Limited time offer! Electronic components enjoy a 10% discount!

0

Blog

Daily Electronics Knowledge Lesson 15 - Power Factor Correction

Power Factor Correction (PFC) is a technique used to improve the power factor of electrical equipment. The power factor is a measure of the phase difference between current and voltage, and is typically used to assess the efficiency of a power system. Ideally, the power factor should be equal to 1, indicating that the current and voltage are in phase and there is no phase difference.

Working principle:

The purpose of power factor correction is to use electronic components to change the phase relationship between current and voltage, so as to make the power factor close to 1. Common power factor correction techniques include series and parallel correction.

 

1. Power factor correction in series: Adding capacitors at the output end of the power supply to improve the power factor by flowing current between the capacitors and the load in series.

 

2. Power factor correction in parallel: Adding inductors or other electronic components at the input end of the load to improve the power factor by flowing current between the inductors and the load in parallel.

 

Features:

- Improving the power factor of the power system, reducing the loss of reactive power, and improving the efficiency of the power system.

- Reducing the load on the power grid and reducing energy consumption.

- Reducing voltage fluctuations in the power grid and overheating of power equipment caused by low power factor.

 

Advantages:

- Improve the efficiency of the power system and reduce energy consumption;

- Reduce the load on the grid and lower power losses;

- Reduce overheating and damage to power equipment.

 

Disadvantages:

- Requires additional costs for installing and maintaining power factor correction equipment;

- May introduce some harmonic issues;

- Requires customized design based on different load conditions and may not be suitable for all power equipment.

 

Industry Scope:

Power factor correction can be widely applied in various industries, especially those that require a large amount of power supply, such as factories, mines, energy industry, construction industry, etc. In addition, equipment that requires efficient energy utilization, such as motors, variable frequency drives, UPS (uninterruptible power supply), LED lighting, etc., can also adopt power factor correction technology to improve work efficiency and reduce energy consumption.

 

With years of deep cultivation in the industry, Heqingele is committed to building a smart procurement platform, providing customers with high-quality and cost-effective electronic components and comprehensive services. Heqingele's online mall offers over 12,000,000 products to choose from! Feel free to inquire about prices and datasheets!

https://www.heqingele.com/

Daily Electronics Knowledge Lesson 14 - Gate driver

The gate driver is an electronic device used to drive the charge on the gate electrode to control the conduction and cutoff of a field-effect transistor (FET) or a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). It changes the gate voltage to alter the conduction state of the transistor.

 

The characteristics of the gate driver include high-speed driving capability, low power consumption, high reliability, and precise control parameters.

The advantages of gate driver are:

1. High-speed driving capability: The gate driver can quickly change the transistor's conduction state, allowing it to respond to input signals in a short period of time.

2. Low power consumption: The gate driver adopts a low power circuit design, which can reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency.

3. High reliability: The gate driver uses reliable circuit design and stable operating parameters, providing high reliability and stability.

4. Precise control parameters: The gate driver can precisely control the transistor's conduction and cutoff states to meet specific application requirements.

 

The disadvantages of gate drivers are:

1. High cost: Due to the need for designing and manufacturing specific circuits and components, gate drivers are relatively expensive.

2. Complexity: The design and operation of gate drivers are relatively complex, requiring specialized knowledge and experience.

3. Limitations: Gate drivers have a relatively limited range of applications, mainly used in fields that require precise control of transistor conduction states, such as power electronics, communications, automotive electronics, etc.

 

The industry scope of gate drivers includes, but is not limited to:

1. Power electronics: Gate drivers are widely used in power electronic devices such as power converters, inverters, AC motor drivers, etc.

2. Communication: Gate drivers are used in communication equipment to drive RF power amplifiers, filters, power amplifiers, etc.

3. Automotive electronics: Gate drivers are used in automotive electronics for applications including motor control, battery management systems, in-vehicle electronic devices, etc.

4. Industrial automation: Gate drivers are used in industrial automation to control and drive various types of motors and actuators.

5. Renewable energy: Gate drivers have wide applications in renewable energy fields such as solar inverters, wind turbine control, etc.

In conclusion, gate drivers have extensive applications in various industries and are widely used in electronic devices and systems that require control of transistor conduction states.

Industry trends:The trough of passive components has passed, and manufacturers are optimistic about the gradual recovery of demand.

 

The passive component industry has undergone more than a year of inventory adjustment. The current consensus in the industry is that the "low point" has passed, and inventory levels are now generally below a healthy level. Industry players are waiting for the market to recover.

According to reports from Taiwanese media, passive component manufacturers are now more cautious in adjusting production capacity. After realizing something was amiss in the first half of last year, everyone started reducing capacity utilization and strictly controlling output to maintain a balance between "supply, inventory, and prices."

In terms of demand, distributors, unnamed passive component manufacturers, and EMS manufacturers all indicate that although the inventory of consumer electronics such as mobile phones, notebooks, and PCs has been largely depleted, the recovery in demand is only "slight" and not very noticeable. Orders mainly consist of urgent or short-term types.

Regarding inventory, supply chains in China and Taiwan all state that after a long period of inventory digestion, stocks of various applications have been almost completely depleted, awaiting a recovery in end-user demand.

According to CMoney's statistics, the inventory amount and inventory turnover days of passive component manufacturers in the second quarter have generally fallen significantly compared to the same period last year. Yageo's proportion of high-end niche products has climbed to over 75%, resulting in higher inventory turnover days due to more special specifications. However, it is understood that Yageo's inventory turnover days for standard products are less than two months.

Huaxin Technology, which has a relatively high proportion of standard products, is also making efforts to reduce inventory. According to CMoney's statistics, Huaxin Technology's inventory turnover days in the last quarter decreased to 94.57 days, compared to 116.8 days in the fourth quarter of last year and 100.33 days in the first quarter of this year. It has fallen below 100 days, approaching the lower limit of a healthy level.

Regarding the market outlook, manufacturers also believe that Q3 may be on par with Q2 and are optimistic about the gradual recovery of market demand.

Murata Manufacturing Company previously anticipated that smartphone demand would slowly improve in the second half of this year, and the annual performance would remain unchanged. They have a positive outlook on the trend of automotive electrification, which will significantly increase the demand for MLCCs.

Yageo estimates that the performance in the third quarter of this year will be similar to the second quarter, with gross profit margin and operating profit margin remaining stable or slightly increasing. The utilization rate of high-end specialty product capacity should be comparable to the second quarter, possibly exceeding 70%.

The chairman of Walsin Technology previously analyzed that the second half of the year would return to normal seasonal performance, and the overall prosperity for the year is expected to remain stable. The vice chairman added that the demand for automotive and communication products is good. The company continues to invest in specialty products in Taiwan, China, and Malaysia, and expands its customer base in Europe and America, focusing on new products such as satellite communication and automotive.

Suppliers in the upstream of passive components are also indicators of the industry. Qinkai, a conductive paste manufacturer, believes that the majority of the industry chain still consists of short orders, with limited order visibility. However, due to the low operating base in the second half of last

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                               Information source: China Electronic Components Association

 

Daily Electronics Knowledge Lesson 13 - Serial/Parallel Converters

A serial/parallel converter is an interface circuit in high-speed data communication. Serial/parallel converters are very common in the field of high-speed data communication. They play an important role not only in optical fiber data transmission, but also in short-distance chip interconnection, similar to the importance of twisted pair cables in networking. They can effectively reduce the number of pins and traces, and improve the data transmission rate.

 

 

Principle:

Serializers and deserializers achieve data transmission by converting parallel data into serial data (serializers) or converting serial data into parallel data (deserializers).

 

Main structure:

Source synchronous interface: This structure can use a reference clock source as the clock for capturing data, or it can receive data using the clock sent by the data transmitter, so a clock data recovery circuit is not necessary. This structure can solve two main problems caused by parallel connections. Firstly, by serializing the parallel data to k data bits (reducing the number of channels to k), the physical consumption is reduced. At the receiving end, the k data bits are deserialized back to n data bits.

Pre-clock: A high-speed clock signal path is added between the two chips. The clock source only needs to provide a lower frequency clock signal, which is multiplied by the phase-locked loop inside the two chips to the required clock frequency for sending and receiving data. The clock signal output by chip 1, generated by the phase-locked loop, is used to send data and is also connected as an input to chip 2 to capture data. This improved structure is called a pre-clock structure.

Data grouping by difference: Since the device receiving the differential signal determines whether a data bit is 1 or 0 based on the difference between the two signals, rather than the individual signal's voltage level, differential-driven circuits tend to have linear current consumption and produce less noise than single-ended signals. The structure using differential output, as shown in the diagram, effectively increases the eye diagram's opening angle for a given clock connection path by only pairing with a certain number of data channels. To expand the opening angle of the eye diagram, the clock tree and the path from each data flip-flop to the clock output should be shared by as many circuits as possible, and the driving of the clock should be equivalent to the driving of the data. Ideally, a clock driver should drive the clock signal to the output driver while also driving the clock input to each data flip-flop, but this becomes more difficult as the number of data bus bits increases. The farther apart two circuits are, the greater the impact of PVT, and the more circuits cannot be shared by the clock distribution network.

 

 

With years of deep cultivation in the industry, Heqingele is committed to building a smart procurement platform, providing customers with high-quality and cost-effective electronic components and comprehensive services. Heqingele's online mall offers over 12,000,000 products to choose from! Feel free to inquire about prices and datasheets!

https://www.heqingele.com/

 

Daily Electronics Knowledge Lesson 12 -UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter)

UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter) is a serial communication protocol used for data exchange between electronic devices. Its principle is to transmit and receive signals by transferring bits and framing the data.

The purpose of UART is to enable data exchange between devices. It can send data to another device or receive data from another device using serial communication. UART is commonly used in computer peripherals, such as serial communication and Bluetooth communication.

 

 

Example of a UART frame:

In this diagram, one byte is sent, consisting of a start bit, followed by eight data bits (D0-7), and two stop bit, for a 11-bit UART frame. The number of data and formatting bits, the presence or absence of a parity bit, the form of parity (even or odd) and the transmission speed must be pre-agreed by the communicating parties. The "stop bit" is actually a "stop period"; the stop period of the transmitter may be arbitrarily long. It cannot be shorter than a specified amount, usually 1 to 2 bit times. The receiver requires a shorter stop period than the transmitter. At the end of each data frame, the receiver stops briefly to wait for the next start bit. It is this difference which keeps the transmitter and receiver synchronized.

 

 

The advantages of UART include:

1. Simplicity: UART implementation is relatively simple and does not require complex protocols and hardware support.

2. Low cost: UART requires only a small amount of hardware resources and can be implemented in many embedded systems.

3. Real-time performance: UART has a fast speed and can meet real-time data transmission requirements.

 

The disadvantages of UART include:

1. Slow transfer rate: UART communication speed is relatively slow and cannot meet the real-time transmission requirements of large amount of data.

2. Requires additional clock signal: UART requires an external clock signal, which limits applications with high clock requirements.

3. Does not support multi-point communication: UART usually only supports point-to-point communication and cannot achieve simultaneous communication among multiple devices.

 

Common industries where UART is used include but are not limited to:

1. Data exchange between electronic devices: UARTis commonly used for data transmission between computers, embedded systems, and sensors.

2. Industrial control: UART is often used in industrial automation control systems, such as PLCs, sensors, and drivers.

3. IoT (Internet of Things): UART is used for data transmission between IoT devices, such as sensor nodes and controllers.

 

It is worth noting that as technology continues to evolve, UART has been gradually replaced by faster and more powerful communication protocols, such as SPI, I2C, and CAN. Therefore, when choosing a communication protocol, it is important to consider the specific application requirements and characteristics to determine the most suitable protocol.

 

With years of deep cultivation in the industry, Heqingele is committed to building a smart procurement platform, providing customers with high-quality and cost-effective electronic components and comprehensive services. Heqingele's online mall offers over 12,000,000 products to choose from! Feel free to inquire about prices and datasheets!

https://www.heqingele.com/