designideas

READERS SOLVE DESIGN PROBLEMS

EDITED BY BRAD THOMPSON AND FRAN GRANVILLE

Hardened Ethernet cable goes underground

Philip Freidin, Fliptronics, Sunnyvale, CA
An application required the extension of Ethernet (IEEE 802.3u-1995) service from a home to a garage, a distance of approximately 300 ft. Wireless communication using IEEE 802.11a/b/g equipment had proved unreliable due to the buildings construction, which comprises stucco over embedded wire mesh. In effect, the buildings walls form Faraday cages that attenuate radiated signals. Straight-line aerial deployment of the Ethernet cable between buildings would have required installation of support poles, and simply laying the cable on the surface of the ground would expose the cable to damage from automobiles, hungry pets, and inquisitive children. At first glance, burial of the cable appeared impractical due to the presence of a large concrete surface between the buildings. However, an alternate route through an adjacent garden would avoid tunneling beneath the concrete slab but would expose the cable to environmental hazards, such as spade work and burrowing animals. This Design Idea describes how to environmentally harden a Category 5 UTP (unshielded-twisted-pair) cable conforming to EIA/TIA 568B and ISO/IEC 11801:1995 thats terminated with RJ-45 connectors (ISO 8877). Without adding repeaters, a Category 5 Ethernet cable can extend to 100m, or a little more than 300 ft. In this application, the cable run comprises 100 ft of exposed cable, 100 ft of garden-grade protected cable, and 100 ft more of exposed cable. To apply the idea, you have to find a way to protect and handle the exposed 200 ft of cable. Depending on your installations requirements, you will need various numbers and lengths of the following parts: a 100-ft-long garden hose whose fittings conform to the ANSI/ ASME B1.20.7-1991.75-11.5 NH thread-form standard; a 4-Gbyte SCSI disk drive, which need not be functional; a continuous, 300-ft-long Category 5 Ethernet cable terminated in RJ-45 connectors; a 120-ft-long, nylon twine; a 5-in.-long, electricalgrade, adhesive-backed tape; a 2-in.steel, socket-head-cap, 1/4-20-thread machine screw (ANSI/ASME B1.11989); and two bricks. To construct the design, uncoil and stretch the garden hose as straight as possible, perhaps using a driveway as a work surface. Place a brick on each end of the hose to prevent it from curling. If you use only one length of garden hose, cut off and discard the hose fittings. Using Torx or Philips screwdrivers as appropriate, dismantle the 4Gbyte SCSI disk drive by removing all of the screws that retain the drives cover. If the cover resists removal, look for screws beneath labels. Remove the drives head-positioning magnets, which can exert a strong pull on nearby ferrous objects. Use caution to avoid pinching your fingers between the magnets and the steel surfaces. Discard the remainder of the SCSI drive. Securely tie the nylon twine to the 1 /4-20 steel machine screw and insert the screw into one end of the hose. Apply the magnet to the hoses exterior to attract the machine screw. Slide the magnet along the hose to pull the nylon twine through the hose. When the screw reaches the

D Is Inside
76 Shunt regulator improves power amplifiers current-limit accuracy 78 Low-power, super-regenerative receiver targets 433-MHz ISM band What are your design problems and solutions? Publish them here and receive $150! Send your Design Ideas to edndesignideas@ reedbusiness.com.

hoses far end, untie the twine and save the screw for future use. To ease manipulation of the Category 5 cable, deploy it from either its original dispenser box or a spool mounted on a suitable axle so that the cable can easily unwind. Securely attach the twine to one end of the Category 5 cable. Walk to the far end of the hose and gently pull the cable through the hose. If you encounter excessive resistance, investigate the cause and remove any cable kinks or feeder-end snags. When the cable appears at the pulling end, stop for a moment. Go to the other end of the hose and wrap an inch or two of electrical tape around the cable where its just about to enter the hose. Return to the far end of the hose and continue pulling the cable through the hose. Stop pulling when you see the electrical-tape marker. You now have a 300-ft-long Category 5 cable whose central 100 feet the garden hose protects. If you decide to protect more of the cable, repeat the process by feeding the twine through a second length of hose. Use the hoses couplings to make a watertight joint between lengths. If you take this approach, make sure that you properly orient the hose segments before you spend too much time threading the twine through the hose.EDN

FEBRUARY 2, 2006 | EDN 75

designideas
Shunt regulator improves power amplifiers current-limit accuracy
John Guy, Maxim Integrated Products Inc, Sunnyvale, CA
Adding current-limiting circuitry to a power amplifiers or a linear voltage regulators emitter-follower output stage protects both the output transistor and the downstream circuitry from excessive-current damage. Figure 1 shows the classic currentlimiter circuit: Transistor Q2 senses the output-current-induced voltage drop across ballast resistor R2 and diverts base current from Darlington-connected transistors Q1 and Q3. Transistor Q2s base-emitter voltage, VBE, sets the circuits current-limit threshold. Unfortunately, a small-signal transistors VBE exhibits a temperature coefficient of 2 mV/C, which causes a substantial variation in the current-limiting threshold over the circuits operating-temperature range. You can improve the circuits performance by replacing Q2 with IC1, an adjustable shunt regulator (Figure 2). With an input threshold voltage of 0.6V, the MAX8515 allows use of a lower value for current-sense resistor R2 and thus helps minimize R2s power and thermal losses. Alternative commonly available shunt regulators present input voltages of 1.25 to 2.5V. In addition, a separate power-supply input connection allows the MAX8515 to maintain accuracy when its internal output transistor approaches saturation. Figure 3 compares current-limit accuracy for the circuits of Figure 1 and Figure 2 over an operating-temperature range of 40 to 85C. Neglecting the temperature coefficient of sense resistor R2, the shunt-regulator version maintains its output current to an accuracy of better than 2%, and the smallsignal-transistor version exhibits a 25% current variation over the operating-temperature range.EDN

15V

10 mA

Q1 2N3904

Q4 2N3906 VIN Q2 2N3904

R1 510

Q3 MJL4281A R2 0.5 OUTPUT

Figure 1 A small-signal transistor, Q2, provides an output-current limit for this emitter-follower power amplifier.

1.6 15V 10 mA Q1 2N3904 4 Q4 2N3906 IC1 MAX8515 2 1 3 5 Q3 MJL4281A R2 0.5 OUTPUT 1.5 2N3904 1.4 CURRENT 1.3 LIMIT 1.2 (A) 1.1 1.0 40 15 10 35 60 TEMPERATURE (C) 85

MAX8515

VIN

Figure 2 Substituting a shunt regulator, IC1, for Q2 in Figure 1 improves the output-current-limit accuracy.

Figure 3 Output-current-versus-temperature plots for the circuits of figures 1 and 2 show improved accuracy for the shunt-regulated circuit (bottom trace) over the discrete-transistor version (top trace).

76 EDN | FEBRUARY 2, 2006

designideas
Low-power, super-regenerative receiver targets 433-MHz ISM band
Cedric Mlange, Johan Bauwelinck, and Jan Vandewege, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Designers often choose a superregenerative receiverdespite its frequency instability and poor selectivityfor battery-powered, shortrange, wireless applications in which power consumption is a major issue. Examples include remote-keylessaccess systems, automobile alarms, biomedical monitors, sensor networks, and computer peripherals (Reference 1). A super-regenerative detector can also demodulate frequency-modulated signals through slope detection. Tune the detector so that the signal falls on the slope of the detector circuits selectivity curve. This Design Idea presents a super-regenerative receiver that consumes less than 1 mW and operates in the license-free, 433-MHz ISM (industrial/scientific/medical) band. In its simplest form, a super-regenerative receiver comprises an RF oscillator that a quench signal, or lower frequency waveform, periodically switches on and off. When the quench signal switches on the oscillator, oscillations start to build up with an exponentially growing envelope. Applying an external signal at the oscillators nominal frequency speeds the growth of the envelope of these oscillations. Thus, the duty cycle of the quenched oscillators amplitude changes in proportion to the amplitude of the applied RF signal (Figure 1). A super-regenerative detector can receive AM signals and is well-suited for detecting OOK (on/off-keyed) data signals. The super-regenerative detector constitutes a sampled-data system; that is, each quench period samples and amplifies the RF signal. To accurately reconstruct the original modulation, the quench generator must operate at a frequency a few times higher than the oscillator. (Note that increasing C1 and C2 improves the oscillators frequency stability at the expense of increased power consumption.) Cascode-connected transistors Q2 and Q3 form an antenna amplifier that improves the receivers noise figure and provides some RF isolation between the oscillator and the antenna. To conserve power, the amplifier operates only during oscillation growth. Based on a Schmitt-trigger circuit, the quench generator switches the oscillator and RF-amplifier stage. To improve sensitivity, the triangular waveform across C5 quenches the oscillator, and the square wave at the output of IC1 switches the RF amplifier. The quench generators two outputs are phased in quadrature so that the RF amplifier has received power when the detectors oscillations start to grow. The quench frequency of this circuit is 100 kHz to allow data transfers at rates as high as 20 kbps. The envelope detector comprises a common-source amplifier thats nominally biased to operate in Class B mode. To increase this stages gain, you apply a small amount of bias current to make it operate in Class AB mode. To reduce the load on the oscillators LC tank circuit, C10 connects to a tap on inductor L1, as inductor L2 shows. The first stage in the data-recovery circuit comprises buffer IC2A; amplifier IC2B; and a third-order, lowpass filter for suppressing quench-frequency components in the envelope detectors output. A dc-coupled Schmitt-trigger circuit, IC3, extracts the transmitted data from the demodulated signal. A lowpass filter comprising C12 and R16 extracts the demodulated signals dc
DATA DETECTION

IN ITS SIMPLEST FORM, A SUPER-REGENERATIVE RECEIVER COMPRISES AN RF OSCILLATOR THAT A QUENCH SIGNAL, OR LOWER FREQUENCY WAVEFORM, PERIODICALLY SWITCHES ON AND OFF.
highest frequency in the original modulating signal. Adding an envelope detector followed by a lowpass filter improves AM demodulation (Reference 2). Figure 2 is a block diagram of the super-regenerative receiver circuit in Figure 3. The heart of the receiver comprises an ordinary Colpitts-configured LC oscillator operating at a frequency that the series resonance of L1, L2, C1, C2, and C3 determines. Switching off transistor Q1s bias current quenches the
QUENCH SIGNAL

ANTENNA LC ENVELOPE AMPLIFIER OSCILLATOR DETECTOR

EXTERNAL RF SIGNAL

THERMAL NOISE

OSCILLATOR OUTPUT

QUENCH GENERATOR

Figure 1 In a super-regenerative detector, the arrival of a signal starts RF oscillations sooner than under nosignal conditions.

Figure 2 The super-regenerative receiver is considerably simpler than a superheterodyne circuit.

78 EDN | FEBRUARY 2, 2006

designideas
DATA DETECTION TLV2763 R11 500k R12 2.2M C10 4.7 pF Q4 BF909 R13 390k L1 9 nH C3 6.8 pF C1 2.2 pF R2 510k C2 2.2 pF C4 10 nF _ ENVELOPE DETECTOR VCC LC OSCILLATOR VCC

IC2A R17 1M R15 24k R16 620k C12 33 nF R21 2.2M ADCMP371 IC3 DATA _ + R19 4.3k R20 430k C14 47 nF TLV2763 IC2B + + R14 24k C11 470 pF _

L2 18.5 nH

Q1 BFR92A R1 2.7k

C6 15 pF

ANTENNA AMPLIFIER C9 10 nF R18 43k C13 180 pF C7 200 pF

VCC

L3 68 nH Q3 BFR92A R9 250k R7 130k QUENCH GENERATOR R3 68k ADCMP371 R8 680k Q2 BFR92A R6 910k IC1
+ _

R10 75

C8 200 nF

C5 47 pF

R4 910k R5 910k

VCC

Figure 3 The super-regenerative receiver features relatively few components.

Figure 4 A prototype version of a super-regenerative receiver uses mostly surface-mount components. The large, black, leaded component in the upper right corner is a power-supply-decoupling capacitor. Note the RF-input connector in the center of the pc board.

component and sets the Schmitt triggers decision threshold. As a consequence, the data transmitter must use a dc-balanced coding scheme, such as Manchester coding, for modulation. On the receiving end, no additional active components are necessary for extracting the data-recovery circuits decision threshold, which helps minimize the receivers power consumption. The prototype occupies a compact pc board measuring approximately 53 cm (Figure 4). Using a simple, homemade PRBS (pseudorandom-binary-sequence) generator that uses Manchester coding with a 28-to-1-bit sequence (Reference 3), BER (bit-error-rate) measurements yield the results in Figure 5. These results demonstrate a sensitivity of less than 100 dBm for a 10to-4 BER at 1 kbps. The receiver consumes 270 A at 3V for a power consumption of 810 W. As a further

80 EDN | FEBRUARY 2, 2006

designideas
enhancement to the design, it includes a transmitter circuit based on Maxims MAX1472, creating a simple, compact, low-cost, and low-power transceiver for the 433-MHz ISM band. You can easily adapt the receiver circuit for recovery of AM audio or other analog signals by replacing the Schmitt trigger, IC3, with a conventional audio-output amplifier. Retune the RF oscillator to cover the frequency range of interest.EDN REFERENCES 1 http://intecweb.intec.ugent.be/data/ researchgroups.asp. 2 Insam, Eddie, Designing Super-Regenerative Receivers, Electronics World, April 2002, pg 46. 3 Mlange, Cedric, Johan Bauwelinck, Jo Pletinckx, and Jan Vandewege, Low-cost BER tester measures errors in low-data-rate applications, EDN, Dec 5, 2005, pg 123, www.edn.com/ article/CA6288033.html.
0.1 1 kBPS 2.5 kBPS 0.01 5 kBPS 10 kBPS 15 kBPS 20 kBPS 0.001 BIT-ERROR RATE 0.0001

0.00001

0.000001 102

101

100

99

98

97

96

95

94

93

92

INPUT POWER (dBm)

Figure 5 Measurements of bit-error rate versus input RF power highlight the prototype receivers sensitivity. The frequency is 433.92 MHz.

82 EDN | FEBRUARY 2, 2006