Engineering a green mindset and sustainable future Growing up in the pre-2000s era with a power electronics engineer for a father, my family’s first introduction to power and energy efficiency efforts was primarily analog. The word “vampire” was associated with a TV show called Dark Shadows; it had nothing to do with standby power back…

In this issue Smarter, safer, cheaper: how Ethernet will enable the car of the future The implementation of Ethernet as a universal standard throughout the automotive industry can optimize vehicle performance by reducing the number of electronic control units (ECUs) and associated wiring, thus enabling a smarter, cheaper, and safer future car. Zonal E/E will…

Test goes beyond the bench Many, if not most, design engineers use bench test equipment — oscilloscopes, multimeters, spectrum analyzers, function generators, and so on. Test doesn’t, however, end at your bench; it goes onto the production floor. In production, test is about making sure that the manufacturing process operates within tolerances. That is, if…

Bigger name, same technical content Welcome to EE World’s 5G, Wireless, and Wired Communications Handbook. What’s this? A longer name compared to 2021 and 2022? In truth, we at EE World have for years covered many forms of electrical communications. It’s time the handbook name better describes what we do. 5G is much more than…

The Origami of the Internet of Things Perhaps you see the connection between origami and the IoT right away. It only occurred to me while watching a documentary the other night, opening my mind further to the symbiotic relationship between art and science. The film “Between the Folds, The Science of Art, The Art of…

In this issue: Extended Power Range GaN-based USB-C adapters and chargers deliver increased performance An innovative, highly integrated combo controller for the joint control of the PFC and the hybrid flyback stage. How to control dc microgrids Microgrids are a great way to power locations where grid connections are unreliable, though it can be tricky…

Goodbye To Used EV Sales? There were some interesting developments at the recent and aptly named Battery Show near Detroit for those who follow battery technology. One in particular came from the Michigan-based Our Next Energy (ONE). The fi rm released details about a 240- Ah prismatic cell battery it has designed and which is…

Next EV Anxiety: Cold Weather If you wandered around the Society of Automotive Engineers’ annual trade show earlier this year, you would have seen a number of ideas aimed at cutting power consumption in electric vehicles. One development in that category was from a company called BetterFrost. It devised a more energy efficient windshield defroster.…

A frequency you can count on There are few constants in life, but what few there are might include death, taxes, and a U.S. grid frequency that doesn’t vary by more than ±0.5 Hz. However, the certainty of the grid frequency is coming into question, thanks to the rising percentage of renewable energy sources that…

5G IN 2022: AN ENGINEER’S PERSPECTIVE Welcome to EE World’s 2022 5G Handbook. We gathered a new collection of articles, some 15 in total that appear in the electronic version. The articles in this year’s handbook look at 5G across hardware and software. If you’re an IoT device designer that needs to connect to a…

How to turn off a smart meter the hard way Potential cyber attacks have a lot of people worried thanks to the recent conflict in Ukraine. So it might be appropriate to review what happened when cybersecurity fi rm FireEye’s Mandiant team demonstrated how to infiltrate the network of a North American utility. During this…

Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a flying battery! According to a company called Joby Aviation, in a few years you’ll be able to summon up an air taxi on your Uber phone app for trips of 25 miles or so. And you won’t have to feel guilty about the…

Talk of EV fires still smolders The latest figures from the National Fire Protection Association show that only about 20% of all vehicle fires arise from problems in the vehicle electrical system—most fires have something to do with the fuel system. Seeing as electric vehicles will do away with problematic petrol, you might wonder whether…

SAY GOODBYE TO CROSS-COUNTRY ROAD TRIPS OFFICIALS ESTIMATE it will cost $50 billion to field the chargers needed for the expected number of electric vehicles on U.S. roads by 2030. But it’s possible that spending every penny of this amount won’t prevent the extinction of the cross-country road trip. Here’s the logic behind that statement:…

MICROWAVES AND THE HAVANA SYNDROME The National Academy of Sciences recently released its conclusions about what sickened dozens of American Embassy diplomats in Cuba, a phenomenon dubbed the Havana Syndrome. Though the panel reached no definitive conclusion, it found pulsed RF (a.k.a. directed microwave energy) was the most likely cause. Panel members could not rule…

WELCOME TO OUR FIRST 5G HANDBOOK 5G is more than another wireless technology. It’s changed the radio, the access network, the spectrum, and the network core. It might even change our lives. That’s why EE World created 5G Technology World. We cover 5G technologies on engineering terms. The site launched in January 2020, just as…

Worst suspicions confirmed: The terrible security of internet routers Here’s the latest IDT security nightmare: All of the wireless routers through which most loT traffic passes are probably vul­nerable to botnets and other kinds of security breaches. That’s the conclusion of researchers at Fraunhofer FKIE in Germany who analyzed 127 different routers sold by seven…

Battery breakthrough fatigue For some cheap thrills, try Googling the words “battery breakthrough.” You’ll be presented with page after page of articles breathlessly chronicling one research result after another in energy storage. But you might wonder why, with so many earth-shattering developments, electric vehicles can’t travel 1,000 miles before needing a recharge. The reason: It…

Why lithium batteries won’t fill up landfills Consumers with an inclination toward sustainability have been bummed out over recent revelations that most of the plastics they have carefully separated, washed, and placed in recycling bins typically end up in the local dump. So it may come as good news that dead lithium batteries are increasingly…

Latest connected car feature: Germicidal lights A year ago, had you brought up the idea of adding germicidal lights to a connected car, you probably would have gotten back facial expressions suggesting you’ d lost your mind. Today, the same idea would be more likely to engender a lot of head nodding. Who knew a…

Will your good samaritanism in the pandemic buy you a lawsuit? IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE INDIVIDUALS voluntarily spending your time on technology to help abate the COVID 19 pandemic, consider the experience of the vacuum cleaner company Dyson in the UK. Company founder James Dyson estimates his firm spent about $25 million and…

No, IoT RF radiation won’t cause a pandemic I once had a lengthy exchange with a guy who claimed RF from WiFi was making him sick. After numerous emails back and forth in which I tried to correct his misconceptions about WiFi signals, I gently suggested that he go find an RF screen room and…

Why we don’t need energy efficiency standards for lighting HEADLINES WERE MADE RECENTLY when two national associations dropped a lawsuit attempting to squash light bulb efficiency standards in California. The California standards supposedly save Californians billions of dollars on their energy bills and avoid millions of tons of carbon- warming pollution. The suit was brought…

How to electrocute yourself in a few easy steps Here’s a fun project: Pop open an old microwave oven and scavenge the high-voltage transformer powering the cavity magnetron vacuum tube. Then use it to make yourself a Lichtenberg generator. But be sure there’s someone nearby to call an ambulance. Lichtenberg generators are used to create…

V2Clueless – Next generation of connected apps If you had been watching the Saturday Night Live TV show in mid January of 2012, you would have seen a skit called the Headz Up App. It was an ad for a fictional app aimed at people so distracted by texting on their smartphone that they were…