Microwaves & RF articles from June 2007

Microwaves & RF archives from June 2007

Demesne?(feedback)(Correction notice)
June 1, 2007... IN REFERENCE TO Jack Browne's article on page 104 of the April 2007 issue of Microwaves & RF ("LDMOS RF IC Amplifiers Boost 100 W At 90 MHz"): You sent me to the dictionary. Who actually uses "demesne" in this day and age? Particularly odd...

A correction.(feedback)(Correction notice)
June 1, 2007... IN THE JUNE ISSUE of Penton's Military Electronics, there are two errors in the writeup on the MwT MMA-022030B MMIC in the new product section ("MMIC Power Amplifier Spans 2 To 20 GHz," New Products 1). The following are the corrections to the...

The odyssey of Claire Wainwright.(from the editor)
June 1, 2007... Wainwright Instruments GmbH may not be a "household word" in the United States when it comes to microwave filters. Still, the company has grown steadily and achieved a sterling reputation as a quality house for RF filters. Sadly, the guiding...

China's chip market to rise 20 percent in 2007.(the front end)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... EL SEGUNDO, CA -- Despite uncertainties regarding the technology sector and the overall economy, China's semiconductor market growth is expected to accelerate in 2007, according to Byron Wu, director and principal analyst, China Research, for...

Cellular machine-to-machine module vendors face a difficult market.(the front end)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... SCOTTSDALE, AZ -- Manufacturers of the cellular modules at the heart of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications are currently facing an extremely difficult market characterized by increasing commoditization and shrinking gross margins. A...

ZIGBEE sees strong growth for energy-management solutions.(the front end)
June 1, 2007... SAN RAMON, CA -- The ZigBee[R] Alliance, a global ecosystem of companies creating wireless solutions for use in energy, residential, commercial, and industry applications, announced that its members are joining forces and leveraging their...

Kudos.(the front end)
June 1, 2007... COLUMBIA, MD -- Rohde & Schwarz was named the Indirect Supplier of the Year 2007 by Rockwell Collins. The award was presented by chairman, president, and CEO Clay Jones during the Annual Supplier Conference. The Supplier of the Year Award...

Innovations lead to multi-pronged homeland defense: to stay a step ahead of any threat, RF products and communications are securing points of entry, ports, airlines, and any other vulnerable spot.(News Report)(Editorial)
June 1, 2007... Markets that are heavily funded often encourage the development of a breadth of products and technologies. Such is the case with today's homeland-security market. The events of September 11, 2001 revealed the United States' vulnerability. It...

Meeting the filtering needs of an industry: microwave and RF filters continue to provide invaluable signal-processing functions in receivers and transmitters, with trends toward smaller packages and higher power levels.(News Report)
June 1, 2007... Filters remain one of the most difficult components to fabricate by means of standard semiconductor processes. For that reason, among others, the need for RF and microwave filters in commercial, industrial, and military-electronic systems...

Iridium announces Q1 2007 results.(financialnews)(Iridium Satellite L.L.C.)(Financial report)
June 1, 2007... Iridium Satellite LLC of Bethesda, MD announced that it had 183,000 subscribers worldwide as of March 31, 2007, a 23.6-percent increase over the company's 148,000 subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2006. The company had...

Education.
June 1, 2007... SHORT COURSES R.A. Wood Associates Short Courses RF Power Amplifiers, Classes A-S: How the Circuits Operate, How to Design Them, and When to Use Each June 28-29 (Boston, MA) September 17-18 (Syracuse, NY) November 12-13...

Microstrip circulator topology boasts rectangular ferrite region.(R & D roundup)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... TYPICAL JUNCTION CIRCULATORS are composed of ferrite material--usually circular, hexagonal, or triangular in shape--surrounded by a uniform dielectric. Microstrip traces are then patterned on top with ports emanating at equal intervals in the...

MIMO system achieves 108-Mb/s data rate using 16-MHz channel.(R & D roundup)(multiple input multiple output)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... HIGHER DATA RATES can be achieved by using wider RF bandwidths. Yet those bandwidths reduce the number of users that can simultaneously be connected to the network. A number of technologies have emerged to resolve this issue. Recently, a fully...

Fractal electrodynamics improves Kokh antenna bandwidth.(R & D roundup)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... IN FRACTAL ELECTRODYNAMICS, fractal geometry is combined with electromagnetic theory in order to investigate a new class of radiation, propagation, and scattering problems. When fractals are applied to antenna elements, the result is smaller...

Small synthesizers arm practical EW trainers: smaller, modular microwave fast-switching frequency synthesizers are clearing the way for more compact and practical radar and electronic-warfare training systems.(Design Feature)(electronic warfare)
June 1, 2007... Fast-switching frequency synthesizers are critical to many radar and electronic-warfare (EW) systems as well as in automatic-test-equipment (ATE) measurement systems where high throughput is important. But fast-switching microwave synthesizers...

Checking capacity for MIMO configurations: wireless system capacity can be added by increasing the number of antennas in a MIMO setup or by carefully optimizing the performance of a smaller number of antennas.(Design Feature)(multiple input multiple output)
June 1, 2007... Antenna elements arranged in a multiple-input-multiple-output configuration can impact the capacity of a wireless-communications system and combat multipath effects. But one of the keys to improved performance is finding the optimum MIMO layout...

PLL synthesizer tunes DCS1800 band: this high-performance PLL frequency synthesizer was developed for DCS1800 base stations receiving 1805 to 1880 MHz and transmitting 1710 to 1785 MHz.(Design Feature)(phase locked loop)
June 1, 2007... Frequency synthesizers are critical components in modern mobile-communications systems, powering both transmitters and receivers. Typically, they are designed with a phase-locked-loop (PLL) approach. (1) To demonstrate the effectiveness of this...

Real-time spectrum analyzers handle advanced radar measurements.(application notes)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... TODAY'S ADVANCED RADARS are notoriously hard to test. Simply put, the radar is beyond the scope of most standard measurement equipment. To simplify diagnostic troubleshooting and production test for radar applications, Tektronix, Inc....

Software-defined radios place stringent demands on test equipment.(application notes)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIOS (SDRS) eliminate incompatibilities between the command and control radio systems of different armed-services branches. They also link the communications systems of allied and coalition forces, thereby helping these...

Portable scopes pack deep memories: these lunchbox-sized lab-quality oscilloscopes defy the usual logic on portable instruments by providing generous memory with blazingly fast acquisition speeds.(Product Technology)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Portable oscilloscopes generally suggest instruments that are one step above a toolbox digital voltmeter. Typically, they are adequate for quick troubleshooting assignments but hardly the tool of choice for critical measurements. There is...

PCB fabricator aims at MM-wave markets: using proprietary processing techniques and precision machining capabilities, this circuit-board specialist "builds-to-print" fine-geometry circuits operating to 100 GHz.(Filtran Microcircuits Inc. developing new printed circuit boards)
June 1, 2007... Millimeter-wave frequencies were once considered the exotic realm of radio astronomers and military missile guidance systems. But recent frequency allocations by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and other global...

100-W GaN-on-Si transistor targets WiMAX.(editor's choice)(Nitronex Corp. introduces 28-V, 100-W gallium-nitride, high-electron mobility transistor )(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... THE MARKET FOR 2.5-GHz WiMAX solutions is growing rapidly, thereby inspiring a legion of new products. One example is a 28-V, 100-W gallium-nitride (GaN), high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT). The NPT25100 GaN-on-silicon (Si) power...

5-V InGaP/GaAs amplifiers satisfy broadband RF and IF.(editor's note)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... THE QUICK EVOLUTION of next-generation communications is making system requirements increasingly complicated. The WJA broadband amplifier family was designed to exceed those requirements. The devices offer up to 20 dB of gain and output...

Economy spectrum analyzers span 9 kHz to 20 GHz.(editor's note)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... IN THE PAST, less-costly microwave spectrum analysis came at the price of some performance. Yet the MS271xB family of microwave spectrum analyzers vows to provide high performance at an affordable price. The three models feature 1-Hz-to-3-MHz...

Double-balanced wideband mixers cover 0.7 to 10 GHz.(Editorial)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... TO SATISFY GPS, telecommunication, radar, EW, and instrumentation applications, a family of wideband, double-balanced mixers has emerged. The monolithic-microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) cover the 0.7-to-10-GHz band. The CGY2180UH,...