Silicon carbide (SiC) devices belong to the group of wide bandgap semiconductors and have several characteristics that make them attractive for a wide range of power applications.

Compared to silicon devices, SiC components have higher voltage and current capacity, lower losses, larger breakdown field strength, faster-switching, and ability to withstand high-temperature conditions.

Construction, characteristics, and benefits of SiC power devices

Bluetooth offers low-cost, energy-efficient and easy to deploy indoor positioning and tracking technology. This helps to easily locate or track items and people, find directions and other important information within buildings and facilities such as airports, shopping malls, and others.

Usually, the location information has the potential to open up other opportunities. For example, the location services technologies can be integrated with others, such as IoT, analytics, and others to trigger specific actions based on a user or object’s locations. Typical use cases include sending personalized messages to the users, powering an HVAC system, sending custom marketing information, etc.

The benefits of using Bluetooth include its low cost, high energy efficiency, working independently of the network, less interference, easy to deploy and integrate into the Bluetooth ecosystem, and more. …

FANUC, a leading robot manufacturer in Japan, has a 22-factory complex where they use the ‘lights-out’ manufacturing concept to build their products - with very little or no human intervention. Using this approach, FANUC utilizes its automated industrial robots to create over 22,000 new robots per month for customers such as Apple, Tesla, and other companies.

Other manufactures are adopting this ‘lights out’ manufacturing concept — referred to as such because robots can work without lights, HVAC, coffee breaks, days off and other conditions that human workers require.

Today, automated robots have great potential in electronics manufacturing, and are applicable to almost any stage of the entire production cycle. Typical application areas include component fabrication, pick and place, assembling miniature components on PCBs, applying adhesives, inspections, testing, packing and more. …

5G is the fifth-generation wireless technology with the potential to transform communication systems. It offers higher speeds, low latency and other benefits that will open up and power a wide range of existing and emerging technologies.

The 5G network delivers faster connections with much larger capacity and low latency (less than 1 millisecond compared to 30 milliseconds for 4G and 100 milliseconds for 3G).

Providers promise theoretical speeds up to a maximum of 10Gps, which is about a hundred times the 100Mbps 4G peak speed. Although the actual speeds will vary according to a range of factors and are unlikely to reach the maximum, the technology will offer a much better experience and opportunities than existing wireless technologies. …

When it comes to testing a circuit assembly, you can test with simulation and you can test in-circuit. A boundary scan test is something else entirely, allowing you to test the state of individual traces while the circuit is active.

A boundary-scan test is a technique of checking ICs and interconnects on PCBs. It follows a testing architecture and procedures defined by the Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) under the IEEE 1149.1 standard.

The boundary-scan test (BST) or JTAG, enables testing of complex ICs and boards where physical access of pins is difficult or impossible when using other methods. Instead of probing of each pin mechanically, the BST relies on a four-wire hardware interface to send and receive specific test signals into the integrated circuits and boards under test. …

Building electronic circuits within a system-on-chip (SoC) has benefits such as improving compatibility and efficiency while reducing space requirements and speed of development. In IoT, including the wireless technology in the SoC helps to overcome implementation challenges such as network incompatibility, integration, and reliability issues.

Edge devices or sensors without inbuilt wireless connectivity often require additional and expensive hardware to connect to the wireless networks. For example, sensors using the Bluetooth, Zigbee or Zware must be paired with a smartphone or other form of gateway for them to connect to the servers or the Cloud. …

Testing printed circuit boards (PCBs) throughout the design and manufacturing processes is essential in ensuring quality products. It avoids situations where designers and manufacturers realize that the product is faulty at the last minute, while the boards are in full production, or already in the market.

Even after following proper design and manufacturing processes, there is always a risk of defects, bugs, human errors at the prototype stages. Identifying and addressing these issues before the final product is critical in ensuring the performance, functionality, and reliability of the products. …

Two or three decades ago, it was a privilege to connect a work computer to the Internet, and it was only possible through wired connections. During its early days, the Internet was purely for emails and work-related activities.

Today, this has changed and the number of internet-connected devices is more than the entire human population. Technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are seeing more and more non-computing devices joining the internet.

The number of connected devices is increasing and expected to pass the 20-billion mark by 2020, according to Gartner Research.

Today, a majority of business leaders believe that the IIoT technology will be a critical component for success in a wide range of industries. …