I am back after a little hiatus to give a quick update on the transmitter. The new V2 transmitter board has proven to be flawed after some testing. It has been tested and shown that the long clock traces are rounding the waveforms a bit too much. I am going to update this post with the new V2.1 which will correct the issue.

In addition to the clock trace problem, the new NCP 8-SOIC surface mount drivers are a bit more demanding in their heat dissipation requirements than I thought. The new V2.1 board will require some small heastinks on the drivers to prevent overheating. The drive voltage has also been decreased to 15V instead of 18V because it has been proven to be just as efficient operating at 15V and the drivers get a little less hot.

So the changes in V2.1 will be:

• Shorter clock traces
• Heatsinks required on drivers
• Voltage changed to 13.7V or 15V on the drivers
• Inverter chip removed (integrated inverted inputs on drivers used instead)

Stay tuned for an update. And please post a comment if you have anything to offer, I’d like to get an idea if anyone is still reading this blog. I will continue to update it regardless, however.

Update:

I am sending the V2.1 to fabrication and they should be done in a few weeks; I will then begin the testing. I believe they will work much better. I still think there may be an efficiency problem with the output match. I might need to change to using coax in the balun instead of wire. I am not sure how this is done though, so I will do some research.

Here is a photo of the V2.1 board: