaging & Interconnections

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APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

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TEL: 516-667-2300

Outlook (Technology News):
6
6 The key to smarter, faster AI likely found by modeling moth brains
6 Physicists to build laser so powerful it could rip apart fabric of space

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Publisher’s Perspective: Tribute to an American classic
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Viewpoint: Fluffing the cloud
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ONLINE MUST-READS

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Pam Fuentes . . . . . . . . . . . . . Business Planning Analyst

LDO Regulators
Modern portable devices require a new breed of LDOs

23

Lori O’Toole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chief Copy Editor

Max Teodorescu. . . . . . . . . Digital Content Manager

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Electronic Products Magazine (USPS 539490) (ISSN 0013-4953)—
Published monthly by AspenCore, 1225 Franklin Avenue, Suite 400,
Garden City, NY 11530. Periodicals postage paid Garden City, NY and
additional mailing offices. Electronic Products is distributed at no
charge to qualified persons actively engaged in the authorization,
recommendation or specification of electronic components, instruments, materials, systems and subsystems. The publisher reserves the
right to reject any subscription on the basis of information submitted
in order to comply with audit regulations. Paid subscriptions available: U.S. subscriber rate $65 per year, 2 years $110. Single issue,
$6.00. Information contained herein is subject to change without
notice. No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for its accuracy
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Publications Mail Agreement Number
40012807.
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4 VIEWPOINT

Fluffing the cloud

T

he electronic design engineering
field is a fantastic place to be at
any given point and especially so
in these modern times. The past two
decades saw the groundwork laid for
these exciting times in technologies like

organic LEDs, wide-bandgap semiconductors, and the digital infrastructure.
These and other advanced core technologies enable and empower new solutions
to serve existing application spaces and
create and develop new ones.

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

This synergistic development aspect
of electronic design was very apparent these past weeks at the APEC and
Embedded World shows as engineers
from around the globe came together
in San Antonio, Texas, and Nuremberg,
Germany, to exchange ideas and look at
the latest in embedded systems.
The booths at both events were
crammed with the latest solutions available for applications both mature and
speculative, and at each (some visitors,
including me, bounced between both),
there was a buzz of activity as company
reps and visitors played with the demonstrations and bounced ideas off of one
another. The energy was palpable at each
of the venues, and the energy of all of
those people dealing with one another in
these public marketplaces was palpable.
In this issue, we’ve pulled together
some very cool examples of the latest
technologies from both shows, and we
hope this foments new ideas for new
solutions with you. One of the notable
aspects of any new technology is that any

given group of engineers will tell you several more applications than you thought
of when developing it, and the number
and quality of these new technologies are
providing the foundation of the remaking of society.
The cloud and IoT are shaping society
in fundamental ways, and you are the
ones shaping the devices in it and the
infrastructures supporting it. Every device that you make is a voice in the great
chorus of development moving society
forward, and these exhibitions are the
concert halls. One positive aspect of Embedded World, for example, was the fact
that most booths contained functional
demonstrations of technology and not
just displays of components and parts.
In the area of wireless, one of the
trends that we observed was the final
filling in, or in the words of the headline,
the “fluffing out” of the cloud. There
are a lot of wireless devices using wired
or sub-gigahertz proprietary wireless
systems, for example, and bringing them
into the IoT is the true “final mile” of
the cloud. Solutions shown ranged from
multi-protocol wireless modules and
Continued on page 20


PUBLISHER’S PERSPECTIVE 5

Tribute to an American classic

In this month’s perspective, our publisher, Victor Gao, pays tribute
to an American classic and delves into our proudly old-fashioned
journalistic values
BY W. VICTOR GAO
Publisher and Managing Director
The ASPENCORE Group

IMAGE: PIXABAY

N

EW YORK — American readers
of this column are prone to
recognize the name E.B. White,
a 20th-century author best known for
his children’s books such as “Stuart
Little” and “Charlotte’s Web.” A resident of this great American city, White
was also a prolific columnist for the
classic humor, literature, and journalism magazine The New Yorker. And in
a prose entitled “Unwritten” in April
1930, White observed in his signature
self-deprecating style that the work of
a writer always represented a choice —
the choice of what to write and what
not to. Which brings me to the subject
of our column this month: Why does a
journalist write at all?
At ASPENCORE, our editorial mission is to bear witness and to celebrate human achievement as manifest
through advancement in technology
and engineering. While every one

of our journalists makes their own
personal choice as to why and what
they write, as a publishing house, we
encourage an intention to affirm or, if
the writing starts out decrying an injury or injustice on behalf of our readers,
that by the end, it arrives at a constructive juncture. Sometimes, that takes
the form of questioning a dubious
claim in a manufacturer’s new product
introduction campaign. Other times,
it could be the critique of a business
trend we believe is over-hyped, a technical achievement that is under-recognized, or an important workplace issue
that would not have found its voice had
it not been for the help of these pages.
Of course, a great deal of how this
mission is achieved is left intentionally
undirected and uncoordinated be-

tween the house and our writers. As a
gentle reader wrote in response to this
column last month, today’s publishers
face a pivotal task to transform the
economics of publishing so the important reporting can be done without
fear of loss of funding, which we have
seen happen to some of our fellow

At ASPENCORE, our editorial
mission is to bear witness and to
celebrate human achievement as
manifested through advancement in
technology and engineering ... and

you, the reader, are here to judge
both the house and our writers on
our respective merits. This is what
editorial independence means to us.
publishing houses in the industry. And
yet as much as ASPENCORE as a commercial concern must make money,
we strive even harder to always make
sense. To achieve this duo of aims, at
ASPENCORE, we rather like the good
old system at The New Yorker, as described by White in another column:

The writers write as they please, and
the magazine publishes as it pleases.
When the two pleasures coincide,
something gets into print. When they
don’t, the reader draws a blank. And
you, the reader, are here to judge both
the house and our writers on our respective merits. This is what editorial
independence means to us.
While we are on the subject of
editorial policy, we expect to share
some exciting news soon about how
we will extend our remit this year to

introduce both more depth and more
diversity to the topics covered in our
titles. We will give you a snippet of our
redesign efforts, with a greater focus
on longer, less frequent, but more
thought-provoking pieces that delve

into an issue without the pressures of
a daily publishing cadence. To find out
more, please check back in this column
next month.
By the time these words go to print,
many of our readers will be wheels-up
to a productive conference in Münich,
Las Vegas, or Shanghai or will have just
returned. Here is to safe and pleasant
journeys for all on the road. As ever, if
you have a comment or want to whisper us a story tip, you can find me at
, or contact your
favorite ASPENCORE writer directly.
From all of us at ASPENCORE, thank
you for your support. ☐

ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018


6 OUTLOOK

Innovations impacting products, technology, and applications

The key to smarter, faster AI likely
found by modeling moth brains
Biological
systems rarely do
anything like this.
Instead, they are
commonly organized

as feed-forward cascades.
The beginning of the cascade
in hawk moths is a set of about 30,000
chemical receptor neurons (RNs), which
feed signals into an antennal lobe (AL). The
AL contains roughly 60 isolated clusters of
cells (called glomeruli — it pays to enhance
your word power!), each of which focuses
on a single odor stimuli feature. The AL,
the researchers say, is inherently noisy. The
researchers liken the AL to a pre-amplifier,
“providing gain control and sharpening of
odor representations.”
Signals from the AL are forwarded to
a structure called the mushroom body
(MB). The MB contains roughly 4,000 cells
(Kenyon cells) associated with forming
memories. Signals go through two more
ancillary structures (each numbering in
the tens of cells), the function of which is
believed to be to read out the signals from
the MB. These sparser structures act as
noise filters, the researchers wrote. Noise
isn’t eliminated but is sufficiently reduced
for the purpose of effective learning.
The process does not work at all
without octopamine, described as a neuromodulator. Release of the chemical is
triggered by a reward — for example, the
moth finding sugar to consume. When a

moth finds a reward, the octopamine that
is released stimulates enhanced activity
in the AL and MB. The practical effect of
this enhanced activity is to strengthen the
connections between correlated neurons
in the moth’s neurological system. The
mechanism is called Hebbian learning;
the extent to which the strength of neuronal connections can be changed is called
Hebbian plasticity.
The UW researchers built a mathematical model that mimics all of this, and their
neural models of moths learned quickly
with minimal simulated odor inputs. Their
results are similar to the behavior that they
observe in the moths, strongly suggesting
that they have an accurate model.
If so, that will have ramifications both
for biology and for neural networks.
That the behavior of the model was
so similar to that of actual biological
systems encouraged the researchers to
expect that they might now have a clearer
understanding of the mechanisms at work
in living creatures. The olfactory/neurological systems of moths are structurally
similar to those of many other creatures,
the researchers noted.
Their work also suggests a new path to
explore for machine learning. “Specifically,”
they wrote in their paper, “our experiments
elucidate mechanisms for fast learning
from noisy data that rely on cascaded networks, sparsity, and Hebbian plasticity.”

Brian Santo

Physicists to build laser so powerful
it could rip apart fabric of space

A

vacuum might not be empty at
all; it might only seem empty on
balance. That balance would be
between electrons and their anti-matter
counterparts, positrons. According to
theory, any vacuum is filled with such
electron-positron pairs. These pairs

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

would be undetectable because they
wouldn’t interact with anything — with
the possible exception of the beam from
a 100-petawatt laser. Which is one of
the reasons why Chinese researchers are
about to begin building a 100-PW laser.
These researchers propose to pulse

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

R

esearchers at

the University of Washington have developed a relatively simple
neural network that mimics
biological neural systems. The
performance of the new neural-network
model points to the possibility of building
AIs that are less complex yet far more efficient at learning because of it. At the same
time, the research, published in the arXiv
repository, yielded new insight into how
living creatures learn — or at least how
some creatures learn some things.
The most common path to emulate the
effectiveness of biological neural systems has
been to create increasingly complex artificial
intelligences with increasingly complicated
machine-learning capabilities. Biological
systems that outperform AIs sometimes
aren’t all that complex, however, and living
creatures often learn far more quickly than
AIs using significantly fewer experiences to
learn than AIs require data sets.
Starting with these observations, UW
researchers resolved to devise a relatively
simple neural-network model that mimics
the relatively uncomplicated structure of a
moth’s neurological system.
The University of Washington has been
analyzing insect biology for decades; this
research team chose moths because UW
labs have already thoroughly mapped their
neurological systems. They already knew

that moths can learn smells after experiencing them only a few times. Despite the
relative simplicity, however, it remained
unclear precisely how moths’ neurological
systems worked when learning.
Most neural networks operate on
the principle of backpropagation. With
this technique, the weights between
neurons (essentially the strength of the
connection between them) are constantly
recalculated through a process of feeding
outputs back into the system so that
inputs and outputs can be compared and
adjusted against each other.


OUTLOOK 7

IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK

an incredibly powerful beam for a few trillionths of a second
through a vacuum with the expectation that it will induce electron-positron pairs to break apart. Positrons are ephemeral, but
the electrons would remain. It would look like producing something out of nothing. The proposed process is being described
as “breaking the vacuum.”
The formula E=MC2 suggested two things. One is that mass
can be turned into extraordinary amounts of energy. Scientists
followed that lead in a number of directions, including the development of the atomic energy. The formula also suggests that it’s
possible to translate energy into mass, though doing so is considered significantly harder. Breaking the vacuum would be a rare
instance of it.
The Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in
China currently holds the record for the most powerful laser. In

2016, the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF)
achieved a burst of 5.3 PW. The institute is currently preparing
to nearly double its record by using SULF to emit a 10-PW
pulse by the end of this year.

It is also planning to build a 100-PW laser called the Station
of Extreme Light (SEL), which could come online as early as
2023. Photon energy from the device could reach 15 keV.
European researchers were thinking about building a 200PW laser but have held off even planning such a beast until
they turn on a 1-PW laser in Prague this year and then build
two more facilities that would take intermediate steps toward
100 PW or more, reported Science.
Russia is building the infrastructure to support a proposed
180-PW laser called the Exawatt Center for Extreme Light
Studies (XCELS). Japanese researchers, who held the record
with a 2-PW pulse before the Chinese eclipsed them, have
proposals for a 30-PW device, according to Science.
Breaking the vacuum would be spectacular, but high-energy lasers could be useful in other applications as well. They
have been used for particle acceleration, inertial confinement
fusion, radiation therapy, and for secondary-source generation
of X-rays, electrons, protons, neutrons, and ions, according to
physicists at Cambridge University. A paper that they wrote in
2015 explains the different types of high-energy lasers. China’s
SEL would be an OPCPA laser.
Brian Santo
ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018


8 COVER STORY

Mil/Aero Electronics

Defense spending opens door to system
technology innovations
BY MIKE MACPHERSON
Vice President, Strategic Planning,
Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions
www.curtisswright.com

T

he U.S. Department of Defense’s
(DoD’s) 2018 National Defense
Strategy (NDS) said it clearly: “Our
backlog of deferred readiness, procurement, and modernization requirements
has grown in the last decade and a half
and can no longer be ignored. We will
make targeted, disciplined increases in
personnel and platforms to meet key
capability and capacity needs.” With that
in mind, Congress increased the FY 2018
defense budget to $700 billion — an
increase of $108 billion.
This article will lay out some of the
areas where that budget will be spent and
what areas may present opportunities
for designers to innovate to close current
and future technology gaps.

AI, big data, and robotics critical

but need to be affordable

The technological priorities called out in
the NDS will drive a significant increase
in R&D spending to close technology
gaps in advanced computing, artificial
intelligence (AI), and autonomy and
robotics. Among the priorities for modernizing key defense capabilities cited in
the NDS that commercial off-the-shelf
(COTS) vendors are well-positioned to
support are:
• New investments in cyber-defense and
the continued integration of cyber-capabilities into the full spectrum of
military operations
• Investments in C4ISR to develop resilient, survivable, federated networks and
information ecosystems
• Advanced autonomous systems, AI,
and machine learning.
For developers of military embedded COTS electronics solutions, this
additional spending promises increased
support for technologies that address

resilience, lethality, and readiness.
Designers of defense and aerospace
systems and platforms desire to continuously introduce advanced technology
that provides the warfighter with an
indisputable advantage in the battlefield.
These technologies range from sensors,
computing, and networking to electromechanical systems.
However, advanced technology by

itself isn’t enough. It also needs to be
affordable, reliable, and sustainable. The
warfighters’ lives depend on the tech-

The new technologies will provide
new capabilities upon which the
warfighter will surely become
dependent. As such, they must
also feature the defenses needed
to ensure that their network and
computing environments are
protected against adversaries and
so remain operationally effective.
nology, and history has proven that if a
soldier can’t trust their technology, they
will abandon it.
New spending on advanced computing will result in improvements for
leveraging big data analytics, enabling
the warfighter immediate access to all of
their critical information. Such access
will require the use of cloud-computing
technologies to enable data access by any
device, wherever the soldier is located,
at any time it’s desired. More than that,
to bring the power of machine learning
(ML) for AI to the network edge will
require far greater local processing capability in order to deliver real-time data
and solve the cloud’s inherent latency
and bandwidth limitations.
Investments in AI and ML will

provide capabilities that disrupt battlefield applications such as intelligence,

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR),
and electronic warfare (EW). Supporting these new capabilities will require
advances in heterogeneous high-performance embedded computing (HPEC)
technologies.
Embedded systems for use on
semi- and fully autonomous unmanned
platforms, whether on the ground,
in the air, or at sea, will require the
development of low-power, ultra-small
form-factor (USFF) processing,
networking, full-motion video, and
data-storage solutions. It’s estimated, for
example, that a fully autonomous car
will require 50 to 100 times the compute power needed to support today’s
advanced driver-assistance systems.
The overarching investment strategy
described in the DNS is to bring these
advanced technologies to the battlefield
in order to provide a force multiplier that
gives warfighters a strategic and tactical advantage over the adversary. That
said, it’s not enough to just deploy new
technologies, it’s also necessary to ensure
that those technologies are brought into
the battlefield in a way that protects and
secures them with the resiliency that they
need to survive enemy attempts to disable or disrupt their intended operation.

Ensuring operational effectiveness
in the field: GPS

The new technologies will provide new
capabilities upon which the warfighter
will surely become dependent. As such,
they must also feature the defenses
needed to ensure that their network and
computing environments are protected
against adversaries and so remain operationally effective.
An example of an advanced technology upon which the warfighter has
become dependent is GPS. When introduced as part of the DoD’s Second Offset
strategy in the mid-1970s, GPS provided
a significant advantage in the battlefield
thanks to its ability to deliver accurate


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10 COVER STORY

Mil/Aero Electronics
Fig. 1: The VPX3-1703 is an example of
an Arm-based 3U OpenVPX single-board
computer designed for DO-254
safety-certifiable avionics
applications.

position, navigation,
and timing (PNT) data.
This technology was essential for
applications such as precision-guided
weapons like the Tomahawk missile.
Over the years, it’s become clear that our
dependence on GPS also makes it a vulnerability. In environments in which GPS
is denied or disabled, all of the weapons
that depend on it are made ineffective. To
counter that vulnerability and threat, an
assured PNT (A-PNT) solution must be
available that is able to operate even in a
GPS-denied environment. New cost-effective and accurate COTS-based A-PNT
technologies will enable the deployment
of cost-effective, rugged solutions for
GPS-denied environments.

Making AI and autonomous
vehicles resilient

The development of new technologies
based on AI will enable man-to-machine
teaming solutions that deliver a significant
advantage in the battlefield. Leveraging
AI, autonomy, and robotics will result in
machines that can operate independently,
whether as an individual entity, paired
with other machines in applications (such
as a swarm configuration of drones), or in
a soldier-machine interface in which the
machine has its own autonomous capability augmenting the warfighter.
An example of the latter is an autonomous ground combat “mule” able to
relieve the warfighter’s personal burden
of carrying batteries, chargers, ammunition, etc. By reducing the weight in the
warfighter’s backpack, these small autonomous vehicles will significantly increase
the soldier’s ability to fight.
Likewise, the use of autonomous aerial
vehicles to deliver logistics equipment

autonomy, the more the machine needs
self-resilience. When a machine is fully
manual, the warfighter provides the resilience. In the case of a semi-autonomous
system, resilience is shared between the
operator and the machine. In a fully
autonomous system, resiliency depends
completely on the expert systems built
into that machine.

Autonomous systems need
resilience and security
or to locate
IEDs will reduce the
warfighter’s exposure to risk and improve
their lethality. On the other hand, as these
new solutions become common, adversaries will strive to find ways to attack and
disable them. For example, one strategy
for countering a learning machine is to
spoof it with false information, forcing it
to produce an incorrect answer.
Improving resilience, another key
goal of the DNS, will ensure that deployed systems have the ruggedness and
reliability to survive harsh environments
and the security to protect against enemy
attempts to exploit their vulnerabilities.
Autonomous vehicles, such as mine
detectors, can keep the warfighter out of
harm’s way, but that autonomy needs to
be trusted. For this, the system requires
the resilience, or self-resilience, that
ensures that it’s reliable and can’t be
easily disabled.
A machine can be manual, semi-autonomous, or fully autonomous. In each
of these states, the higher the level of

Fig. 2: Security
in the field is
critical, so the DTS1

NAS supports cost-effective
two-layer encryption.

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

To be able to confidently depend on fully
autonomous systems will require investments in technologies that provide both
resilience and security.
An example of resiliency is found
in safety-certifiable avionics systems
for manned or unmanned military
aircraft. To operate safely over domestic airspace, these platforms are
increasingly required to meet DO-254
hardware and DO-178 software certification for specific Design Assurance
Levels (DALs) recognized by aviation
authorities around the world, such
as the FAA in the U.S., the Canadian
Transport Board, and EASA in Europe
and the U.K. While safety certification
is handled at the platform level, the
electronic modules used to build out
avionics subsystems must be supported
with comprehensive data artifacts. Historically, modules for safety-certifiable
subsystems were costly custom designs
that took years to design and millions
of dollars to develop.
In recent years, a new class of cost-effective DO-254-certifiable COTS boards
has become available, greatly speeding
and lowering the cost
of inte-

Mil/Aero Electronics

grating safety-certifiable applications.
The preferred processor architecture for
these COTS modules has been the Power
Architecture family of devices being that
Intel processors only support DO-254 up
to the DAL C level.
As NXP shifts its focus from development of new Power Architecture processors toward Arm-based processors,
designers of safety-certifiable systems
are increasingly turning to Arm-based
solutions. Arm processors support
D0-254 up to the most stringent and
critical level, DAL A, and also provide
the additional benefit of very low power
dissipation. The VPX3-1703 3U OpenVPX is a good example of an Arm-based
single-board computer (SBC) (Fig. 1). It
is designed for DO-254 safety-certifiable
avionics applications.
The concepts of resilience and trusted
systems refer not only to safety but also
to data and hardware security. Great
strides are being made today to enable
COTS systems with anti-tamper technologies, cybersecurity, and protection of

data-at-rest and data-in-motion.
For example, the Data Transport
System (DTS1) network attached storage

(NAS) device supports cost-effective
two-layer encryption (Fig. 2). The
DTS1 is also easily integrated into network-centric systems.

Design for tech-savvy warfighters

The soldiers now using this equipment
are digital natives — almost born with
modern technologies in their hands.
Along with this technological adeptness comes a high level of assumption
and expectation.
Today’s warfighter expects and depends on access to technologies as good
as or better than what they have at home,
such as an iPhone X, and social networking services to enable information
sharing in real time in the battlefield. All
of today’s internet resources, whether
searching on Google or asking questions
of Siri or Alexa, are only years away from
being available to the warfighter. As we
increasingly bring reliable networked

COVER STORY 11
desktop computing, mobile platform,
and social media capabilities to the
warfighter to enable “network-centric
warfare,” the network itself has become a
key component of our ability to operate.
This technological adeptness can
also be leveraged to address readiness,
an area of military spending that has

been relatively underfunded in recent
years. Advanced computing can be
brought to bear for training and mission-planning and exploiting technologies developed for the gaming industry
to provide sophisticated, realistic
scenarios and experiences.
By having training embedded in the
actual deployed platform, warfighters
will be able to train while they operate
without requiring a dedicated training
location. Realistic simulation can be
done virtually, providing, for example,
the ability to train for a specific mission while en route.

Contain costs with open systems

Many of the technologies discussed

ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018


12 COVER STORY
above will benefit from the use of open
systems, which reduce design risk and
greatly speed time to deployment. The use
of open systems also delivers significant
cost reductions. Affordability results from
competition and provides an alternative to
expensive proprietary solutions.
Another key benefit of open systems
is seen in technology insertions. Open

systems enable the rapid insertion of
new technology by defining an interface between different entities whose
advancements progress at different
rates. An open-systems interface, such
as the OpenVPX system architecture,
functions as a differential that enables
the use of technologies that evolve out
of synchrony.
For example, the fire control computer algorithms used in a main battle
tank to handle ballistic solutions tend to
evolve at a very slow relative rate with
very little change from one year to the
next. In comparison, the underlying
processing technology used to run those
algorithms progresses much faster. On
the flip side, with EW as the example,
the very sophisticated algorithms used to
help identify a specific signal of interest
in the noise of the electromagnetic spectrum have developed at a much faster
rate than the processors that are used to
run them in deployed systems.
The result is that the most advanced
EW algorithms wait for processor

Mil/Aero Electronics

bandwidths to catch up in order for
them to be put to use. The use of
open-standard interfaces enables the
processing technology and the algorithms used on deployed platforms to

advance at different rates.

Innovation opens door to vulnerabilities

For every new opportunity and technological leap forward, there is likely
to be an associated vulnerability that
emerges. While investing in the technologies sought by the DoD in order
to enable new capabilities and increase
force lethality, technology providers must
also invest in mitigating against those
vulnerabilities.
The use of COTS-based open systems provides a cost-effective approach
to bringing these capabilities to the
warfighter quickly and with the least
risk. To bring the powerful benefits
of advanced computing, AI, autonomy, and robotics to the warfighter,
COTS solutions must be designed
and packaged to meet the environmental and usage requirements of the
battlefield. The equipment must be
dependable and operate while exposed
to extreme environmental conditions.
The technology must also be designed
and packaged to ensure safe and secure
operation. Care must be taken to ensure safe operation without requiring
burdensome safety precautions. System

designers need to design and package
next-generation COTS solutions to
eliminate vulnerabilities to adversarial
access or attack, including cybersecurity and protection against reverse-engineering to prevent physical access

intended to disrupt operation.
It’s essential that these new technologies assure the security of the defense
systems and critical information during
development and operation.
Another area of great importance is
testing, which must be done to ensure
that deployed COTS solutions are
reliable and deliver error-free operation
throughout their useful life.

Conclusion

The DoD and warfighters depend on
trusted and proven sources of supply,
and Congress has made available the
funds to make this happen. Now it’s up
to designers and other innovators to
realize the full promise of new technologies outlined here, just as examples.
For sure, the COTS approach provides
a proven alternative to costly, closed
proprietary system architectures, speeds
deployment, and ensures that critical
technologies remain readily available
over the lifecycle of their use. How technologists build upon and apply it for
next-generation battlefield deployments
with more tech-savvy warfighters will be
interesting to watch. ☐

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APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS


FEATURE 13

Discrete Semiconductors

System integration considerations for
heart rate sensing designs
When it comes to optical
HRM designs, developers
have a choice of doing it all or
purchasing it all
BY MORRIE ALTMEJD
Senior Staff Systems Engineer,
Silicon Labs
www.silabs.com

D

esigning an optical heart rate
monitoring (HRM) system, also
known as photoplethysmography
(PPG), is a complex and multidisciplinary
undertaking. Design factors include
human ergonomics, signal processing and
filtering, optical and mechanical design,
low-noise signal receiving circuits, and
low-noise current pulse creation.
Wearable manufacturers are increasingly adding HRM capabilities to their
health and fitness products, which is
helping to drive down the cost of sensors
used in HRM applications. Many HRM
sensors now combine discrete components such as photodetectors and LEDs

Subdermal Tissue

Skin
Excitation signal
Typically green
(525 nm ), 100 µs
long pulses
repeated at 25 Hz

Attenuated
and pulse
modulated
light

Sensor
Photodiode

Green LED
Optical blocking is critical to prevent
the unmodulated excitation signal from
overwhelming the desired signal

Fig. 1: Principles of operation for optical heart rate monitoring.

into highly integrated modules. These
modules enable a simpler implementation that reduces the cost and complexity
of adding HRM to wearable products.
Wearable form factors are steadily
changing as well. While chest straps have

effectively served the health and fitness
market for years, HRM is now migrating to
wrist-based wearables. Advances in optical
sensing technology and high-performance,
low-power processors have enabled the
wrist-based form factor to be viable for

Fig. 2: The basic electronics required to capture optical heart rate.
ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018


14 FEATURE

Discrete Semiconductors

Fig. 3: An integrated heart rate sensor requires only external LEDs.

ated by the travel through the skin and is
picked up by a photodiode and sent to the
electronic subsystem for processing. The
amplitude modulation due to the pulse is
detected, analyzed, and displayed.
A fundamental approach to HRM system design uses a custom-programmed,
off-the-shelf MCU that controls the pulsing of external LED drivers and simultaneously reads the current output of a
discrete photodiode. Note that the current
output of the photodiode must be converted to voltage to drive analog-to-digital
(A/D) blocks. The schematic in Fig. 2
shows the outline of such a system.
Here, it’s worth noting that the I-to-V
converter creates a voltage equal to VREF
at 0 photodiode current, and the voltage
decreases with increasing current.

HRM building blocks

Fig. 4: A highly integrated HRM sensor module incorporating all essential components.

many designs. The HRM algorithms have
also reached a level of sophistication to be
acceptable in wrist form factors.
Other new wearable sensing form factors and locations are emerging — such
as headbands, sport and fitness clothing,
and earbuds. However, the majority of

wearable biometric sensing will be done
on the wrist.

HRM design fundamentals

No two HRM applications are alike.
System developers must consider many
design tradeoffs: end-user comfort,
sensing accuracy, system cost, power
consumption, sunlight rejection, how

to deal with many skin types, motion
rejection, development time, and physical
size. These design considerations impact
system integration choices: whether to use
highly integrated modules or architectures
incorporating more discrete components.
Fig. 1 shows the fundamentals of measuring heart rate signals, which depend
on the heart rate pressure wave being
optically extracted from tissue. It displays
the travel path of the light entering the
skin. The expansion and contraction of
the capillaries — caused by the heart rate
pressure wave — modulate the light signal
injected into the tissue by the green LEDs.
The received signal is greatly attenu-

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

The current pulses generally used in

heart rate systems are between 2 mA
and 300 mA, depending on the color
of the subject’s skin and the intensity of
sunlight with which the desired signal
needs to compete. The infrared (IR)
radiation in sunlight passes through skin
tissue with little attenuation, unlike the
desired green LED light, and can swamp
the desired signal unless the green light
is very strong or unless an expensive IR
blocking filter is added.
Generally speaking, the intensity
of the green LED light, where it enters
the skin, is between 0.1 and three times
the intensity of sunlight. Due to heavy
attenuation by the tissue, the signal that
arrives at the photodiode is quite weak
and generates just enough current to allow for a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) — 70 to 100 dB — due to shot
noise even in the presence of perfect,
noise-free op-amps and A/D converters.
The shot noise is due to the finite
number of electrons received for every
reading that occurs at 25 Hz. The
photodiode sizes used in the design are
between 0.1 mm2 and 7 mm2. However, above 1 mm, there are diminishing
returns due to the effect of sunlight.
The difficult and costly function
blocks to implement in an optical heart
rate system design, as shown in Fig. 2, are

the fast, high-current V-to-I converters


Discrete Semiconductors

that drive the LED, a current-to-voltage converter for the photodiode, and
a reliable algorithm in the MCU that
sequences the pulses under host control.
A low-noise LED driver — featuring 300
mA and 75–100 dB SNR — that can be
set to very low currents down to 2 mA
while still creating very narrow light
pulses down to 10 µs is an expensive
block to achieve with discrete op-amps.
The narrow pulses of light down to 10
µs, shown in Fig. 2, allow the system to
tolerate motion and sunlight. Typically,
two light measurements are made for
each 25-Hz sample. One measurement is
taken with LEDs turned off and one with
LEDs turned on. The calculated difference removes the effect of ambient light
and gives the desired raw optical signal
measurement that is insensitive to the
flickering background light.
The short duration of the optical
pulses both allows and requires a relatively strong light pulse. It is essential to
stay brighter than the sunlight signal,
which may be present and not allow the
PPG signal carrier to be dwarfed by the
sunlight signal.

If the sunlight signal is larger than
the PPG carrier, then although it may be
removed by subtraction, the signal can
be so large that external modulation such
as swinging an arm in and out of shadow
can create difficult-to-remove artifacts.
As a result, systems that use low-current
LED drivers and large photodiodes can
suffer severely from motion artifacts in
bright-light situations.

Discrete vs. integrated design

Much of the desired HRM sensing functionality is available pre-designed and
integrated into a single device. Packing
most of this functionality into one piece
of silicon results in a relatively small 3 x
3-mm package that can even integrate
the photodiode itself.
Fig. 3 shows an example of a schematic with an optical sensor. This HRM
design is relatively easy to implement.
You just need to focus on the optical portion of the design, which includes optical
blocking between the parts on the board
and coupling the system to the skin.
While the approach shown in Fig. 3

FEATURE 15
results in a high-performance HRM solution, it’s not as small or power-efficient as
some designers would like. To achieve an
even smaller solution, the LED die and

the control silicon must be integrated
into a single package that incorporates all
essential functions, including the optical
blocking and the lenses that improve the
LED output. Fig. 4 illustrates this more
integrated approach, based on a Silicon
Labs Si117x optical sensor.
No external LEDs are required for this
HRM design. The LEDs and photodiode
are all internal to the module, which can
be installed right below the optical ports
at the back of a wearable product such as
a smartwatch. This approach enables a
shorter distance between the LEDs and
photodiode than is possible with a discrete design. The reduced distance allows
operation at extremely low power due to
lower optical losses traversing the skin.
Integrating the LEDs also addresses the
issue of light leakage between the LEDs and
photodiode so that the designer doesn’t
have to add optical blocking to the PCB.
The alternative to this approach is to handle
the blocking with plastic or foam inserts
and special copper layers on the PCB.
There is one more part of an HRM
design that developers don’t necessarily
need to create: an HRM algorithm. This
software block residing on the host processor is quite complex due to the signal
corruption that occurs during exercise
and motion in general. End-user motion

often creates its own signal that spoofs the
actual heart rate signal and is sometimes
falsely recognized as the heart rate beat.
If a wearable developer or manufacturer
doesn’t have the resources to develop the
algorithm, third-party vendors provide
this software on a licensed basis. It is up to
the designer to decide how much integration is right for the HRM application. The
developer can simplify the design process
and speed time-to-market by opting for a
highly integrated module-based approach
using a licensed algorithm.
Developers with in-depth optical
sensing expertise, time, and resources
may opt to use separate components —
sensors, photodiodes, lenses, etc. — and
do their own system integration and even
create their own HRM algorithm. ☐
ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018


16 FEATURE

Automotive

AI alters auto design challenges
Automobile designers need to incorporate new approaches as change comes quickly
BY PATRICK MANNION
Contributing Editor

A

rtificial intelligence (AI), electrification, and in-cabin entertainment are just some of the revolutionary
changes underway for automobiles, causing a complete
rethink of how an automobile should be designed and used.
They’re also cause for designers to rethink their own role in the
automotive design chain.
From a semiconductor and components environmental performance point of view, the same rules apply, namely AEC-Q100,
which has been around since 1994. This defines the temperature,
humidity, and other reliability factors. Since 1994, however, much
has changed, and soon, “auto” mobiles will start living up to their
name, thanks in large part to advances in sensor integration, AI,
Moore’s Law, and some people in remote regions making a living
by tagging images to make smart systems more accurate.
For example, accurate labeling can make the difference
between distinguishing between the sky and the side of a
truck. Mighty AI is one company focused on ensuring accurate

Getting to the point at which autonomous vehicles
can be considered safe for everyday use is a
challenge that has captured the imagination of
automobile OEMs, spurring innovations in sensors,
processing, and communications.
tagging using teams of humans spread globally. According to its
founder, S. “Soma” Somasegar, there is a large role for humans
in this loop for a long time to come. “We’re not building a system to play a game; we’re building a system to save lives,” said
Mighty AI CEO Daryn Nakhuda.1
Getting to the point at which autonomous vehicles can be
considered relatively safe for everyday use is an interesting
challenge that has captured the imagination of automobile

OEMs and electronic system designers and spurred innovations
in sensors, processing, and communications.
For some time, it was believed that LiDAR would be the
critical breakthrough technology that would enable autonomous vehicles, but now, developers have realized that it’s a
combination of every sensor input possible, including sonar,
high-definition cameras, LiDAR, and radar, all to ensure accurate ranging and identification of objects. According to GM, the
autonomous version of its Chevy Volt electric vehicle (EV) has
40 more sensors and 40% more hardware.
Lowering the cost and power consumption of that hardware, especially for advanced image processing, is one of many
critical enabling factors for autonomous vehicles. To that end,
APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

Dream Chip Technologies announced an advanced driver
assistance system (ADAS) system-on-chip (SoC) for computer
vision at Mobile World Congress (MWC) that greatly increases
performance while lowering power consumption.
The ADAS SoC was developed in collaboration with Arm,
ArterisIP, Cadence, GlobalFoundries (GF), and Invecas as part
of the European Commission’s ENIAC THINGS2DO reference
development platform. It was developed on GF’s 22FDX technology to lower the power required for AI and neural network
(NN) processing so that it can be embedded into a vehicle
without the need for active cooling techniques, which can add
weight, size, and cost while increasing the probability of failure.
The SoC uses Dream Chip’s image signal-processing pipeline, Tensilica’s (Cadence) P6 DSPs, and a quad-cluster of Arm
Cortex-A53 processors to get to 1 tera operations per second
(TOPS) with a power consumption “in the single digits.”

Distributed vs. centralized sensor processing

The low-power performance of Dream Chip Technologies’ SoC

at low power for image processing is critical, given that latency
needs to be minimized to avoid incidents. The further that a vehicle can see, and the sooner that it can process what it sees, the
safer a vehicle will become. However, as mentioned, there are
many sensors required for reasonably intelligent decision-making, which raises the question of where and how all of those
sensor inputs should be processed.
Sensor fusion techniques are well-known in applications such
as drones, in which gyroscopes, accelerometers, and magnetometers are managed in such a way that the benefits of each are
accentuated and the negatives attenuated. How can this be done
for autonomous vehicles with so many and varied sensors?
To tackle this, Mentor Graphics decided to work backwards
and start with Level 5 autonomy in mind. Its approach is called
DRS360 and it takes (fuses) raw sensor data from LiDAR, radar,
and cameras and processes it to develop a 360-degree real-time
view of vehicle surroundings. The centralized approach reduces
latencies but does require a high level of centralized processing,
which Mentor provides using Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC
FPGAs with its advanced NN algorithms. The alternative is to
do the image, LiDAR, or radar processing locally at the sensor
and send the results upstream, but that approach doesn’t scale
as efficiently as DRS360, nor does it take full advantage of rapidly changing and evolving algorithms. The downside is a single
point of failure, but built-in redundancies and good design can
offset that.
The importance of automotive sensors is not lost on the
MIPI Alliance, which is bringing its experience with defining
sensor physical-layer interfaces on mobile handsets to the
rapidly evolving automotive space. On Oct. 7, it announced the
formation of the MIPI Automotive Working Group (AWG) to


Automotive

FEATURE 17

definition to wire harness manufacture and vehicle maintenance.
“Capital excels at managing complex systems,” said Scott.
“We’ve got generative design, where we can take basic architectures and auto-generate wiring diagrams from that.” While
Capital doesn’t pick the specific components required, Scott
said that Mentor does have a design services team that can help
with next-level design decisions.

Comfort and services replacing performance

Fig. 1: A teardown of eight EVs showed large differences in how
power trains are designed and how thermals are managed.

bring standardization to sensor interfaces to lower development
costs, reduce testing time, and improve reliability. With its
background in mobile devices, MIPI Alliance is also confident
that it can help ensure that highly sensitive, mission-critical
automotive applications suffer minimally from EMI.

IMAGE: MCKINSEY & COMPANY

Electrification of vehicles accelerating

Though often considered to be synonymous with autonomous
vehicles, the move to electrification to replace the internal combustion engine (ICE) is moving at its own pace with different
drivers. Primarily, electric vehicles with their large batteries are
seen as a more sustainable form of transportation. However,
that battery does add weight, up to 32% more versus an equivalent ICE vehicle, according to Dan Scott, market director for

integrated electrical systems at Mentor Graphics.
The issue, then, is to minimize weight, which goes directly
to cables, harnesses, and connectors. The other issue with electrical vehicles is the higher power requirements, with currents
of up to 250 A at 400 V for a typical 1-KW battery implementation. Such high currents cause more energy losses to heat
generation, which is driving a move to 800-V power for EVs.
This will also reduce the cable weight, as will other techniques,
such as removing shielding on high-power cabling. McKinsey
& Company tore down eight EVs just to see how they were
differentiated, and power and thermal management proved to
be an interesting factor with no convergence on power-train
design approaches yet (Fig. 1).
However, there are trade-offs associated with that, said
Scott, such as EMC issues. “Also, with things like regenerative
braking, now you have power electronics, motor controls, and
battery chemistry to consider, so you have to share that data
between different tools,” said Scott. “This requires a much more
holistic design approach.”
For this, Mentor developed its Capital software suite for
electrical and wire harness design and layout for automotive and
aerospace applications. The goal of Capital is to maintain a seamless data flow from vehicle concept and electrical architecture

As vehicles evolve toward autonomy, comfort, entertainment,
and services are becoming seen as more differentiating factors
than performance and road “feel.” Ford has recognized and
championed this migration toward services, and Intel has long
promoted the focus on data, both on the vehicle and on its usage.
How vehicles are being used is changing the business model,
with younger users showing an affinity for a subscription model
versus owning a vehicle. Also, they like to be both informed
and entertained, which inspired Imagination Technologies to

announce its PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 four-cluster IP for
high-definition heads-up displays and infotainment. The GPU
core can support multiple high-definition 4K video streams as
well as up to eight applications and services simultaneously. ☐

Reference:

1. Nakashima, R. (2018, March 5). AI’s dirty little secret: It’s powered by people. Retrieved from />
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ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018

EET201803_Na Bob.indd 3

2018/3/1 上午9:37


18 SPECIAL

Power Devices

Modern portable devices require a new
breed of LDOs

The following LDO parameters are important for the application at hand:
Low noise and high PSRR. In wired and wireless commuBY DIMITRY GODER, Director of Product Definition;
nication
systems, the LDO provides a clean power supply to
KEN SALVI, Business Manager;
NAZZARENO ROSSETTI, Ph.D. EE
sensitive analog circuits (PLL, VCO, RF). The LDO must
Maxim Integrated
have good power-supply rejection ratio (PSRR) to isolate
www.maximintegrated.com
its load from its source, likely due to a noisy switching
regulator. Low spectral noise (VRMS/√Hz) will minimize linearity degradation in the RF demodulator
n the long electric path from the power source
and phase noise in the PLL and VCO circuits.
— be it the AC line or the battery — to an
Low power dissipation. While power dissipaelectronic load, the low-dropout (LDO)
tion is the LDO’s Achilles heel, a 5-V, 500-mA
regulator is often called upon to cover
LDO with a 100-mV dropout (500 mA x 200
the “last mile.” Here, the noisy switching
mΩ) will yield a respectable 98% efficiency
regulator steps aside in favor of the quiet
when used with a 5.1-V input (50-mW losses),
LDO to power critical electronic loads.
rivaling some of the best switching regulators.
The LDO has been under constant renewal
Used properly, the LDO’s qualities can be exor evolution along with the rest of power

ploited without having to suffer its shortcomings.
management electronics. Over time, the
Low quiescent current. In operation, the quiLDO has not only become quieter but more
escent current of an LDO will dissipate additional
reliable, accurate, fault-tolerant, powerful, and
power. A 4-mA quiescent current with a 5-V
efficient, with a mix of features that adapt
Fig. 1. State-of-the-art low-dropout
to the application at hand.
regulator: smaller than a drop of water. input (as shown for the bipolar LDO in Table
1) will dissipate 20 mW. This robs the regulaRecent applications like miniature
tor of almost another whole percentage point of efficiency. The
wireless 4G base stations have challenged the already small LDO
CMOS regulator, with only 365 µA of quiescent current, can reto become even smaller while packing more power. In this article,
duce this loss tenfold. This is significant because low quiescent
we’ll review the main features of an LDO while comparing a modcurrent is as important as low dropout in portable applications.
ern CMOS LDO to an old bipolar workhorse. Subsequently, we’ll
High output accuracy. Additional power dissipation can ocreview how each LDO parameter helps solve a specific application
cur due to an output voltage that is higher than nominal, even
problem. We’ll then introduce a new family of LDOs with features
when within an acceptable range of tolerance. At 4% accuracy
that enable further miniaturization, enhance fault tolerance, and
over 5 V and 500 mA, you will see a power dissipation increase
support a broad range of modern applications.
of 4% x 5 V x 500 mA = 100 mW. This is as costly as the losses
from the pass transistor of the previous case! This is inadequate
LDOs have come a long way
for power-hungry portable applications.
Table 1 compares the main features of a pioneering bipolar LDO
Low leakage. Even while not in operation, the LDO needs

regulator with an integrated PNP pass transistor (2.1- to 16-V into perform efficiently. Wearable devices are typically very small
put voltage) to a modern CMOS LDO with an integrated PMOS
in size and must last a long time both in operation and on the
pass transistor (1.7- to 5.5-V input). As you can see from across
shelf. Minimization of the size and power dissipation in both
all of the features listed, the CMOS LDO outperforms the old
modes is crucial. While on the shelf in shutdown mode, the
bipolar one by a factor ranging from 1.5 to 8 times!

I

Table 1: Bipolar vs. CMOS LDO regulator comparison.
500-mA LDO

PACKAGE mm2

ACCURACY
OVER TEMP

NOISE, µVRMS,
10–100 kHz

QUIESCENT
CURRENT, µA

PSRR,
dB @ 1 kHz

DROPOUT,
mV @ 500 mA

CMOS

TDFN8
2x2

±1%

12

365

70

100

BIPOLAR

SSOP8
3x3

–4%/+2.5%

18

3,000

60

310

CMOS OVER
BIPOLAR
IMPROVEMENT

2x

3x

1.5x

8x

3x (10 dB)

3x

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS


SPECIAL 19

Power Devices

WLP-6
1.22 x 0.82 x 0.84 mm

TDFN-8
2.0 x 2.0 x 0.8 mm

Fig. 2: MAX38902C/D WLP-6 package
advantage.

SOT23-5
2.8 x 2.8 x 1.2 mm
Fig. 3: MAX38902A/B/C/D reverse-voltage
protection.

device might need to last up to three years, which requires a
very low leakage current.
New requirement: reverse-current protection. Reverse-current protection is a new feature seldom found in available LDOs.
In battery-operated equipment, the load is regulated typically via
an efficient CMOS LDO with a MOSFET pass transistor that carries a reverse-biased intrinsic diode between input and output.
The reverse-current protection prevents the large reverse
current that occurs when a buck regulator at the LDO input is
shut off, shorting the input to GND. The discharge energy of a
large LDO output capacitance through the LDO pass transistor’s intrinsic diode creates the damage. A low reverse current is
tolerated. Above a set threshold (200 mA), the reverse current
is completely blocked.
New requirement: Miniaturization. As seen in Table 1, little
progress has been made in LDO packaging miniaturization.
This is due, in part, to reliability concerns. In harsh environments like automotive under-the-hood applications, lead-frame
IC packages like the TDFN-8 are preferred because they have
proven their high reliability over time. Lead-frame technology
is inherently space-inefficient.
On the other hand, in consumer and wireless communications applications, size is a major concern. Fortunately, these
environments are relatively benign and stress-free, opening
opportunities for innovation.
Can we preserve all of the progress made by LDO electrical
parameters and add additional features like fault tolerance with

reverse-current protection and miniaturization for wireless applications? A new family of LDOs positively answers this challenge.

TDFN-8
2.0 x 2.0 x 0.8 mm

Fig. 4: MAX38902A/B TDFN-8 package
advantage.

technology for increased miniaturization. Fig. 2 illustrates how
the 500-mA LDO regulator, in a WLP-6 package, occupies
roughly one-fourth the space of the TDFN-8 footprint (and
one-sixteenth of the SOT23-5 of Fig. 4). The WLP-6 solution is
well-suited for applications that require minimal PCB space.
Reverse-current protection. The pass element (T1 in Fig. 3)
is a low RDSON p-channel MOSFET transistor. The internal
circuitry senses the MOSFET drain-to-source voltage and, in
addition to driving the gate, keeps the body diode reverse-biased. This additional step allows the device to behave like a
true open switch when its polarity is reversed (LDO OUT 10
mV higher than LDO IN). A positive drain-to-source voltage,
under proper drive (CONTROL), turns the MOSFET “on,”
with current flowing in normal mode while the body diode is
again reverse-biased.
This innovative feature protects the load and the LDO from

A state-of-the-art solution

The excellent parameters shown in Table 1 for the CMOS
LDO are applicable for the MAX38902A/ MAX38902B/
MAX38902C/MAX38902D family of LDO regulators. Going
even further, this new family solves the miniaturization problem by providing an option of wafer-scale packaging technology, resulting in minimal PCB space usage. In addition,

it solves the reverse-current protection problem with a novel
implementation of the LDO power train. Let’s review these
innovations in more detail:
Wafer-scale packaging. Miniature 4G base stations are small
enough to fit in a backpack and are still very powerful. Here,
the LDO that powers the RF section must be small and powerful, delivering hundreds of milliamperes. The C and D versions
of this newer LDO family adopt wafer-level packaging (WLP)
ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018


20 SPECIAL

Power Devices
MAX38902 PSRR VS. FREQUENCY AT 25°C
(VIN = 3.7 V, VOUT = 3.3 V, IOUT = 400 mA)

MAX38902A NOISE

VIN = 3 V
VOUT = 2.5 V
IOUT = 100 mA

1.0E-6

100.0E-9

10.0E-9
10.0E+0100.0E+0

1.0E+3

10.0E+3100.0E+3

MAGNITUDE (dB)

NOISE (VRMS/√Hz)

10.0E-6

10
0
–10
1 x 100-nF 0201 BYP CAP
3 X 4.7-µF 0402 INPUT AND OUTPUT CAP
–20
–30
–40
–50
–60
–70
–80
–90
–100
100 1K 10K 100K 1M10M

FREQUENCY (Hz)

FREQUENCY (Hz)

Fig. 5: MAX38902A/B noise performance.

Fig. 6: MAX38902A/B PSRR.

accidental input shorts, making the system more fault-tolerant.
High-reliability applications. Industrial and automotive applications are characterized by a wide operating temperature range.
Here, a lead-frame package, more tolerant of temperature-induced PCB surface mechanical stress, may be preferred. In this
case, a modern TDFN package (A and B versions) provides a
solution that is roughly half the footprint and two-thirds the
height of a more traditional SOT23-5 or similar package (Fig. 4).
Low noise performance. Fig. 5 shows the spectral noise
density of this family of devices. With a figure of merit as low
as 30 nV/√Hz), it is an excellent choice for many low-noise
applications.
High PSRR performance. Fig. 6 shows the PSRR profile from
100 Hz to 10 MHz. With a figure of merit as high as 62 dB, this
family is an excellent choice for analog or digital noise-sensitive
applications.

Conclusion

Fluffing the cloud
Continued from page 4
SoCs to hard-wired intelligent
modules for everything from old “early-adopter” houses full of semi-intelligent
disconnected wired subsystems to devices intended to cost-effectively upgrade a
manufacturing facility to Industry 4.0.
What this means for you is that there
are more possibilities and opportunities
than ever before. Just about anything you
can imagine in three dimensions can be

realized in an object of some kind. Software
is more powerful than ever before, and design tools can even output C code for those
who are better at thinking with their hands.
Development kits and reference designs are
abound, enabling those with a concept but
without a staff to properly develop that
idea with completely operational subsystems that provide all the functionality

LDOs have come a long way since their initial introduction by
adapting to the needs of evolving applications. We reviewed the
classic LDO parameters and discussed its improvements moving
from a bipolar to CMOS implementation. Next, we discussed the
challenges of reverse-current protection and the miniaturization
required by many modern portable applications. A new family
of LDOs (MAX38902A/B/C/D) solves the former problem with
a new power train architecture and the latter problem with the
adoption of wafer-level packaging options. For challenging application environments such as industrial and automotive applications, traditional lead-frame package technology is also available.
The availability of multiple versions of the basic LDO supports different applications. This gives system designers several
“go-to” LDOs that can be leveraged to save significant cost and
development time. ☐

desired for the final product.
This development is also empowering
the components and magnetics industry
as those industries are being challenged
to step up to address the new needs of
the advanced topologies in the newest
generation of devices. Better capacitors, improved magnetics, and better
PCB construction not only address the
demands of the latest semiconductor materials and IC designs, they also provide

empowering aspects of their own, enabling engineers to leverage the benefits
with one another to achieve their goals.
This movement forward is also placing
severe demands on the test and measurement industry at every level. Test
has achieved a level of importance in the
design industry previously only hinted
at and now is a critical aspect of design,
development, and manufacture. Manufacturers now test at every point of the chain

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

from idea to product, and this benefits the
engineer, the company, and the consumer.
The big issue in test is that a test device
has to be “better” than the system that it
is testing. Just as a ruler can only measure
something more accurately than another
ruler if their lines are closer together, a
test device can only measure a system if it
is faster and has a higher bandwidth and
a higher memory than the item tested.
The test industry has responded with a
plethora of fantastic gear that can measure
quickly, widely, and deeply with a memory both big enough and fast enough to
measure anything attached to it.
So take a look in these pages, and see
the latest in embedded and power technology in our reports on Embedded World
and APEC. These devices and solutions
will empower not only your designs but the
next level of electronic device development.

Alix Paultre


Power Devices

SPECIAL 21

Advanced battery packages empower
next-generation systems
BY ALIX PAULTRE
Contributing Editor

O

ne of the most discussed and
stressed-over aspects of the latest
revolution in portable, worn, autonomous, and remote electronics is the battery.
The problem is that people pay both too
much and not enough attention to it. They
pay too much to the size, and less to the
need, the capability, and the functionality.
Design engineers understand the importance of selecting the most optimized
solution for their application, especially
when the device has demanding power
requirements. Selecting the right battery
solution will directly affect the performance of the device and the experience
for the end user. Understanding battery
chemistry and cell selection as well as battery management systems will guide the
proper battery selection and or design.

Size: Does it matter?

When it comes to energy storage, does
the size of the battery matter? Actually,
size isn’t as important as safety or operational reliability, among other things.
Pure power isn’t necessarily the silver
bullet to a design’s needs. It’s an easy out
to address every range or operating time
issue by adding a bigger or supplemental
battery, and a brisk aftermarket in several
application spaces exists to do just that.
But it often isn’t enough.
The issue is being able to provide the
energy that the system requires to fulfill
the primary functionality for a reasonable
time at a price point both acceptable to
the consumer and able to generate a profit.
However, in many cases, when designing
a custom battery, size is a key driver. With
device manufacturers, battery requirements are often an afterthought and an
important component to ensuring that
the design engineers can provide a battery
supporting the mechanical requirements
in the form factor that is needed.

We recently spoke to VARTA about the
issues facing engineers developing products
and battery choice. Arkadiy Niyazov, Project
Manager at VARTA Microbattery, explained
that for many engineers, it isn’t battery

capacity as much as it is form factor and
functionality. Arkadiy points out, “A custom
battery pack often serves the customer better because it allows for an optimal solution
for not only the power requirement but also
safety and functionality.”
For example, in the rapidly-changing
Li-ion battery industry, the traditional
18650 cell size is not the only choice. New
options such as the 21700 and 26650 have
now become more readily available, providing design engineers with more choices
to meet the form, fit, and function needed
to support the mechanical specifications
of the end device while still delivering the
energy required by the system.
When it comes to energy management today, it often isn’t how big the
battery but how efficient the system it
drives. In a hypothetical case of two
identical batteries in two nearly identical
IoT wearable medical systems, the one
with better antenna matching will have a
significantly longer battery life than that
of the system less elegantly designed. Another example can be found in the coming wave of disruptive power electronics
based on wide-bandgap semiconductors,
with not only higher efficiencies but also
higher power densities, smaller sizes, and
reduced cooling requirements.

Buy or build?

One of the most fundamental questions

in embedded design engineering is
whether to procure subsystems off the
shelf, custom-made, or do-it-yourself.
In the case of modular subsystems like
batteries, this can be a very difficult question to ask oneself. Not only are standard
battery sizes readily available, they are a
mature interface that has strong customer and industry support.

Fig. 1: This VARTA battery pack was

created for a human robotics project.
Providing a view from the field, Stefan
Hald, Field Applications Engineer (Power
Pack Solutions) at VARTA said, “I see a lot
of requests from specialty spaces because
they need to meet the redundant electrical and thermal safety and protection
demanded by the application. The battery
has to be as small as possible, but there
also has to be redundancy and monitoring
functionality included. We are also seeing
a lot of requests for LED indicators for operational status, failure codes by blinking,
and the like.”
Consumer products with a relatively
large form factor have the hardest decision to make, as there is enough room to
accommodate a standard battery without
concerns of packaging or size compromises. This also applies to products that
have evolved in form factors that already
have accommodated themselves to legacy
battery adoption.
One way to sidestep the issue is to do

both, create a custom battery solution
that also can work with off-the-shelf cells.
Companies with the assets to do so usually do it for maximum market penetration
while providing both an upgrade path for
customers and an accessory sales channel
to support it. Video game controllers and
cameras come to mind, both high-use
(high-power-drain) products with a
customer base ranging from entry-level
newbie to passionate professional. This is
obviously not possible for every manufacturer, hence the difficulty of the decision.
On the “soft” side, multiple power
options benefit both the manufacturer
and consumer for marketing and practical

ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018


22 SPECIAL
reasons. Standard batteries are often the
default choice unless there are form-factor
concerns that preclude use of off-the-shelf
batteries. Until recently, form-factor issues
were the primary reasons that manufacturers went with a custom solution.
Often, user acceptance and form
factor go hand in hand. A single thin removable battery appeals to the customer
while also providing form factor and
internal functionality to the manufacturer. For example, this 1,590-mAh VARTA
EasyPack SLIM measures 5.2 mm max
and has a CE Marking, a UL 2054 Listing, and IEC62133 Edition 2 compliance.

This kind of solution is often the best of
both worlds as it is a “standard custom”
kind of solution that multiple products
from multiple vendors can share.

Packing in functionality

The advantages of an optimized battery
solution, however, can far outweigh the
additional costs involved in designing a
custom power pack into your product.
As Stefan over at VARTA pointed out,
the most popular add-on functionalities
currently involve the battery itself, such
as fuel gauging and safety monitoring.
However, the ability to add functionality
to a device by putting it in its battery pack
lets designers provide features in a novel
way that allows easy binning, scalability,
and upgradability to the customer.
One of the biggest problems is the
previously mentioned aftermarket add-on
batteries. Many of these off-brand overthe-counter batteries have no security or
safety technology integrated at all; there
is often no way to tell if a store-bought
battery is a real one from the manufacturer or just a tootsie roll wrapped in a label
thrown together by scammers.
There are many stories of counterfeit
bad batteries destroying products via
agents from leaked acid to catastrophic

thermal runaway (a fancy way to say, “It
caught fire”). The first benefit of a custom
pack is that you can add an RFID chip
for inventory and counterfeit detection, a
battery-monitoring IC to watch the charge
state and thermals, or buy a chip that has
both of those functionalities and more.
Once you open the battery pack to
drop in a chip, your horizons broaden

Power Devices

significantly. That chip could be a simple
safety and security device, or it could
be one of the new crops of IoT wireless
ASICs, or it could be a complete SOC
that lets you tailor your entire product
line by the kind of battery pack it takes.
When designing a custom battery,
design engineers need to understand cell
technology for an application based on
what is the best technical fit, which, in
some cases, can have very demanding
power requirements. Additionally, understanding cell technology trends will
directly impact the direction for a particular design including availability of cells
and new cell sizes such as Li-ion 26650
and 21700. Choosing the appropriate
BMS is equally as important as they
can have simple electronics to measure
cell voltage or more complex BMS that

affects the battery life and performance
as well as ensuring safety.
Another example can be found
in the area of robotics. Fig. 1 shows a
VARTA battery pack that was created for a human robotics project that
required advanced functionalities like
fuel gauging and safety monitoring. The
design included sophisticated casting
to withstand the mechanical forces
certification according to UL, a custom
cell holder for production assembly and
cell positioning, and highly customized
PCM for electrical control, battery safety,
and performance. Robots must not only
operate remotely, they must be able to
detect low-battery situations accurately
and quickly enough to address them in
real time either by reducing power needs
or returning to base for recharge.

Wireless functionality

The aforementioned wireless functionality can be implemented in many ways.
Just integrating a cheap paper RFID tag
in the label would go a long way toward
reducing counterfeit risks as well as
providing users with product information like pack capacity and may even give
the device being powered a rudimentary
interface to first-level battery functions
like amount of charge and temperature.

In areas where there are options for
the user such as near-field communication (NFC) payments, it is possible to add

APRIL 2018 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

regional functionality to a device via the
battery to address local or proprietary
communication protocols. Many places
are now accepting NFC pay, but some
manufacturers may not wish to deploy that
functionality across their entire product
line. This also applies to internal security
devices for internal company resources that
may vary from location and facility.
The other major wireless functionality
is wireless charging. Once thought of
for longer-ranged applications, wireless
charging is rapidly becoming a final-inch
solution to eliminating batteries. Adding
independent wireless-charging capability
to your product’s battery pack delivers
multiple benefits. Not only does this
enable the user to buy multiple battery
packs and charge the unused packs with
the same wireless power interface, it
allows the manufacturer to offer users of
popular legacy products an upgrade path
to wireless charging.

Optical functionality

When one thinks of batteries, lights
usually come into the situation as loads.
More often today, that light is an internal
LED showing charge state. In the future,
that LED could also transmit optical
data, from troubleshooting information
to augmented reality codes that would
let users fight virtual dragons emanating
from the back of their phones.
These embedded LEDs (or in the
future, possibly OLED coatings) can also
be used for aesthetic purposes as well
as practical, or both. Status LEDs could
be made to blink in time with music
or other data (gaming) to enhance the
smart-device experience, for example. The key is that once you open the
box to adding a light, there is nothing
restricting you to only one function for
it, especially because most additional
functionality can be added in code.

Looking forward

Electronic engineers have more and more
choice when designing and specifying
their battery packs, with more options
for security and functionality than ever
before. Understanding all of them (work
with your supplier!) will help you greatly

in achieving your product design goals. ☐


SPECIAL 23

Embedded World Wrap-Up

The expanding IoT: a visit to Embedded World
BY ALIX PAULTRE
Contributing Editor

T

he most notable thing about Embedded World, the leading
international exhibition for embedded technology, is the
buzz of activity everywhere. The bringing together of
engineers, ideas, and technology makes for an exciting and busy
event. In its 16-year existence, Embedded World has provided
a place where the world’s engineering community can come
together and work on solutions for things both great and small.
Larger yet again in 2018, the show brought together over
1,000 companies in six exhibition halls to show their wares to
over 32,000 visitors from 78 countries. The event’s associated
conferences also demonstrated the vibrancy of the industry
with 2,176 participants and speakers from 52 countries. This
combined effort to show, educate, entertain, and create an
environment to exchange ideas and solutions makes the show
a must-see for any company serious about participating in the
embedded engineering space.
In the buzz, many application areas were discussed — from

automotive to the smart home to intelligent medical devices
to Industry 4.0. All of these application spaces are expected to
eventually all connect in the cloud as part of the IoT, and the exhibition floor is where that reality is being created. Solutions both
wired and wireless were presented to automate and integrate all
aspects of society that involve powered systems.
This final integration of all powered devices into the IoT is the
true “final mile,” as even legacy technology is brought into the fold
using methodologies from multi-protocol wireless devices that can
talk to sub-gigahertz proprietary systems to wired devices that can
completely replace the older systems in place. This final integration
of all powered devices will further increase the ability to communicate, coordinate, and operate in better and more useful ways.

ry and 128 Kb of SRAM (80 Kb available for the user).
The IoD-09 can be programmed with the 4D Systems Workshop4 integrated development environment (IDE) or through
the Arduino IDE. Workshop4 provides powerful graphics using
the GFXdloIoD09 graphics library specifically for the IoD-09
series through a drag-and-drop-style graphical user interface
(GUI). The IoD-09 Starter Kit comes with an IoD display module, 4D-UPA programmer, and a 4-GB micro-SD card.

Printed Circuit Boards
from Prototype to Production

4D Systems

One thing that people expect from an intelligent system is a
control screen everywhere that input is needed. 4D Systems
is serving that need with its Internet of Display modules, and
their 0.9-in. WiFi-enabled IoD-09 series of 80 x 160 TFT LCD
displays can display full color images, animations, and icons.
The new modules come in two variants: through-hole (IoD09TH) and surface-mount (IoD-09SM).

The module is designed around the ESP8266 systemon-Chip (SoC) from Espressif. It comes with 802.11 b/g/e/i
support as well as WPA/WPA2, WEP/TKIP/AES, and STA/
AP/STA+AP/P2P operational mode support. There are six
GPIOs available allowing digital input/output as well as various
communication protocols. Available interfaces include SPI, I2C,
UART, and one-wire communications. A micro-SD slot allows
the use of off-the-shelf high-capacity memory cards from 4 GB
to a maximum of 32 GB. FAT16 and FAT32 file accesses are
supported. The module also comes with 4 Mbit of flash memo-

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ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • APRIL 2018