Latest Stories

Products

DC/DC Converters

The QMJ Series of DC/DC converters from Contech (Concord, CA), a division of Calex, offers up to 20 Watts of fully regulated output power. The series offers a 4:1 input range with nominal input voltages of 24 VDC and 48 VDC....

Feature Image

Products

MIL-STD-1553 PMC Card

The BU-65596F/M, a MIL-STD-1553 PMC card from Data Device Corporation (Bohemia, NY), uses DDC’s Enhanced Mini-ACE® ASIC core. The BU- 65596F/M incorporates Total-ACE® integrated terminals and includes over 62 million...

Feature Image

Products

FPGA Development Environment

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) (Middleton, WI) offers the XPedite2300, a Xilinx® Virtex®-6 based XMC module with support for pluggable daughter cards for customizable I/O. In conjunction with the...

Feature Image

Products

Digital Oscilloscope

Rigol Technologies (Oakwood Village, OH) has introduced the DS6000 series digital oscilloscope, featuring up to 1 GHz bandwidth, 1.5 GHz bandwidth differential, and single-ended active probes. The digital oscilloscopes use...

Feature Image

Articles
Electronics & Computers

Event-Driven Processor Programming

Almost since computers were invented, interrupts have been a common programming method to deal with real-time tasks. An interrupt causes a processor to stop the running task, and to execute an interrupt...

Feature Image

Articles
Electronics & Computers

Extensible Processing Platforms: Giving Designers the Best of Both Worlds

Creating a new field programmable gate array is no small feat. FPGA vendors spend tens-of-thousands of man-hours simply researching markets to determine the feature set a...

Feature Image

Products
Electronics & Computers

Rad-Hard FPGAs

The rad-hard and rad-tolerant reprogrammable Virtex®- 5QV FPGA from Xilinx (San Jose, CA) supports specified Total Ionizing Dose (TID) and characterized Single-Event Effects (SEE). The space-grade field programmable gate arrays...

Feature Image

Products
Electronics & Computers

Graphics Processor

AMD (Sunnyvale, CA) has introduced the AMD Radeon™ E6460 discrete graphics processor. With support for up to four simultaneous displays, the E6460 GPU enables an immersive experience with desktop-level 3D graphics and...

Feature Image

INSIDER
Defense

Vibration Damper Prevents Jet Engine Seal Cracks

A $35 “snubber” developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Propulsion Directorate is a vibration damper that will prevent cracks in the J-seal on the F119 engine’s inlet case, a spoked, ring-like device that helps control the air going into the engine.

INSIDER
Defense

Paper-Based Wireless Sensor Could Help Detect IEDs

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a prototype wireless sensor capable of detecting trace amounts of a key ingredient found in many explosives. The device, which employs carbon nanotubes and is printed on paper or paper-like material using standard inkjet technology,...

INSIDER
Defense

New Test Facility Measures Radar Cross Sections

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has opened a new compact range that will be used for radar cross section measurements and antenna testing. The new facility, which is shielded against electromagnetic interference, will be used for GTRI's defense-related research projects and collaborations...

INSIDER
Defense

Plasma Research Could Improve Radar, Satellite Systems

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Alabama have received a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to conduct fundamental research into the ways in which plasmas interact with the walls of the structures containing...

INSIDER
Software

Army Tests High-Tech Helicopter Simulator

The Army is using a new helicopter simulator, called the Non-rated Crew Member Manned Module (NCM3), to train helicopter crews on the rear of both the CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk. Through specially created virtual reality glasses, which fit the same as night vision goggles, soldiers can practice and...

INSIDER
Defense

Pentagon Explores Use of Small, Throwable Robots

The Army, Marine Corps and the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) are working to procure and deliver thousands of small, easily transportable "throwable" robots equipped with surveillance cameras designed to beam back video from confined spaces, buildings, tunnels and other potentially...

Briefs
Physical Sciences

Multifunctional Vehicle Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors

A novel structural health monitoring (SHM) concept of embedded nondestructive evaluation with piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) has been...

Feature Image

Briefs
Physical Sciences

Acoustic Detection Using Reverberation

Acoustic detection of undersea objects is difficult due to the uncertain environment and even more difficult when the objects are buried in the seabed. First, sediments generate high backscattering noise due to heterogeneous scatters within the sediments, clouding the object.

Briefs
Information Technology

Evolutionary Data Mining Approach to Creating Digital Logic

When required to reverse-engineer a product, engineers often do not have design specifications for the system, and the machine may not be disassembled or invasively examined. The...

Feature Image

Briefs
Medical

Precision Targeting with a Tracking Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope

Adaptive optics (AO) has become increasingly utilized in research ophthalmic diagnostic instruments since their first use nearly ten years ago. Integration of...

Feature Image

Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Trustworthy Hardware for 3D Circuit-Level Integration

Three-dimensional (3D) integration is a promising technology for designing high-performance, low-power systems by stacking multiple integrated circuit dies and connecting them at the circuit level with conductive posts. Most current efforts are at the electromechanical level of getting 3D to...

Briefs
Electronics & Computers

Open Network Architecture for Army Vehicle Electronics

Army vehicle electronics networking is complex and challenging due to vendor-specific devices and interfaces. Military vehicles require 100% network uptime and security. The network must reduce vehicle clutter, focus on saving soldiers’ lives, and provide minimum latency. Battle requirements...

Articles
Aerospace

Surviving The Embedded Design Thermo-Mechanical Envelope

The Embedded usage model is characterized as one that is operated at the extremes of available performance. Knowing that the targets of the thermal design power usage mode are only...

Feature Image

Articles
Aerospace

Using Fiber Metal Abradable Seals in Aerospace Turbine Applications

Limiting leakage in aerospace turbo-machinery has been a focus of engineers ever since the advent of the turbine. An increasing number of companies are finding that fiber metal...

Feature Image

Articles
Aerospace

Five Approaches to Cooling Military Electronics

Seventy-one degrees C is the temperature of a steak done medium-well. It is also the temperature of an oven used to test thermal characteristics of military electronics. Electronic components in...

Feature Image

Application Briefs
Defense

Gas Turbine Exhaust Recovery Design Improves Propulsion Efficiency

In January, Concepts NREC (CN) was awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant from the Navy to improve the power efficiency of its gas turbine prime...

Feature Image

Application Briefs
Defense

Realistic Simulation Makes Army Helmets Safer

As materials, ergonomic design, and ballistics protection have evolved, the U.S. Army helmet has improved in form and function, from the M1 of WWII, to the 29-layer Kevlar PASGT (Personnel Armor...

Feature Image

Articles
Electronics & Computers

Graphics Performance vs. Power Consumption in Embedded Systems Design

The rapid evolution of technology has given embedded developers more options than ever before in designing embedded graphics systems. The consumer electronics market, most...

Feature Image

Articles
Electronics & Computers

From Reference Board to Rugged Military SBC

Intel processor reference designs are developed by Intel to assist engineers in the design of Intel processor-based products. The less a design deviates from the reference design, the easier the...

Feature Image

Articles
Electronics & Computers

Prototyping with Multi-Layer Boards

As electronic components continue to move increasingly into surface- mount packages exclusively, prototype manufacturing firms are seeing a shift in the fabrication and assembly work needed to implement...

Feature Image

Products
Electronics & Computers

Encryption Processor

Enova Technology Corp. (San Jose, CA) has announced its ninth-generation X-Wall DX processor, a real-time hardware encryption device. The processor encrypts all USB mass storage class (MSC) devices at USB 2.0 wire speed...

Feature Image