IPRO 344 was founded by Dr. Wong for the Fall 2007 semester with a stated long term purpose of studying and improving technologies for use in low‐power mobile audio applications. IPRO 344 had been... Show moreIPRO 344 was founded by Dr. Wong for the Fall 2007 semester with a stated long term purpose of studying and improving technologies for use in low‐power mobile audio applications. IPRO 344 had been outlined as the first in a multi‐semester project, with each subsequent semester building on the work of the previous semesters and a final objective of providing a diverse and complete toolkit for low‐power mobile audio applications. The current trends in social‐electronic integration are indicative of a level of “Ambient Computing”. That is, providing users with electronic services independent of their physical location or condition. Examples of this new form of integration can be seen in everything from cell‐phones, portable music players, portable gaming devices, laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and most recently smart‐phones. For this entire generation of new devices, one of the most critical design factors to emerge is that of power efficiency. Users are demanding smaller and lighter devices, more features and more powerful processing power, and longer battery times. Unfortunately, improvements in the power density of consumer level batteries are significantly lacking behind user demands, bringing about the increasingly urgent need for exceptionally energy‐efficient technologies upon which the next generation of devices can be built. For the scope of this semester’s IPRO, we will focus on the amplification stage of mobile audio applications. Final Signal amplification for mobile audio devices can reasonably be in the range of several watts, and can make up significant portions of a devices power budget. Furthermore,traditional amplifiers are limited by a tradeoff between low efficiencies and audio distortion. Lower efficiencies further increase power consumption, and require additional hardware to dissipate waste heat, while higher distortion levels are considered unacceptable by many users. Show less
