abSTRact: Most magnetic read head data sheets do not fully specify the frequency-dependent components andare often vague when specifying other key parameters. In some cases, the specifications of two very similarheads from two different manufacturers might be quite different in terms of parameters specified and omitted.The limitations in the data sheets make designing an optimum card reading system unnecessarily difficult andtime consuming. This document outlines a strategy to overcome the above shortcomings and offers guidelinesto overcome the noise issues.
abSTRact: What can be simpler than designing with CMOS and BiCMOS? These technologies are very easy to use butthey still require careful design. This tutorial discusses the odd case of circuits that seem to work but exhibit somepeculiar behaviors—including burning the designer's fingers!
abSTRact: Perfection is relative and application specific. The perfect race car is not the car we use to commute to work.
We need products for everyday use that are high quality, affordable, and solidly reliable. There will be times when we
must use components that are not perfect, and this is when calibration becomes important. Calibration techniques reduce
tolerances in imperfect manufacturing equipment while maintaining affordability.
abSTRact: Many industrial/scientific/medical (ISM) band radio frequency (RF) products use crystal oscillators to generate areference for the phase-locked loop (PLL)-based local oscillator (LO). This tutorial provides a basic description of theISM-RF Crystal Calculator, which can be used to calculate various impacts on crystal frequency accuracy and startupmargin for such an LO.
abSTRact: Alexander Graham Bell patented twisted pair wires in 1881. We still use them today because they work so well. In addition we have the advantage ofincredible computer power within our world. Circuit simulators and filter design programs are available for little or no cost. We combine the twisted pair and lowpassfilters to produce spectacular rejection of radio frequency interference (RFI) and electromagnetic interference (EMI). We also illustrate use of a precision resistorarray to produce a customizable differential amplifier. The precision resistors set the gain and common mode rejection ratios, while we choose the frequencyresponse.
abSTRact: This application note describes how to improve the speed of modular exponentiation by more than 50% whenusing MAXQ® microcontrollers that have a modular arithmetic accelerator (MAA).
