All About Circuits

The previous article in this series explored the essential workings of the FMFB circuit, particularly its approach to FM demodulation and its capability to reduce the noise threshold. Building on that foundation, this article calculates the output SNR of the FMFB demodulator at high carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) values. We’ll demonstrate that, despite the FMFB’s ability to reduce the noise threshold, it has no effect on output SNR in high-CNR conditions.

Texas Instruments has introduced the TCAN6062, which the company says is the first commercially available CAN XL transceiver. Designed for industrial robots, humanoid robots, HMI systems and other data-heavy applications, the device supports signaling rates up to 20 Mbps and CAN XL payloads as large as 2,048 bytes. The new TCAN6062 CAN XL transceiver is well suited for industrial and robotic network designs.

Graphene electronics maker Paragraf has expanded its sensing portfolio with two products for researchers and diagnostic developers: the PMF2002, a 12-channel graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) platform, and the Enterprise Reader, a data acquisition system that provides direct electronic readout and real-time analysis. The PMF2002 and Enterprise Reader. The U.K.-based company announced the pair three months after launching its three-channel PMF2000. Both products are now commercially available.

In every industrial environment, machines are constantly speaking. They do not use words, but they communicate clearly through motion, heat, noise, pressure, and especially vibration. For years, this language was understood mainly by specialists. Today, thanks to advances in sensing and edge AI, it is becoming more accessible, driving an evolution in the industry.

AMD will add Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) connectivity to its Versal adaptive SoC portfolio for the first time. Select Versal RF Series devices will ship with native support for UCIe 1.1 interfaces, allowing specialized chiplets to be co-packaged with the SoC and to communicate over a low-power, high-bandwidth in-package link.

In April of this year, IBM announced a strategic collaboration with Arm, promising to “shape the future of enterprise computing”. Now, almost five months later, the company unveiled the next-generation processor for its IBM Z and LinuxONE systems, marking the first mainframe silicon whose cores natively and concurrently execute Arm and IBM instructions. IBM and Arm call their dual-architecture design "revolutionary" for its ability to bring Arm-native applications to IBM's mainframes and servers.

A PCB design can be electrically correct yet still create significant problems during fabrication. Many of these problems are not discovered on the production line. They are identified earlier, during the engineering review that converts design files into manufacturing data. This pre-production review, often involving CAM and DFM checks, is where design intent meets process capability. On multilayer FR-4 boards in particular, several recurring issues tend to emerge.

Bourns has introduced three additions to its FBP Series of LTCC bandpass filters designed for 5G C-band RF front-end applications. The new models include the FBP1604N470L3, FBP1608N375L3, and FBP2007N470L3, each built to support high-frequency wireless designs operating from 3,300 MHz to 5,000 MHz. The parts are aimed at front-end circuits where filtering performance, board space, and frequency coverage all matter simultaneously.

On Sunday, Falcon Heavy shot the latest NASA mirrored observatory towards its stellar home for the next half-decade. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a 2.4-meter-diameter mirror infrared observatory built to accomplish two very different jobs at once. The first is cosmology: Roman will survey enormous swaths of the sky, observing and tracking how galaxies cluster. As it watches light bend around massive objects, Roman will help us better understand what dark energy really is.

MaxLinear, well known for RF and mixed-signal products, recently introduced a comprehensive new portfolio of products for rack-level control-plane architectures for AI, cloud, enterprise, and edge infrastructure. Dubbed RackCommander, the new portfolio collects the company’s existing products, including the Coronado and Laguna USB-UART, and groups them by rack controller functions. Server operators need an AI rack management solution that stays accessible even when the production network is down.