What's the Toughest Branch in Electronics?

I put digital at the #4 spot because I'm looking at digital design from a what's-off-the-shelf point of view. Applying fast ADC IC's can't be too nasty.. I imagine the analogue front end gets attention as well as the pcb layout.

D from BC

Anybody here a rich electronics designer? Do you have the 4 cars, the 20 room home, the trophy wife and maybe hang out the Schwarzeneggers?

D from BC

Ha ha ha... :) But no ones gone fanatical enough to get brain surgery to increase fidelity perception. Ear replacement too. Heck..forget that.. Wireless brain implant! The audio implant will "make you think" there's no distortion. :P D from BC

I stumbled over the step-up of a computer floor yesterday :-(

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Beyond 100MPSP and 12bit is does tend to get nasty. That's when clients call me in as the analog dude. Because everything digital becomes analog at some point on the speed scale ;-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

[snip]

I'm not "rich", but my income is like the horsepower rating of a Rolls-Royce... "adequate" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Why do you want to hang out the Schwarzeneggers? For stiff acting in 'The Terminator', or Kindergarten Cop'?

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

EVERYTHING about it is fundamentally difficult for a company. The main one being retention of one's secure status.

Bullshit.

He said BRANCH of electronics.

NOTHING about modern military comms uses ANYTHING STANDARD or OFF the shelf. Not to mention the things that such facilities must go through to provide such things, and remain authorized to do so.

NONE of "the algorithms used" are "in widespread use".

EVERYTHING is cutting edge.

The commercial world is STILL about ten years behind mil comms, as they have always been.

Most anything that goes into a flight system has to be designed for conduction cooling. Another realm that is more difficult than your off the shelf mentality provides for.

You're a big dope.

100% bullshit.

A professional designer needs the theory whereas a Technician does the build part and needs only a little theory. For example, how do you stabilise a fighter aircraft or a rocket? The final part is the build. Consider a Phase-locked-Loop. If you just look at the electronics you spend most of the time fiddling with no results. Knowing the theory - how to stabilize it - drawing Bode plots,phase-margins is the professional part.

However if you are talking about just electronics per-se then Analogue IC design is probably the worst. The application could well be RF or audio etc but the methods are the same, only the bandwidth differs. Analogue design will never die - you will always need analogue - less so now but it's always there.

Hardy

{...]

To do analog data acquisition you need to have almost all of the skills needed for each other subject. The signals you are working with are often very wide band width. The noise levels you need to maintain are like those for audio work. The distortion etc can in fact be more of a problem than for audio.

You sometimes have to do your own DC-DC converter so you can sync the ADC clock to the DC-DC switching edges.

You are also forced to build stuff that works in an envirnoment with other equipment by people. AC currents through the chassis and earth returned currents mean that you often have to design permitting large common mode noise levels.

I agree about the digital stuff being a lot easier. It is after all just analog design where a lot of clipping happens.

IMHO: anything is hard if you are not a specialist at it and/or don't have the right tools for the job.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

Yes, exactly. Commercial chips don't give enough controls.

Or to shut it off altogether and rely on stored charges during A2D.

Second try. Time to think about a real ISP for this stuff again

somewhere in the 10^5 to 10^6 codes per sqrt(Hz) band, things start to get hard.

A comparitor sqrt( (2 codes) x 10GHz ) = 1.4 * 10^5

12 bit ADC sqrt ( (4096 codes) * 100MHz) = 6.4 x 10^5

24 bit audio sqrt ( (2^24 codes) * 44KHz) = 8.6 x 10^5

How can anyone claim that VCSELs produce as wide of a stereo effect as a needle, I'll never know.

D from BC hath wroth:

Compliance Engineering. The rules change as you design.

RF is magic and nothing works twice the same way. Computer models and simulations at best come close. All RF data sheets lie. Everything radiates, spews garbage, or picks up crud. Most designs are unconditionally unstable. Nobody understands or follows the FCC rules-n-regs. RF really is magic.

The switcher part is easy. It's all the added circuitry that protects the switcher from over/strange/under loads, self-oscillation, conducted radiation, radiating RF, going berserk near RF, drift, parasitics, and finding a place to put all the regulatory stickers, is what's difficult.

That's almost trivial. What's hard is inventing new buzzwords that sell. Dynamic transient music power, ambience, presence, motional distortion, oxygen free copper wire, classic tube/valve distortion, and such are what's difficult. No unusual design expertise is required, but plenty of marketing savvy and buzzword creativity.

I sometimes design on my digits. I have 10 of them easily available with 10 more in reserve if I remove my shoes and socks. For up to 20 items, digital design is quite simple. My 10 key xylophone sounds like bells and can therefore do deci-bells.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann snipped-for-privacy@cruzio.com

150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060 Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Hey, did you work for Metricom? I tried to license them my metering technology, but they had a bad case of NIH, and the engineers seemed to be only interested in RF, and then they became an Internet company, and then they died. I met the prez, the guy from Zenith, a few times, and even met The Guru once. What were their names? Dilworth and Barron maybe?

John

What type of metering technology did you have ??

donald

John Larkin hath wroth:

Not as an employee. Just consulting.

Yep. They wanted to do it all themselves. That made some sense as long as they were privately held and were able to invent the technology as they went along. NIH (not invented here syndrome) was one of the many little things that killed the company.

The remote meter reading stuff (Utilinet) went on the back burner after Metricom discovered the internet in about 1993. Utilinet was eventually sold to Shlumberger. I still have some of the old Utilinet radios and wireless power meters.

Bob Dilworth. He's still around:

The company was founded by Paul Baran in approximately 1986.

(6 pages)

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558