Electronics & Software

Elma Bustronic (Fremont, CA) has developed a 3U 32-bit CompactPCI (cPCI) backplane in a 6-slot size. It features hundreds of I/O pins across the backplane that are undefined on the 64-bit version. The backplanes are PICMG 2.16-compliant and utilize controlled-impedance stripline design resulting in virtually zero...

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers have developed a new energy storage device that resembles a sheet of black paper. The nanoengineered battery is lightweight, ultra-thin, flexible, and geared toward meeting the design and energy requirements of tomorrowís gadgets, implantable medical equipment, and transportation...

NASA Tech Briefs' new Digital Design Center, sponsored by Autodesk, provides a one-stop source for the latest information on how to design better products faster. Featured on the site is the first in a series of exclusive excerpts from the new book, "Better Be Running! Tools to Drive Design Success" by Dr. Ronald Hollis, the...

The scenario: You’ve been assigned the task of designing and producing an embedded device. You’ve been given time, cost and size constraints that impact your design. An initial analysis of the requirements leads you to the conclusion that a 32-bit processor with a relatively small amount of RAM...

X/P Merge is a computer program that estimates ground-surface elevations and vegetation heights from multiple sets of data acquired by the GeoSAR instrument [a terrain-mapping synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) system that operates in the X and P bands]. X/P Merge software combines data from X-...

Two algorithms for processing the digitized readings of electronic noses, and computer programs to implement the algorithms, have been devised in a continuing effort to increase the utility of electronic noses as means of identifying airborne compounds and measuring their concentrations. One...

FRONTIER is a computer program that functions as a front end for any of a variety of other software of both the artificial intelligence (AI) and conventional data-processing types. As used here, "front end" signifies interface software needed for acquiring and preprocessing data and making the...

Improved, solid-state photoelectrochemical cells for converting solar radiation to electricity have been proposed. (In general, photoelectrochemical cells convert incident light to electricity through electrochemical reactions.) It is predicted that in comparison with state-of-the-art photoelectrochemical...