System power engineers have many choices in today’s power connector market and the list of options is growing as the industry diversifies to offer more specialised products. Here are some commonly asked questions:

According to Australian leading electronics solutions provider Benbro Electronics, electronic designers need to consider a number of factors to achieve power quality when designing a lighting system. This is more so with the advent of LEDS, compact fluorescent lighting (CFL), high intensity discharge (HID) lighting and other new technologies in lighting.

Embedded software intended for aerospace and military applications must operate with the utmost concern for safety. To achieve reliability goals, software development teams strive for these applications to meet rigorous verification processes and the goal of zero defects.

The environments in which microwave cable assemblies are being used today are becoming more challenging with exposure to such conditions as extreme temperatures, chemicals, abrasion, and flexing. Additional challenges include the need for smaller, lighter packaging for cable systems that last longer and cost less.

Such highly coveted technical capabilities as the observation of single catalytic processes in nanoreactors or the optical detection of low concentrations of biochemical agents and gases are an important step closer to fruition.

With its promise of superfast computers and ultrapowerful optical microscopes among the many possibilities, plasmonics has become one of the hottest fields in high technology.

The consumer market for telephone headsets is noted for its innovative products and its fast pace. Companies produce products with new features almost weekly. In this environment, the market life of headsets is becoming very short; in fact, some products can have a life of only six months or so.

Of all of the specifications of a battery-powered device, the battery run time is key. Every user wants their device to run longer on a charge. Therefore, to know the run time of your device is important, not only to represent the device to the end user, but as a means of knowing if improvements in power management within the device are successful at increasing battery run time.

As microprocessors get increasingly more powerful, so does the appetite for additional software functionalities. Size of embedded systems software increases every year, bringing new types of problems. This is the final part of a three-part series.

As microprocessors get increasingly more powerful, so does the appetite for additional software functionalities. Size of embedded systems software increases every year, bringing new types of problems.

This is the second part of a three-part series.

FTTx is the all-inclusive term that covers a number of possibilities for fibre-optic networking. Fibre to the home (FTTH) is probably the first one that comes to most people’s minds. It is also called fibre to the premises and fibre to the building. Terms less often heard are FTTN and FTTC.

After six years of effort, scientists are reporting development of the first commercially viable nanogenerator, a flexible chip that can use body movements - a finger pinch now en route to a pulse beat in the future - to generate electricity.

The University of Queensland’s $7.75 million solar power system at St Lucia has reached a milestone, with installation completed on one of the project’s most visible components.

A type of nanomaterial developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US could be the next generation of high-power rechargeable lithium (Li)-ion batteries for electric vehicles, as well as batteries for laptop computers, mobile phones and other portable devices.

Accurate measurements are central to virtually every scientific and engineering discipline, but all too often measurement science gets little attention in the undergraduate curriculum. Even those who received a thorough grounding in measurement fundamentals as undergraduates can be forgiven if they’ve forgotten some of the details.