Your Electronics Open Source

by Franco Musiari [ DESIGN IN ]

Born around the year 2000 they already are at the second or the third generation and still represent the highest efficiency.

The miniaturization of the systems is a trend followed in all the electronics systems and particularly in the portables ones. In many of them the dimension and the weight of the power supplies are a dominant parameter of the whole system and more and more switching power supplies manufacturers (SMPS – switching mode power supply) define the road-map to increase the density power of their devices

The most common problems to follow the goal focus on two aspects:
The reduction of the passives components dimension (increasing the switching frequency) and reduction of losses (and the corresponding effort needed for the cooling through dissipates and / or ventilators).

National Application Note AN-558: Introduction to Power MOSFETs and Their Applications

National Application Note AN-805: Application Note 805 Calculating Power Dissipation for Differential Line Drivers

National Application Note AN-903: Application Note 903 A Comparison of Differential Termination Techniques

National Application Note AN-914: Application Note 914 Understanding Power Requirements in RS-232 Applications

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Smart power ICs are becoming increasing by common in automotive powertrain and body electronics. This note provides a general introduction to the subject. As is well known, electronics is slowly but progressively invading every part of the automotive environment (figure1); entering first in the car radio, it has extended progressively and is now present in all of the subsystems of an automobile. For those people who prefer a "historical" approach, the evolution of auto electronics has been divided into three main sections, each subdivided into various phases, correlated with the state of the art in general electronics at that time. Today, at the beginning of the 90’s we are in the SMART POWER phase, and it is precisely that which we intend to discuss briefly here (see fig. 2).