Before you buy a car, you probably take it on a test drive. There are on-line “virtual test drives”, but they are usually just videos showing someone else driving the car … there is no user interaction! That is no longer the case when buying automotive electronics components. With SystemVision Cloud, semiconductor manufacturers can provide far more realistic, interactive “test drives” for their customers.

We have been asked by several of our customers for instructions on creating “Live” (a.k.a. “tunable”) designs and embedding them in their own web-pages. These component manufactures appreciate the accessibility and customer-education value of these interactive reference designs, for demonstrating key features and effective usage of their devices, in the context to the customer’s application!

This article describes a method for creating this content. It is also product of that approach!

Virtual Teardown

When I saw the original advertisement  for the Ember coffee mug, I was drawn to it like a Seattleite to a Starbucks. I knew that I had to get one and would then inevitably spend my weekend trying to figure out precisely how it works.

A versatile and effective modeling capability is available in our HyperLynx product family. It uses complex-pole fitting to extract simulation-ready models from measured frequency response data. This can be useful in a wide range of engineering design applications, from system level transfer function (signal flow) analysis, to modeling component interactions in a circuit simulation. The following example illustrates both of these aspects in a practical application: Design of a motion control loop that includes a flexible structure.

In a previous blog post, I provided a number of Energy Harvesting example designs that could be modeled and simulated in SystemVision. These included electrodynamic, thermal and solar energy harvesting for Industrial IoT and Automotive applications. Subsequent to that posting, we added a rich new capability to SystemVision, "Live Designs".

Electric Power Steering (EPS) systems provide a challenging control design problem for system integrators. Because the system directly interacts with the driver’s hands, reducing vibration is a must.

A colleague of mine, a thermal design engineer, once made a comment that I’ll never forget. I was simulating a power electronics circuit and I placed a scope probe on a transistor model and plotted the power dissipation. Its value was of course changing over time, as the circuit’s operating state was varied during the simulated test scenario. He exclaimed: “You have a Power Fairy!”

Ever since the CAN specification was released many decades ago, designers have pushed their network configurations beyond the conservative limits of the standard, driven by manufacturablity, customization flexibility and other non-technical reasons. With thorough engineering analysis, including electrical simulation of the physical layer, they were able to design communication systems that meet both demanding performance and economic requirements.

ON Semiconductor uses SystemVision^® Cloud to offer customers a comprehensive web-based design/simulation environment. By developing VHDL-AMS product models, ON's application engineers provide cloud-based product support, including interactive schematics and application notes, tunable simulations of pre-designed solutions, and free-form application designs. Collaborative workgroups let product application engineers work concurrently with their customers in private design workspaces, solving real design-in problems in the end-application circuit.

This handbook presents an overview of the most important DC-DC converter topologies. The main objective is to guide a designer in selecting the topology with its associated semiconductor devices. Be sure to interact with the embedded designs below, and feel free to take them into your own workspace to explore further!

SystemVision Cloud is all about modeling, simulation, and waveforms – lots of waveforms! We make it easy for you to view your waveforms by clicking on the probe icon, on the application toolbar, and dragging probes onto any wire or component.

The SystemVision Cloud application environment opens automatically within your web browser when you go to create a new design or take a closer look at a previously existing one. If you are going to spend more time in-depth designing, modeling, or simulating, it may be helpful to dedicate more of your screen space for this. SystemVision Cloud supports a full-screen mode as shown below

Go Full Screen

To go full screen, just click the window button as shown here.

When using SystemVision Cloud in modeling and design, the results of simulations can be valuable for a variety of reasons. Whether your using SystemVision Cloud's multi-discipline simulation engine to measure voltage or velocity, the output data can be useful and applicable outside of the application environment. Let's take a look at how to download simulation results.

This is the first part of a three-part series on special handling of PWM waveforms. The first two parts deal with the large amount of data involved. The last part deals with precise characterization in the presence of switching cycle “noise.” I am honored to post this article, which was created by one of our talented community members, a modeling and simulation expert and my friend, Norm Elias.

Download Energy Harvesting datasheet

We have recently added a number of new electro-thermal models to our Component Library. These models represent devices that are either temperature sensing/control elements, or electronic components that dissipate significant power and may require thermal analysis. These models include:

In this final installment of my series on TDFS (Time Domain Frequency Sweep) analysis, I’ll focus on measuring impedance vs. frequency. I’ll first demonstrate the method by showing the measurement of input impedance for a switching power converter. Then I’ll extend that method to analyze the “impedance stability” of a distributed power system. Power systems may include many DC to DC converters, some acting as sources and other as loads.