silicon Labs

How to Design Smart Gas and Water Utility Meters for the Utmost in Power Efficiency

Designing a smart water or gas meter can present a vexing low-power challenge for embedded control systems requiring RF connectivity. These metering applications are inherently battery powered, and the battery life for these systems is expected to exceed ... Read >

Top Design Considerations for Low-Power Metering Applications

As green energy management becomes a global imperative, the idea of implementing intelligent systems and wireless technology to more efficiently use energy and other natural resources has become a pervasive reality. It began with a relatively simple idea.... Read >

USB Connectivity in a Complex World

Designers of industrial and consumer devices have rapidly adopted the universal serial bus (USB) as the interface of choice for enabling connectivity to other applications due to its ease-of-use, plug-and-play functionality and robustness. Although USB co... Read >

USB Simplified Adding USB Connectivity to Applications with Legacy Serial Connections

USB has become an enormous success in industrial and commercial applications as it continues to replace many legacy serial connections (i.e. RS-232, 485). It is becoming the interface of choice for enabling connectivity to new applications with its eas... Read >

Prototyping with Frequency-Flexible Crystal Oscillators

Developers of new systems ideally should make decisions regarding clocking requirements early in the design process. Although clocking rates are critical parameters that should be known in advance, determining these rates sometimes requires experimentati... Read >

8-Bit Mixed-Signal Microcontrollers Reduce Cost and Complexity in Automotive Designs

From safety and chassis systems to body electronics and powertrain management, high-performance microcontrollers (MCUs) provide critical control and intelligence capabilities for today’s automotive designs. Mixed-signal 8-bit MCUs offer a variety of w... Read >

Low EMI Isolation for Medical Equipment Applications

EMI in the Medical Environment Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is defined as any electromagnetic disturbance that interrupts, obstructs or otherwise degrades or limits the effective performance of electronic equipment. Unfortunately, EMI sources are... Read >

Enhancing Performance and Reliability in High-Power Class D Audio Amplifier Designs

Green energy standards, the continuing need to reduce costs and the demand for higher audio fidelity are driving the adoption of Class D amplifiers in high-power audio applications. Traditional analog implementations, such as Class AB topology, are more c... Read >

Delivering High-Performance Car Radio Designs at Low Cost with Digital Low-IF CMOS AM/FM Automotive

High-growth economies such as Brazil, Indonesia, India and China have an emerging middle class and rapidly growing automotive markets. The vehicle retail price in these markets must be relatively low, putting cost pressure on components in these vehicl... Read >

Touchless Gesturing Brings New Innovation to Electronic Product Designs

Human-machine interaction has evolved significantly over the past decade through enhancements in user interfaces and smart design. Many of these changes have focused around touchscreen interfaces with high-precision, low-power capacitive touchscreens at t... Read >

Design Considerations in Adding USB Communications to Embedded Applications

Designing an application with universal serial bus (USB) communications enables a system to be able to communicate with a wide variety of USB host devices and provides a convenient power option through the USB connection. Today’s printers, cell phones, di... Read >

Developing Next-Generation Human Interfaces using Capacitive and Infrared Proximity Sensing

Introduction More than a billion electronic products with advanced human interfaces capabilities are expected to ship in 2010. Based on technologies such as capacitive and infrared proximity sensing, these interfaces provide a dramatic improvement in ... Read >

When to Use a Clock vs. an Oscillator

Introduction A wide range of timing solutions are available, including crystal oscillators (XO), voltage-controlled crystal oscillators (VCXO), and clocks. No one size fits all strategy applies when it comes to component selection. Picking the right d... Read >

SI321X NEON FLASHING DESIGN GUIDE FOR THE Si3210/15/16 DC-DC CONVERTER

1. Introduction The ProSLIC® from Silicon Laboratories integrates a complete analog telephone interface into one low-voltage CMOS device and offers extensive software programmability to meet many global telephony requirements and customer specification... Read >

Frequency Modulation (FM) Tutorial

Introduction Edwin H. Armstrong, known as one of the founding fathers of radio technology, invented the superheterodyne radio receiver in 1918 and frequency modulation (FM) in 1933. These two concepts, along with his regenerative circuit technique de... Read >