Microwaves & RF articles from October 2008

Microwaves & RF archives from October 2008

To the editor.(feedback)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2008... I READ WITH INTEREST your article in the August issue of Microwaves & RF, "Crystal Oscillators Continue to Shrink," p. 33. As a designer of RF/microwave function modules for commercial and military applications, I think it is fair to say that I...

Bluetooth re-invents itself for the better.(from the editor)
October 1, 2008... Bluetooth has turned out to be the "little engine that could" of wireless technology. Most folks in the wireless industry considered it an example of what happens to a technology that is overhyped. It was credited with too many capabilities too...

200 million UMDs to ship in 2013.(the frontend)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... NEW YORK -- From a virtual "standing start" of just 10 million units this year, shipments of ultra-mobile devices (UMDs) are expected to exceed 200 million in 2013. UMD is the umbrella term for ultra-mobile PCs, netbooks, and Mobile Internet...

First wideband networking radio is certified as fully compliant.(the frontend)
October 1, 2008... ROCHESTER, NY -- Harris Corp. has announced that its Falcon III AN/PRC-117G(V)1(C) multiband manpack has become the first wideband networking radio to be certified as Software Communications Architecture (SCA) compliant. The certification, from...

Skyworks/Ember to develop front-end modules for ZigBee applications.(the frontend)
October 1, 2008... ATLANTA, GA -- Skyworks Solutions, Inc. and Ember are partnering to develop the industry's first portfolio of ZigBee front-end modules (FEMs) targeting applications like smart meters in energy management, home-area networks (HANs), and...

Kudos.(the frontend)
October 1, 2008... N. BILLERICA, MA -- Radio Waves, Inc. is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Radio Waves has been designing and manufacturing high-quality microwave antennas for 25 years in Billerica, MA. When asked about his company's 25th anniversary, Andy...

The latest news, in e-mail form.(Product Data Directory PDD)
October 1, 2008... Some of the most important high-frequency news won't be found in Microwaves & RF magazine, but in the e-mail newsletter Microwaves & RF UPDATE. Sent directly to your computer desktop twice each month, this concisely written newsletter features...

RF blog.(Product Data Directory PDD)
October 1, 2008... The RF Components Blog features the latest news and technology of interest to designers of high-frequency, high-speed components. Although integrated-circuit components are included in the blog, the majority of the coverage is devoted to...

Link to the industry's most trusted directory.(Product Data Directory PDD)
October 1, 2008... The Microwaves & RF web site offers several instant links to the industry's only complete directory of products and suppliers: The Microwaves & RF Product Data Directory. With products from more than 2000 companies, thoughtfully classified into...

News and products.(WEB-EXCLUSIVE)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... Please join us in welcoming Lisa Maliniak, Online Managing Editor, to the staff of Microwaves & RF. Lisa, who received a BSEE from Rutgers University, has been working as an editor for 20 years. Aside from stints as a Technology Editor and...

Share your thoughts with quick polls.(Product Data Directory PDD)
October 1, 2008... Quick polls allow you to regularly share your opinion on a wide range of topics. LATEST POLL RESULTS: The average age in the industry is rising. Is there a need to attract new, younger engineering talent? NO 9% YES 91%...

PMC format holds agile ADCs and SDRs.(Special Section)
October 1, 2008... Modular signal-processing solutions provide a great deal of flexibility in both military and industrial applications. By swapping modules or cards in a mainframe, the character of a system can be quickly changed, and performance capabilities...

Military electronics firms set to weather economic storms.(Editors' Notes)
October 1, 2008... Business in the military electronics sector is generally steady and stable, in spite of an ever-changing landscape of suppliers. The reason for the stability could be arguable, of course, that the ultimate customers do not change, i.e., the...

Teamwork provides secure surveillance software solution: a challenging thermally efficient and environmentally sealed enclosure was needed to protect a hardware/software system used to process multiple forms of data from surveillance systems.(Special Report: Designing Secure Enclosures)
October 1, 2008... Military surveillance systems are designed to make records of events of interest. But finding a particular event among one month's worth of surveillance recordings can be challenging and time-consuming. For that reason, EchoStorm Worldwide...

Hybrid coupler provides impedance transformation.(New Products)
October 1, 2008... Model IPP-4011 is an impedance-transforming, high-power 3-dB 90-deg. hybrid coupler capable of combining two signals with as much as 300 W CW power from 1.0 to 2.5 GHz. The hybrid coupler, which provides more than 14-dB isolation between ports,...

Contactors handle high-voltage systems.(New Products)
October 1, 2008... The KILOVAC LEV100 contactor employs hermetic construction for use in explosive or harsh environments. The rugged contactor is rated for 100 W at +900 VDC and uses an inert gas in the contact chamber and an epoxy-sealed resin case for long-term...

Graphics processor packed into XMC.(New Products)
October 1, 2008... The Sentiris AV1 PCI Express mezzanine card (XMC) has been developed for security-critical applications such as primary flight instrumentation and multilevel-security (MLS) systems. Certified to DO178B for software and DO-254 for hardware, the...

S-band VCO shaves phase noise to 3475 MHz.(New Products)
October 1, 2008... Model CRO3467A-LF is a coaxial-resonator voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) designed for low-noise S-band applications from 3460 to 3475 MHz. The oscillator is well suited for aviation and point-to-point radio applications. It tunes across...

Technologies strive for improved communications: wireless technologies play an important role in the present and future delivery of information to the home, and in a wide range of additional voice, video, and data communications applications.(NewsReport)(Industry overview)
October 1, 2008... Communications systems operators face at least one continuing reality: their customers want ever-improving services even as networks become overloaded with subscribers. Additional subscribers on a wired or wireless communications network...

An interview wiith Christos Tsironis.(crosstalk)(Interview)
October 1, 2008... When did you start Focus Microwaves and what came before that? After studying EE in Karlsruhe, I received a Dr. Ing. degree from the University of Aachen, both in Germany. I spent three years working on noise theory and measurements of GaAs...

Microwave legends: this year's microwave "hall of fame" bows to the people who made history with the magnetron, discovered the transferred electron effect, created the first MMIC, and drove radar beyond its known limits.(NewsReport)
October 1, 2008... In 2006, this magazine proudly celebrated its 45th birthday. To commemorate that event, the editorial staff put together a list of 45 "Microwave Legends." This was a hall of fame that combined ground-breaking products like the HP 8510 with...

Tunable oscillators aim at reduced phase noise: this innovative, low-power, low-phase noise oscillator technology is currently available in discrete-component form but ready to make a transition to integrated circuits.(NewsReport)
October 1, 2008... Tunable oscillators are instrumental in the operation of many systems, from commercial communications to military radars. And, while many characteristics define the performance of a tunable RF/microwave oscillator, one of the more difficult...

Greenhill and Iridium merge and rename company.(financialnews)
October 1, 2008... GHL ACQUISITION CORP. and Iridium Holdings LLC, a provider of voice and data mobile satellite services (MSSs), have jointly announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which the two companies plan to combine. The proceeds of the...

Alcatel-Lucent.(CONTRACTS)
October 1, 2008... Alcatel-Lucent -- Has signed a turnkey equipment and services contract with 3 Italia, a 3G mobile operator in Italy and the first DVB-H Mobile TV operator, to expand and optimize its broadcast Mobile TV network throughout Italy....

Redline Communications Group, Inc.(CONTRACTS)(IDNet )(WiMAX Forum Certified products )(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... Redline Communications Group, Inc. -- Has announced that IDNet has deployed Redline's RedMAX family of WiMAX Forum Certified products to provide enterprise and residential customers with advanced Internet and data services. The project...

Saab TransponderTech.(CONTRACTS)
October 1, 2008... Saab TransponderTech -- Has been selected to supply coastal Automatic Identification System (AIS) base stations as part of a coastal maritime traffic network for Germany's Federal Water and Shipping Administration. The contract was awarded by...

DragonWave, Inc.(CONTRACTS)
October 1, 2008... DragonWave, Inc. -- Altitude Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Altitude Group, has selected DragonWave products to provide high-capacity Ethernet backhaul as part of its rollout of WiMAX broadband services across France. Altitude has pioneered...

Elcom Technologies, Inc.(FRESH STARTS)
October 1, 2008... Elcom Technologies, Inc. -- Has announced receipt of orders totaling $2.8 million from two major US military contractors for Elcom's Ultra Fast Switching series of direct analog synthesizers. The application demands exceptionally fast switching...

RF Micro Devices.(FRESH STARTS)
October 1, 2008... RF Micro Devices -- Has announced the opening of a customer support center in Bangalore, India. The new customer support center in Bangalore highlights RFMD's presence in Asia and underscores the company's commitment to one of the world's...

The Allied Defense Group, Inc.(FRESH STARTS)
October 1, 2008... The Allied Defense Group, Inc. -- Has entered into a definitive agreement to sell substantially all of the assets of its California subsidiary, Global Microwave Systems, Inc., to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cobham plc--an international company...

Ceralink, Inc.(FRESH STARTS)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... Ceralink, Inc. -- Has announced the launch of a redesigned and expanded web site at www.ceralink.com. The web site delivers in-depth information on Ceralink's increased testing capabilities and services. It also announces the rollout of its...

Lime Microsystems.(FRESH STARTS)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... Lime Microsystems -- Has joined the Femto Forum, the independent industry and operator association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide. The forum promotes the adoption of femtocell technologies through open standards, market education...

LBA Technology.(FRESH STARTS)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... LBA Technology -- Has expanded to add a new Test Equipment Group. This group will take responsibility for existing test products manufactured or sold by LBA. The firm also is in the process of activating major third-party test-equipment...

Krevet becomes Mimix Broadband's vice president of special projects.(people)
October 1, 2008... GUY KREVET has been appointed vice president of special projects at Mimix Broadband, Inc., a supplier of microwave and millimeter-wave gallium-arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors. Krevet will focus on establishing strategic practices to maintain...

Intel Foundation.(people)
October 1, 2008... Intel Foundation -- PAUL GRAY, executive vice chancellor and Provost Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, received the 2008 IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal for his work in analog integrated-circuit theory.

Alcatel-Lucent.(people)
October 1, 2008... Alcatel-Lucent -- GERARD J. FOSCHINI, a scientist and innovator at Bell Labs, has been awarded the 2008 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He was recognized for seminal contributions to the science and technology of multiple-antenna wireless...

Tahoe RF Semiconductor, Inc.(people)
October 1, 2008... Tahoe RF Semiconductor, Inc. -- HANS DROPMANN has been hired as vice president of marketing and business development; formerly a director and business manager of wireless products at Maxim Integrated Products.

Tyco Electronics Ltd.(people)
October 1, 2008... Tyco Electronics Ltd. -- ROB SHADDOCK appointed to the newly created position of senior vice president and chief technology officer; formerly senior vice president of Motorola's consumer products business.

QUALCOMM, Inc.(people)
October 1, 2008... QUALCOMM, Inc. -- DEREK ABERLE promoted to executive vice president and president of QUALCOMM Technology Licensing (QTL); formerly senior vice president and general manager within QTL.

Agilent Technologies, Inc.(people)
October 1, 2008... Agilent Technologies, Inc. -- BRIAN FETZ, DisplayPort program manager for Agilent's Digital Test Division, has been elected to the Video Electronics Standards Association board of directors.

Giga-tronics.(people)
October 1, 2008... Giga-tronics -- MALCOLM LEVY appointed vice president of sales and marketing; formerly executive vice president, sales and marketing with Racal Instruments.

QinetiQ North America.(people)
October 1, 2008... QinetiQ North America -- DONALD HAZELWOOD appointed vice president of unmanned systems at its Systems Engineering Group; formerly the project manager for the US Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

Labtech Microwave.(people)
October 1, 2008... Labtech Microwave -- STEPHEN MELVIN has been appointed principal engineer to develop the company's MMIC offering; formerly senior design engineer for RFMD.

ProVision Communications.(people)
October 1, 2008... ProVision Communications -- DAVID CW ROGERS joins the company as chairman; formerly Lucent EMEA chief executive officer.

Quantum Leap Packaging, Inc.(people)
October 1, 2008... Quantum Leap Packaging, Inc. -- BYOUNG LEE appointed chief financial officer; formerly chief financial officer/vice president special projects at REMEC Defense & Space.

Short courses.(education)(Calendar)
October 1, 2008... Besser Associates Short Courses RF Transceiver Architecture, Design and Evaluation Nov.17-21, 2008 (Dallas, TX) Applied RF Techniques for Modern Radio Design Nov. 17-21, 2008 (Dallas, TX) Wireless System Design and...

Meetings.(education)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... Taiwan RFID Oct. 7-11, 2008 (Taiwan) For more information, visit the web site: http://www.rfidtaiwan.com.tw/presscenter/news_view.shtml?docno=2797. RF and Microwave Conference--ARMMS Nov. 24-25, 2008 (Northamptonshire, UK)...

Call for papers.
October 1, 2008... ISQED 2009 10th Anniversary of International Symposium & Exhibits on Quality Electronic Design March 16-18, 2009 (San Jose, CA) For more information, visit www.isqed.org. Paper submission deadline: Oct. 17, 2008 Acceptance Notifications:...

65-nm CMOS houses 75-to-91-GHz receiver front end.(R & D roundup)
October 1, 2008... CMOS TECHNOLOGY has emerged as a solid option for low-cost wireless HDMI integrated circuits (ICs) in the 60-GHz band. Recently, two W-Band receivers have been reported by Mehdi Khanpour, Keith W. Tang, and Sorin P. Voinigescu from the...

Antenna Solution ends hearing-aid buzzing.(R & D roundup)
October 1, 2008... WHEN CELLULAR PHONES and hearing aids interact, many hearing-aid users experience a severe buzzing noise. By reducing the near-field electromagnetic energy around a cellular phone, a group of researchers hoped to mitigate the interference...

Measurement procedure compares Gilbert micromixers.(R & D roundup)(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... TO DETERMINE a Gilbert mixer's frequency response for each local oscillator (LO), RF, and intermediate-frequency (IF) stage, a measurement approach has been proposed by Jin-Siang Syu, Chinchun Meng, and Chih-Kai Wu from Taiwan's National Chiao...

Measure the range of sensor networks: these experiments considered the practical transmission distances between wireless sensors and their base stations under different environmental conditions and with different antennas.(DesignFeature)
October 1, 2008... Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide invaluable services with their short-range communications capabilities. But their limited operating power can impose restrictions on the maximum allowable distance between the sensors and the base...

Analyze interference in compact wireless designs: an important consideration in minimizing RFI in miniature portable wireless products is the location of the antenna relative to a design's audio circuits.(DesignFeature)
October 1, 2008... Portable wireless transceivers have proliferated rapidly in recent years, for a wide range of applications including transmission and reception of voice, data, and video. One of the key requirements for wireless equipment is that the electronic...

Setting strategies for transmission lines: in building a strategy for effective integrated-circuit design, it is important to understand the characteristics of different printed transmission lines.(DesignFeature)
October 1, 2008... Last month, the first part of this article made recommendations for choosing the physical dimensions of stripline (Fig. 3). A large height, H, ensures high power-handling capability. Smaller H requires a smaller strip for the same impedance,...

Two-stage LDMOS RFIC drives WiMAX: this two-stage LDMOS-based RFIC provides the benefits of a high-linearity driver stage with the 25-W output power of a final output stage for 3.3-to-3.8-GHz WiMAX applications.(DesignFeature)
October 1, 2008... Power amplifiers (PAs) for modern communications systems are generally designed by cascading and paralleling multiple RF transistors to achieve the required solid-state gain and power. With their wide range of impedance-matching, optimization,...

Tune in clearly on antenna fundamentals.(applicationnotes)
October 1, 2008... RADIO-FREQUENCY (RF) ENGINEERS often cite designing RF emitters, such as RF/microwave antennas, as major technical challenges. This issue seems to stem from a lack of clear understanding of RF transmitting antennas. To alleviate this problem,...

AWG handles WiMedia Signal Generation.(applicationnotes)
October 1, 2008... ULTRAWIDEBAND (UWB) communications techniques serve as examples of how RF signals and systems are becoming increasingly complex. Clearly, RF engineers need better ways of understanding RF signal behavior and multiple-signal interactions. In...

Novel approach yields fast, clean synthesizers: this line of frequency synthesizers rides a patent-pending phase-refining technology to meet market demands for low phase noise, fast switching speed, small size, and low cost.(COVERStory)
October 1, 2008... Frequency synthesizers are invaluable components in many systems, from commercial communications networks to test and measurement instruments. (1) Because of their wide application, the RF/microwave industry constantly feels the pressure to...

CMOS RFIC Design Principles.
October 1, 2008... At one time, high-frequency engineers might have associated silicon CMOS processes with digital circuits or, at most, low-frequency RF devices. But with nanoscale fabrication processes improving, a variety of semiconductor companies and silicon...

ADCs and DACs arm broadband communications: increasingly wide signal bandwidths and complex modulation schemes are driving data converter suppliers to push the performance levels on their products.(ProductTechnology)
October 1, 2008... Data converters, while not directly involved in RF/microwave communications, play critical roles in those and other high-frequency systems. Whether it is the digital-to-analog converter (DAC) used to create the complex modulation needed to...

Dual-channel YIGs filter signals to 18 GHz: these compact dual-channel, band-reject YIG-tuned filters help cut size requirements and power consumption in multichannel receivers.(ProductTechnology)
October 1, 2008... Filters based on yttrium-iron-garnet (YIG) technology provide passbands or rejection bands that can be tuned across wide microwave frequency ranges. One of the companies that has succeeded in shrinking the size of the technology in recent...

Surface-mount filters meet RoHS requirements: for applications that require RoHS compliance, these lines of RF/microwave surface-mount filters provide high rejection without high trace amounts of lead.(ProductTechnology)
October 1, 2008... Hazardous waste from disposal of electronic products should be a concern to all involved with electronic design. The Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive adopted by the European Union (EU) in 2003, of course, set limits on...