Many parameters have to be taken into consideration before getting to a decently audible class D amplifier. Each element of the signal chain must be adequately controlled to achieve a good audio signal through the whole audible frequency range.

In order to save cost and time, face-to-face meetings and conversations in both our business and personal lives are less frequent than they used to be. Mobile phones and voice over internet technology have been the enablers for this significant change in how we interface with one another. The quality of sound and the suppression of noise are crucial to ensure a good user experience with voice communications.

Examining one category – ambient-light sensing – represented by one of last January’s Product of the Year award winners, demonstrates how quickly some technology fields can alter course.

A novel MIT technology is now making possible remarkably efficient photovoltaic systems that can be powered by the sun, a hydrocarbon fuel, a decaying radioisotope, or any other source of heat. The key to the efficient operation: a specially engineered material that absorbs the heat and then—because of billions of nanoscale pits on its surface—selectively radiates to the PV cell only those wavelengths that the cell can convert into electricity.

LED lighting has become increasingly popular within both businesses and homes, and there are many reasons why LED bulbs can be seen as preferable over traditional bulbs, including filaments, halogen bulbs and the new, low energy compact fluorescent lights, or CFLs as they are called. But what is it about an LED light which makes it a safer alternative, and are there any drawbacks to consider when switching to LED light solutions?

The end of article "Harvest Energy from a Single Photovoltaic Cell". Maximum power point control mechanism explanation. Some practical circuits examples.

To simplify the distribution of wireless communications for instrumentation, monitoring and control applications, power supply designers strive for device grid-independence. Batteries, the immediately obvious solution, offer the illusion of grid independence, but require replacement or recharging, which means eventual connection to the grid and expensive human intervention and maintenance. Enter energy harvesting, where energy is collected from the instrument’s immediate environment, offering perpetual operation with no connection to the grid and minimal or no maintenance requirements.

Developers looking to ease and accelerate their industrial automation designs can now benefit from the industry's first ARM Cortex-A8 system solution with multiple integrated industrial communication protocols, offered by Texas Instruments Incorporated. The Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors, launched last month, deliver power dissipation levels below 7mW, along with two industrial automation hardware development tools, complete software and analog signal chain complement to provide a total industrial automation system solution. Using this solution, developers can get to market faster with industrial automation designs, including input/output (I/O) devices, human machine interfaces (HMIs) and programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and electroluminescence have been around for more than a century. Henry Round, a British experimenter with Marconi Labs, first noted the emission of light in 1907 while using a crystal of silicon carbide and cat’s-whisker detector (diode).