Portal:Electronics

The Electronics Portal

Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other electrically charged particles. Electronics is a subfield of electrical engineering, but it differs from it in that it focuses on using active devices such as transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits to control and amplify the flow of electric current and to convert it from one form to another, such as from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) or from analog to digital. Electronics also encompasses the fields of microelectronics, nanoelectronics, optoelectronics, and quantum electronics, which deal with the fabrication and application of electronic devices at microscopic, nanoscopic, optical, and quantum scales.

Electronics have a profound impact on various aspects of modern society and culture, such as communication, entertainment, education, health care, industry, and security. The main driving force behind the advancement of electronics is the semiconductor industry, which produces the basic materials and components for electronic devices and circuits. The semiconductor industry is one of the largest and most profitable sectors in the global economy, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. The electronics industry also encompasses other sectors that rely on electronic devices and systems, such as e-commerce, which generated over $29 trillion in online sales in 2017. (Full article...)

Good articles -

These are Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.


  • The Quad Electrostatic Loudspeaker (ESL) is the world's first production full-range electrostatic loudspeaker, launched in 1957 by Quad Electroacoustics, then known as the Acoustical Manufacturing Co. Ltd. The speaker is shaped somewhat like a home electric radiator curved slightly on the vertical axis. They are widely admired for their clarity and precision, but known to be difficult speakers to run and maintain.

    The original ESL, in production between 1957 and 1985, has been hailed in Sound & Vision as one of the most important speakers of the 20th century. It was succeeded in 1981 by the ESL-63, which remained in production until 1999. As of 2013, Quad maintains four electrostatic speakers in its range. (Full article...)
  • An antimetric electrical network is an electrical network that exhibits anti-symmetrical electrical properties. The term is often encountered in filter theory, but it applies to general electrical network analysis. Antimetric is the diametrical opposite of symmetric; it does not merely mean "asymmetric" (i.e., "lacking symmetry"). It is possible for networks to be symmetric or antimetric in their electrical properties without being physically or topologically symmetric or antimetric. (Full article...)

  • The LS3/5A (each element pronounced separately, without the stroke) is a small studio monitor loudspeaker originated by the BBC for use by outside broadcast vans to ensure quality of their broadcasts. The speaker concept set out transparent and natural sound as the goal, and the achievement of the end result is widely acknowledged.

    The BBC granted licences to a small number of British firms, who first manufactured the product in 1975. The product underwent a change in 1987 due to consistency issues in manufacturing, and again in around 2003 when original parts from KEF ran out. Upwards of 60,000 pairs of the speaker have been sold. Reviewers have recognised its enormous importance as a bookshelf design. (Full article...)

  • The first-generation iPad (/ˈaɪpæd/; EYE-pad) (retrospectively referred to unofficially as the iPad 1 or original iPad) is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple Inc. as the first device in the iPad lineup of tablet computers. The device features an Apple A4 SoC, a 9.7 in (250 mm) touchscreen display, and, on certain variants, the capability of accessing cellular networks. Using the iOS operating system, the iPad can play music, send and receive email and browse the web. Other functions, which include the ability to play games and access references, GPS navigation software and social network services can be enabled by downloading apps.

    The device was announced and unveiled on January 27, 2010, by Apple founder Steve Jobs at an Apple press event. On April 3, 2010, the Wi-Fi variant of the device was released in the United States, followed by the release of the "Wi-Fi + 3G" variant on April 30. On May 28, 2010, it was released in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. (Full article...)
  • Staggered tuning is a technique used in the design of multi-stage tuned amplifiers whereby each stage is tuned to a slightly different frequency. In comparison to synchronous tuning (where each stage is tuned identically) it produces a wider bandwidth at the expense of reduced gain. It also produces a sharper transition from the passband to the stopband. Both staggered tuning and synchronous tuning circuits are easier to tune and manufacture than many other filter types.

    The function of stagger-tuned circuits can be expressed as a rational function and hence they can be designed to any of the major filter responses such as Butterworth and Chebyshev. The poles of the circuit are easy to manipulate to achieve the desired response because of the amplifier buffering between stages. (Full article...)
  • The circuit topology of an electronic circuit is the form taken by the network of interconnections of the circuit components. Different specific values or ratings of the components are regarded as being the same topology. Topology is not concerned with the physical layout of components in a circuit, nor with their positions on a circuit diagram; similarly to the mathematical concept of topology, it is only concerned with what connections exist between the components. There may be numerous physical layouts and circuit diagrams that all amount to the same topology.

    Strictly speaking, replacing a component with one of an entirely different type is still the same topology. In some contexts, however, these can loosely be described as different topologies. For instance, interchanging inductors and capacitors in a low-pass filter results in a high-pass filter. These might be described as high-pass and low-pass topologies even though the network topology is identical. A more correct term for these classes of object (that is, a network where the type of component is specified but not the absolute value) is prototype network. (Full article...)
  • Air stripline is a form of electrical planar transmission line whereby a conductor in the form of a thin metal strip is suspended between two ground planes. The idea is to make the dielectric essentially air. Mechanical support of the line may be a thin substrate, periodical insulated supports, or the device connectors and other electrical items.

    Air stripline is most commonly used at microwave frequencies, especially in the C band. Its advantage over standard stripline and other planar technologies is that its air dielectric avoids dielectric loss. Many useful circuits can be constructed with air stripline and it is also easier to achieve strong coupling between components in this technology than with other planar formats. It was invented by Robert M. Barrett in the 1950s. (Full article...)

  • The JBL D44000 Paragon is a one-piece stereo loudspeaker created by JBL that was introduced in 1957 and discontinued in 1983; its production run was the longest of any JBL speaker. At its launch, the Paragon was the most expensive domestic loudspeaker on the market.

    Designed by Arnold Wolf from a concept elaborated by Richard Ranger, it is almost 9 feet (2.7 m) long and requires over a hundred-man hours of hand-finishing by a team of dedicated craftsmen. Resembling less a conventional loudspeaker than an elegant sideboard, it is a landmark product for the company that was sought after by the well-heeled and by celebrities. With an estimated total production of about 1,000 units, it is highly sought after by collectors to this day. (Full article...)
  • Mechanical–electrical analogies are the representation of mechanical systems as electrical networks. At first, such analogies were used in reverse to help explain electrical phenomena in familiar mechanical terms. James Clerk Maxwell introduced analogies of this sort in the 19th century. However, as electrical network analysis matured it was found that certain mechanical problems could more easily be solved through an electrical analogy. Theoretical developments in the electrical domain that were particularly useful were the representation of an electrical network as an abstract topological diagram (the circuit diagram) using the lumped element model and the ability of network analysis to synthesise a network to meet a prescribed frequency function.

    This approach is especially useful in the design of mechanical filters—these use mechanical devices to implement an electrical function. However, the technique can be used to solve purely mechanical problems, and can also be extended into other, unrelated, energy domains. Nowadays, analysis by analogy is a standard design tool wherever more than one energy domain is involved. It has the major advantage that the entire system can be represented in a unified, coherent way. Electrical analogies are particularly used by transducer designers, by their nature they cross energy domains, and in control systems, whose sensors and actuators will typically be domain-crossing transducers. A given system being represented by an electrical analogy may conceivably have no electrical parts at all. For this reason domain-neutral terminology is preferred when developing network diagrams for control systems. (Full article...)

  • The iPhone 5s is a smartphone that was designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the seventh generation of the iPhone, succeeding the iPhone 5, and unveiled in September 2013, alongside the iPhone 5c.

    The iPhone 5s maintained almost the same external design as its predecessor, the iPhone 5, although the 5s received a new white/gold color scheme in addition to white/silver and space gray/black. The 5s has vastly upgraded internal hardware, however. It introduced the A7 64-bit dual-core system-on-chip, the first 64-bit processor to be used on a smartphone, accompanied by the M7 "motion co-processor". A redesigned home button with Touch ID, a fingerprint recognition system which can be used to unlock the phone and authenticate App Store and iTunes Store purchases, was also introduced. The camera was also updated with a larger aperture and a dual-LED flash optimized for different color temperatures. Earphones known as EarPods were included with the 5s, and Apple released accessories including a case and a dock. It had a 4-inch display, similar to the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c. (Full article...)
  • Analogue filters are a basic building block of signal processing much used in electronics. Amongst their many applications are the separation of an audio signal before application to bass, mid-range, and tweeter loudspeakers; the combining and later separation of multiple telephone conversations onto a single channel; the selection of a chosen radio station in a radio receiver and rejection of others.

    Passive linear electronic analogue filters are those filters which can be described with linear differential equations (linear); they are composed of capacitors, inductors and, sometimes, resistors (passive) and are designed to operate on continuously varying analogue signals. There are many linear filters which are not analogue in implementation (digital filter), and there are many electronic filters which may not have a passive topology – both of which may have the same transfer function of the filters described in this article. Analogue filters are most often used in wave filtering applications, that is, where it is required to pass particular frequency components and to reject others from analogue (continuous-time) signals. (Full article...)

  • Power dividers (also power splitters and, when used in reverse, power combiners) and directional couplers are passive devices used mostly in the field of radio technology. They couple a defined amount of the electromagnetic power in a transmission line to a port enabling the signal to be used in another circuit. An essential feature of directional couplers is that they only couple power flowing in one direction. Power entering the output port is coupled to the isolated port but not to the coupled port. A directional coupler designed to split power equally between two ports is called a hybrid coupler.

    Directional couplers are most frequently constructed from two coupled transmission lines set close enough together such that energy passing through one is coupled to the other. This technique is favoured at the microwave frequencies where transmission line designs are commonly used to implement many circuit elements. However, lumped component devices are also possible at lower frequencies, such as the audio frequencies encountered in telephony. Also at microwave frequencies, particularly the higher bands, waveguide designs can be used. Many of these waveguide couplers correspond to one of the conducting transmission line designs, but there are also types that are unique to waveguide. (Full article...)
  • Foster's reactance theorem is an important theorem in the fields of electrical network analysis and synthesis. The theorem states that the reactance of a passive, lossless two-terminal (one-port) network always strictly monotonically increases with frequency. It is easily seen that the reactances of inductors and capacitors individually increase with frequency and from that basis a proof for passive lossless networks generally can be constructed. The proof of the theorem was presented by Ronald Martin Foster in 1924, although the principle had been published earlier by Foster's colleagues at American Telephone & Telegraph.

    The theorem can be extended to admittances and the encompassing concept of immittances. A consequence of Foster's theorem is that zeros and poles of the reactance must alternate with frequency. Foster used this property to develop two canonical forms for realising these networks. Foster's work was an important starting point for the development of network synthesis. (Full article...)
  • Nominal impedance in electrical engineering and audio engineering refers to the approximate designed impedance of an electrical circuit or device. The term is applied in a number of different fields, most often being encountered in respect of:

    The actual impedance may vary quite considerably from the nominal figure with changes in frequency. In the case of cables and other transmission lines, there is also variation along the length of the cable, if it is not properly terminated. (Full article...)

  • A waffle-iron filter is a type of waveguide filter used at microwave frequencies for signal filtering. It is a variation of the corrugated-waveguide filter but with longitudinal slots cut through the corrugations resulting in an internal structure that has the appearance of a waffle-iron.

    Waffle-iron filters are particularly suitable where both a wide passband, and a wide stopband free of spurious transmission modes, are required. They also have a high power-handling capability. Applications include suppressing the harmonic output of transmitters and the design of wide-band diplexers. They are also used in industrial microwave manufacturing processes to prevent the escape of microwave radiation from the microwave chamber. Filters with an analogous design are now appearing in photonics, but, due to the higher frequency, at a much smaller scale. This small size allows them to be incorporated into integrated circuits. (Full article...)

Selected image

Selected biography

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 - 7 January 1943) was an inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer known for his patents and theoretical work that contributed to modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC induction motor. His contribution was recognized and the derived SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field ), the tesla, was named in his honor.

Selected article

Inductance is a measure of the amount of magnetic flux produced for a given electric current. The term was coined by Oliver Heaviside in February 1886. The SI unit of inductance is the henry (symbol: H), in honour of Joseph Henry. The symbol L is used for inductance, possibly in honour of the physicist Heinrich Lenz.

The inductance has the following relationship:

where; L is the inductance in henrys, i is the current in amperes, Φ is the magnetic flux in webers. Strictly speaking, the quantity just defined is called self-inductance, because the magnetic field is created solely by the conductor that carries the current.

When a conductor is coiled upon itself N number of times around the same axis (forming a solenoid), the current required to produce a given amount of flux is reduced by a factor of N compared to a single turn of wire. Thus, the inductance of a coil of wire of N turns is given by:

where, is the total 'flux linkage'.

Did you know (auto-generated) -

Consumer showcase

Associated Electrics, Incorporated, also known as Team Associated, of Costa Mesa, California is one of the world's leading manufacturers of radio controlled cars,vans, trucks and accessories. Team Associated cars have inspired small company's conversions. Several off-road buggies have been developed from the TC3 chassis, most notably the TC3 'o', the Durango range, and recently JConcepts with their BJ4 and Worlds-winning BJ4 'Worlds'.

Selected design


Credit: User:Omegatron
Color coded transistor-level schematic for a 741 op-amp.

WikiProjects

  • Technology
  • Science
  • Physics
  • Electronics
  • Computing
  • Energy

Main topics

Subcategories

Select [►] to view subcategories
Electronics
Audio electronics
Automotive electronics
Avionics
Electronics concepts
Electronic circuits
Electronics competitions
Consumer electronics
Digital electronics
Electrical connectors
Electronics and the environment
Electronics lists
Electronics work tools
Electronic engineering
Hobby electronics
Images of electronics
Interference
Marine electronics
Microwave technology
Military electronics
Molecular electronics
Nanoelectronics
Open hardware electronic devices
Optoelectronics
Organic electronics
Power electronics
Quantum electronics
Radio electronics
Semiconductor technology
Signal processing filter
Electronics and society
Spintronics
Electronics standards
Telecommunications
Television technology
Terahertz technology
Electronic test equipment
Video hardware
Works about electronics
Electronics stubs

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.