Cover Story
Smart Sensors	Onboard "smarts" in sensors and transducers range from simple on/off decision-making to complete digital control with EEPROM storage for setting ranges and parameters. —Bill Travis, Senior Technical Editor
Design Features The hottest new technologies and the latest design techniques to help you work efficiently and effectively.
Reference designs reshape design engineering	By using complete circuit designs from IC vendors, you can avoid reinventing the wheel. You need to apply them carefully, however, so that your finished product rolls out flawlessly. —Bill Travis, Technical Editor
CardBus configuration: a two-step process	A CardBus card combines the low-power, small form-factor, and light weight of a PC Card with the performance of PCI. However, proper configuration is essential to gain the full benefits of this device. —Tom Shanley, Mindshare
LPMs: High-level design uses low-level techniques	Adding LPMs to your design allows you to adopt a high-level methodology using low-level techniques. —Clive "Max" Maxfield, Intergraph Computer Systems
Content-addressable memories add processing power to embedded systems	CAMs enable you to apply associative processing to designs that require list searches and data translation. The newest CAMs make it practical to embed these tasks in high-speed systems using simple controllers. —Tom Weldon, MUSIC Semiconductors
Signaling system provides speed, noise immunity	High-bandwidth data streams are stretching the data-moving capabilities of systems. LVDS can accelerate performance and reduce power consumption. Although the standard's small noise margin can be alarming, LVDS is easier to implement—and more immune to noise—than you might think. —William Chiang, National Semiconductor
Portable systems demand vigilant overcurrent protection	Modern portable systems require protection from an arsenal of potential overcurrent problems. Your current-limiting scheme not only has to remain ever-vigilant against these threats, but also must satisfy cost, size, and reliability targets. In many cases, traditional fuses may not be up to the task. —Mark Mendenhall, Raychem
Measurements on CCFL-driver circuits pose tricky problems	Obtaining reliable efficiency data for CCFL circuits presents difficult measurement problems. The accuracy required in the high-frequency ac measurements is uncomfortably close to the state of the art. —Jim Williams, Linear Technology