Analog television or analogue television is the original television technology that uses analog signals to transmit video and audio. In an analog television broadcast, the brightness, colors and sound are represented by rapid variations of either the amplitude, frequency or phase of the signal.
A system on a chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components typically include a central processing unit (CPU), memory, input/output ports and secondary storage – all on a single substrate or microchip, the size of a coin. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio frequency signal processing functions, depending on the application. As they are integrated on a single substrate, SoCs consume much less power and take up much less area than multi-chip designs with equivalent functionality. Because of this, SoCs are very common in the mobile computing and edge computing markets. Systems on chip are commonly used in embedded systems and the Internet of Things.
A variable frequency oscillator (VFO) in electronics is an oscillator whose frequency can be tuned over some range. It is a necessary component in any tunable radio receiver or transmitter that works by the superheterodyne principle, and controls the frequency to which the apparatus is tuned.
A frequency counter is an electronic instrument, or component of one, that is used for measuring frequency. Frequency counters usually measure the number of cycles of oscillation, or pulses per second in a periodic electronic signal. Such an instrument is sometimes referred to as a cymometer, particularly one of Chinese manufacture.
A voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is an electronic oscillator whose oscillation frequency is controlled by a voltage input. The applied input voltage determines the instantaneous oscillation frequency. Consequently, a VCO can be used for frequency modulation (FM) or phase modulation (PM) by applying a modulating signal to the control input. A VCO is also an integral part of a phase-locked loop.
Dallas Semiconductor, acquired by Maxim Integrated Products in 2001, designed and manufactured analog, digital, and mixed-signal semiconductors. Its specialties included communications products, microcontrollers, battery management, thermal sensing and thermal management, non-volatile random-access memory, microprocessor supervisors, delay lines, silicon oscillators, digital potentiometers, real-time clocks, temperature-compensated crystal oscillators (TCXOs), iButton, and 1-Wire products. The Dallas, Texas-based company was founded in 1984 and purchased by Maxim Integrated Products in 2001. Both the Maxim and Dallas Semiconductor brands were actively used until 2007. Since then, the Maxim name has been used for all new products, though the Dallas Semiconductor brand has been retained for some older products, which can be identified by "DS" at the beginning of their part numbers.
Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a subset of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic components built into an electrical network on a monolithic semiconductor substrate by photolithography.
A direct-conversion receiver (DCR), also known as homodyne, synchrodyne, or zero-IF receiver, is a radio receiver design that demodulates the incoming radio signal using synchronous detection driven by a local oscillator whose frequency is identical to, or very close to the carrier frequency of the intended signal. This is in contrast to the standard superheterodyne receiver where this is accomplished only after an initial conversion to an intermediate frequency.
Error-correcting code memory is a type of computer data storage that can detect and correct the most-common kinds of internal data corruption. ECC memory is used in most computers where data corruption cannot be tolerated under any circumstances, such as for scientific or financial computing.
The Pierce oscillator is a type of electronic oscillator particularly well-suited for use in piezoelectric crystal oscillator circuits. Named for its inventor, George W. Pierce (1872–1956), the Pierce oscillator is a derivative of the Colpitts oscillator. Virtually all digital IC clock oscillators are of Pierce type, as the circuit can be implemented using a minimum of components: a single digital inverter, one resistor, two capacitors, and the quartz crystal, which acts as a highly selective filter element. The low manufacturing cost of this circuit and the outstanding frequency stability of the quartz crystal give it an advantage over other designs in many consumer electronics applications.
Rakon Limited is a technology company founded in 1967 that designs and manufactures frequency control products, primarily quartz crystals and temperature-compensated crystal oscillators (TCXO), oven controlled crystal oscillators (OCXO) and voltage controlled crystal oscillators (VCXO). Its head office is in Auckland, New Zealand with wholly owned subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and France with joint venture operations in India and China. The company specialises in supplying frequency-control products to the GPS industry.
When writing firmware for an embedded system, immunity-aware programming refers to programming techniques which improve the tolerance of transient errors in the program counter or other modules of a program that would otherwise lead to failure. Transient errors are typically caused by single event upsets, insufficient power, or by strong electromagnetic signals transmitted by some other "source" device.
A frequency synthesizer is an electronic circuit that generates a range of frequencies from a single reference frequency. Frequency synthesizers are used in many modern devices such as radio receivers, televisions, mobile telephones, radiotelephones, walkie-talkies, CB radios, cable television converter boxes satellite receivers, and GPS systems. A frequency synthesizer may use the techniques of frequency multiplication, frequency division, direct digital synthesis, frequency mixing, and phase-locked loops to generate its frequencies. The stability and accuracy of the frequency synthesizer's output are related to the stability and accuracy of its reference frequency input. Consequently, synthesizers use stable and accurate reference frequencies, such as those provided by crystal oscillators.
A quartz clock is a clock that uses an electronic oscillator that is regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very precise frequency, so that quartz clocks are at least an order of magnitude more accurate than mechanical clocks. Generally, some form of digital logic counts the cycles of this signal and provides a numeric time display, usually in units of hours, minutes, and seconds.
A semiconductor package is a metal, plastic, glass, or ceramic casing containing one or more discrete semiconductor devices or integrated circuits. Individual components are fabricated on semiconductor wafers before being diced into die, tested, and packaged. The package provides a means for connecting the package to the external environment, such as printed circuit board, via leads such as lands, balls, or pins; and protection against threats such as mechanical impact, chemical contamination, and light exposure. Additionally, it helps dissipate heat produced by the device, with or without the aid of a heat spreader. There are thousands of package types in use. Some are defined by international, national, or industry standards, while others are particular to an individual manufacturer.
A PLL multibit or multibit PLL is a phase-locked loop (PLL) which achieves improved performance compared to a unibit PLL by using more bits. Unibit PLLs use only the most significant bit (MSB) of each counter's output bus to measure the phase, while multibit PLLs use more bits. PLLs are an essential component in telecommunications.
Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) oscillators are timing devices that generate highly stable reference frequencies, which can measure time. These reference frequencies may be used to sequence electronic systems, manage data transfer, define radio frequencies, and measure elapsed time. The core technologies used in MEMS oscillators have been in development since the mid-1960s, but have only been sufficiently advanced for commercial applications since 2006. MEMS oscillators incorporate MEMS resonators, which are microelectromechanical structures that define stable frequencies. MEMS clock generators are MEMS timing devices with multiple outputs for systems that need more than a single reference frequency. MEMS oscillators are a valid alternative to older, more established quartz crystal oscillators, offering better resilience against vibration and mechanical shock, and reliability with respect to temperature variation.
Two independent clocks, once synchronized, will walk away from one another without limit. To have them display the same time it would be necessary to re-synchronize them at regular intervals. The period between synchronizations is referred to as holdover and performance under holdover relies on the quality of the reference oscillator, the PLL design, and the correction mechanisms employed.
C8051 is a microcontroller (MCU) core produced by Silicon Laboratories, Inc. It is based on a patented implementation of the 8051 instruction set architecture.
