Power House

  • When putting together the power tree for a complicated system, such as a smartphone or tablet , very often specific integrated circuits are used because they support a wide input voltage range or because they run off of a common input voltage, such as...
  • I own a smartphone, an e-reader and a tablet. And, as is the case with most consumer electronics, they tend to malfunction every so often (Murphy’s Law never fails, does it?). The screen freezes up or apps decide not to launch. Sometimes the device...
  • I'm pleased to welcome Mark Pieper to the Power House blog. Mark is the mind behind the article "Designing a negative boost converter from a standard positive buck converter" featured in TI's Analog Applications Journal newsletter. ...
  • A few months ago Texas Instruments announced that we will expand development of Qi-compliant solutions and will work on dual-mode wireless power ICs to support the Qi standard from Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) wireless...
  • Have you ever been blinded by viewing your phone’s bright display at night? Or been unable to sleep on a plane because of the amount of light coming from your neighbor’s laptop screen? If only dimming were used, then you could read your phone...
  • Many of us remember how we first learned to ride a bicycle. Some of us remember it being somewhere between thrilling and mortifying. For me it was around my seventh birthday when my parents decided it was time to graduate to a “two-wheeler.”...
  • A common concern in LED lighting has been keeping THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) below 10%. Power sources act as non-linear loads and draw a distorted waveform that contains harmonics. These harmonics can cause interference in the working of other electronic...
  • For most of my career developing portable equipment, I've been taught that "less is more." The fewer integrated circuit (IC) devices on a PC board, the better. We've been on a quest for smaller, lighter and cheaper since the first portable...
  • I'm pleased to welcome Anthony Fagnani to the Power House blog. Anthony is the mind behind the article " Synchronous rectification boosts efficiency by reducing power loss " featured in TI's Analog Applications Journal newsletter. ...
  • I sat down this week with Yevgen Barsukov and Jinrong Qian, two of TI’s leading battery technology experts to discuss the release of their new 240-page book, Battery Power Management for Portable Devices (by Artech House publishing -- available...