As technology advances, new parameters and measures are necessary while some older ones fade in importance. Engineering depends on metrology, measurements, metrics, and figures of merit (FOM). These allow designers to quantify performance and compare it to previous implementations and alternative designs. These factors are critical to the many essential quantitative assessments, as well as […]
3D printing and bacteria blend for solar harvesting
Leveraging apparently unrelated technologies links bacteria and photosynthesis to additive manufacturing for energy harvesting. Additive manufacturing—perhaps better known as 3D printing—has radically changed the production reality for everything ranging from unique, one-of-a-kind structures to spare-parts inventory to lower-volume, tooling-free productions. It’s also enabled the creation of structures that would be difficult if not impossible to […]
What? LORAN may be back? Why? How? Part 3
The defunct, obsolete LORAN navigation system is being revived with enhancements to overcome GNSS’s potential performance and availability risks. Congress debated whether to retain and upgrade the LORAN-C infrastructure to become enhanced LORAN (eLORAN), a national backup to GPS. In October 2009, Congress enacted a Department of Homeland Security appropriations measure allowing LORAN-C termination. […]
What? LORAN may be back? Why? How? Part 2
The defunct, obsolete LORAN navigation system is being revived with enhancements to overcome the potential performance and availability risks of GNSS. Before GNSS and GPS, and before INS systems were available, another type of RF-based position-determining system was in wide use: LORAN. Q: What is LORAN? A: LORAN is short for LOng RAnge Navigation. LORAN, […]
What? LORAN may be back? Why? How? Part 1
The defunct, obsolete LORAN navigation system is being revived with enhancements, to overcome the potential performance and availability risks of GNSS. There’s no need to tell the readers of this FAQ about the impact of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) on positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services from global, regional, or even localized perspectives. Billions […]
Engineering lessons from the carpal tunnel syndrome “epidemic”
The fact that the widely touted carpal tunnel syndrome epidemic never materialized is an excellent example of over-hyped predictions meeting the reality of technology change. We are swamped by predictions of future performance and technical paths, whether it involves components, circuits, systems, markets, and, of course, even diseases. The dilemma is that some of these […]
Bidirectional power supplies support new UPS requirements, Part 2
Bidirectional power supplies dynamically direct power from multiple sources to different loads, some of which are also power sources at other times. In recent years, there’s has been a dramatic increase in the need for bidirectional AC/DC and DC/DC power supplies, in addition to the unidirectional supply of a traditional UPS. That supply takes a […]
Bidirectional power supplies support new UPS requirements, Part 1
Bidirectional power supplies dynamically direct power from multiple sources to different loads, some of which are also power sources at other times. We recently had a short-term power failure in the neighborhood due to a storm and a downed tree. As the outage lasted only about eight hours, it was a minor inconvenience in the […]
The humble neon lamp: down, but definitely not out, Part 3
Despite the convenience and availability of LEDs, the neon lamp still has a viable position as a power-on indicator as well as use in some specialty applications. Thus far, we have looked basic neon lamp principles and operation. This part looks at some special issues related to these versatile indicators. Q: Why use a neon […]
The humble neon lamp: down, but definitely not out: Part 2
Despite the convenience and availability of LEDs, the neon lamp still has a viable position as a power-on indicator as well as use in some specialty applications. This part continues the exploration of the neon lamp. Q: Are there more details of the various operational phases? A: Yes, the entire glow process has been studied […]