-- Tech Headline News --

All the News Fit to Link™
-Archive-

Future Electronics with Super-Efficient Hard Drives

Novel Transistors Make Robust Thin-Film Logic

U.S. Internet Speed Ranks 31st in World

Fab Equipment Spending to Increase 20-30% in 2014

Wearable Ring for Gesture Control (your personal "Precious")

Pentagon to Spend $6B on C4I in 2015

Rough Surface Could Keep Small Electronic Parts from Sticking Together

Mexico Regulator Decides on Dominant Players in Telecoms, TV

GPS III Program Faces Cuts, More Delays in 2015 Budget

Colored Diamonds Are a Superconductor's Best Friend

Einstein's WWII-Era Letter to U.S. Soldier on Sale for $40k

Withdrawing Money at Cash Machines with Google Glass (while it records your PIN)

New EMV Framework to Support NFC, QR, Bluetooth LE and More

Crystals Ripple in Response to Light

1.8-mm Thin Speaker Delivers 80 dB

Apple Security Rules Leave Inherited iPad Useless

Job Hunting & Careers

It's been a while since posting job hunting and career article links. These might be of interest to you.

• 8 Lies Interviewers Tell Job
   Candidates
• 5 Steps to Enhance Your
   Online Job Search
• Low-Cost Strategy for a
   College Degree
• Engineering Grads Enjoy
   Greater Job Prospects
• How to Survive Getting Fired
   from a Tech Company
• 8 Reasons You Should Turn
   Down That Job Offer
• How to Know When You've
   Outgrown Your Job
• Are Employees Working
   More Jobs for No Pay?
• Giant Resumes Fail to
   Impress Employers

Thanks for Support
by to Windfreak Technologies

Windfreak Tech designs, manufactures, tests and sells high value radio frequency products such as RF signal generators, synthesizers, power detectors, mixers, upconverters and downconverters. We develop high quality, reliable, low cost products to make your life easier. Windfreak Tech is developing high quality, low cost products to make life easier for RF engineers and hobbyist. Future products will be more synthesizers, transmitters, receivers and test equipment - All at low cost.

Full-Featured e-Cigarette
w/Bluetooth and a Music Player

When I first saw this video, I thought it was a satire. The video is a for-real commercial promoting the new Supersmoker Bluetooth e-cigarette that has built-in Bluetooth connectivity and a music player. From their website, "Supersmoker or Clubsmoker are electronic cigarettes, you can smoke without all the harmful ingredients of a conventional cigarette. We have two kinds, rechargeable and disposable e-cigarettes. With the rechargeable you need refills and this cigarette can be recharged every day. The disposable is an e-cigarette that lasts about 2 packs of conventional...

PMI Intros 14-40 GHz, 10-Bit
Programmable Attenuator

PMI Model No. DTA-14G40G-32-CD-2 is a 10 Bit programmable attenuator with step resolution as low as 0.04 dB which provides over 32 dB of attenuation over the frequency range of 14.0 to 40.0 GHz. This model is offered in a slim line housing measuring 2.0" x 1.8" x 0.5" with 2.92 mm female connectors and operates on a single +15 VDC supply with only 40 mA of current consumption typically.

Time for a Handheld DSO?

A couple decades ago, you would expect to pay $100 for a good quality handheld DMM that measured AC and DC current and voltage and maybe even power, plus had a few other functions like frequency counting, and capacitance and transistor beta measurement. Now for about the same money, you can buy a handheld digital oscilloscope (DSO) for about the same money. This 1 MHz bandwidth RioRand DSO features 1 Msps, 12-bit sampling and a 320x240 pixel color LCD display. A 1x/10x probe is included. The price from Amazon is less than $90 with free shipping. If you need more bandwidth, the Owon HDS1021M provides a 20 MHz BW and also has a multimeter function for a tad over $200. Need the extra BW and 2 channels? Less than $400 gets you the Owon HDS1022M-N with 20 MHz BW, or $800 for the Owon HDS3102M-N with 2 channels and 100 MHz. This is a good time to add one to your home toolbox.

Notable Tech Quote

"So here we have pi squared, which an engineer would call 10." - Frank King, cartoonist, creator of Gasoline Alley (Source: Wikipedia). That statement was made by Walt Wallet (the main character) to his tech-inclined nephew Skeezix (cowboy slang for a motherless calf). Over the years, Gasoline Alley included many episodes with Skeezix dabbling in electronics - usually not very successfully.

Thanks to Dow-Key Microwave
for Their Support

Dow-Key Microwave is the world's largest manufacturer of electromechanical switches for RF and microwave applications. Founded in 1945, we are also the oldest continuously operating RF / microwave switch manufacturer in the U.S. Dow-Key specializes in customized, high-performance coaxial, waveguide, and high-rel switches, as well as switching systems such as RF matrices and system-level rack integration, programmable attenuators, and delay lines.

White Paper: Close Proximity
Co-Located GPS Receivers

Parsec Technologies has published a white paper titled "Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) Linearity Impacts to Close Proximity Co-Located GPS L1 Receivers." A commercial low-cost GPS L1 (Fc = 1575.42 MHz) receiver in close physical proximity to a 2G/3G/4G compliant cellular handset transceiver FEM is analyzed for performance impacts related to various forms of electromagnetic interference. A description of how the GPS L1 receiver works is presented. GPS L1 receiver link budgets, simulation and measured receiver data, and spurious...

Thanks to PCB Material World
for Longtime Support

PCB Material World is an independent distributor and market maker of PCB raw materials, located near Chicago. We buy, list and sell PCB raw materials such as copper clad laminates, copper foil, drill backer and entry, among other items. Our objective is to act as a buy-sell PCB materials exchange; enabling efficiency in materials usage for PCB manufacturing. Our emphasis is on high end and/or hard-to-find products such as microwave materials, colors, heavy coppers, and obsolete and other non standard products.

8 New Titles Added to
Book Drawing Selection

Thanks to the generosity of Artech House and Cambridge University Press, eight new books have been added to the selection available to monthly RF Cafe Book Drawing winners. There are currently 21 titles to choose from if you are the lucky person. To date, I have given away more than 90 books, and have paid the shipping cost on all of them. It is one way to thank the many visitors and contributors to RF Cafe's ongoing success.

Congrats to Dean F.,
Our February Book Winner!

Dean F., of Suwanee, GA, is the February 2014, RF Cafe book drawing winner. Dean selected Integration of Passive RF Front-End Components in SoCs, by Hooman Darabi and Ahmad Mirzaei. Each month I select one or two names from a list of people who have either ordered one of my RF Cafe software products, or sent me an e-mail asking t obe entered. The book was Graciously provided by Cambridge University Press

Many Thanks to MECA
Electronics for Support!

Amazing Collection of QSL
Cards & Photos, c1924-1978

You will want to see this. Collecting thousands of QSL cards and photographs of their Ham radio operators and radio equipment is a monumental accomplishment today, but it was even more of a challenge in the early and middle part of the last century. You must actually make contact with the station to legitimately collect a QSL card, and then the remote operator must be willing to absorb the cost of mailing you a card. Mail service, particularly from some overseas locations, was no guarantee of successful delivery. A large portion of radio installations were cobbled together by their operators from scrap parts and had marginal functionality, even into the 1960s and '70s, so contacts were more difficult. As early as 1924, Don Retzlaff's grandfather, Thomas "Tom" Russell Gentry (W5RG) began the process where over a span of more than half a century he acquired more than 5,000 QSL cards from all over the Earth...

A Few Free Technical Books
(you pay shipping)

A few of the technical books generously donated by major publishers like Artech House and Cambridge University Press are not likely to be selected by the RF Cafe monthly Book Drawing winners, and have been sitting on my shelf for a year or so. I would never consider selling them, but they do deserve good homes because the information is very interesting. If you are willing to pay for me to ship them to you, I will be glad to do so. If you would like any of the books below, please send me an e-mail with your zip code...

API Intros Broadband
8-12 GHz Limiting Amplifier

API Technologies announces a new broadband 8-12 GHz limiting amplifier ideally suited for demanding military requirements and high-end commercial applications such as microwave receivers, microwave telemetry systems, uplink communications platforms, instrumentation, and military communications systems. It features excellent output flatness of 1 dB that is independent of the input, and allows for inputs levels from -20 to -10 dBm.

A Few Good Articles for You

If your workplace is anything like the ones I have experienced, most print issues of magazines end up in the mail room recycle bin or trash can - they never make it out the door. You might even scan the TOC and dog-ear a couple pages for later reading, but seldom get around to it before ultimately chucking them in the can. Fortunately, you can read the articles online if you know they exist. I post a list like this one about once a week to help you keep track.

» Microstrip Antenna Maintains
    Low Profile
» Hall Effect Sensors Measure
    Fields and Detect Position
» Understanding Adjacent
    Channel Power
    Measurements in Spectrum
    Analysis
» Sigma Delta ADCs : A Non-
    Mathematical Approach

Please Thank LadyBug
Technologies for Support

Founded in 2005, LadyBug Technologies manufactures the PowerSensor™ line of miniaturized USB RF & microwave power sensors. LadyBug manufactures high accuracy average, pulse, and pulse profiling sensors with GUI interfaces covering up to 26.5 GHz and 80 dB dynamic range. These sensors set a, patented industry standard, No Zero / No Cal technology. There is no need to disconnect or wait for internal zeroing and calibration prior to making accurate low power measurements.

Free Vintage Electronics
Magazines

Here is your chance to own a pile of vintage electronics magazines for just the cost of shipping. As you are probably aware, for the past few years I have been buying vintage editions of QST, Popular Electronics, Electronics World, Radio & TV News, Radio-Electronics, and Wireless World, for the purpose of scanning and posting articles that I believe will be of interest to RF Cafe visitors. I have gotten all I need from them and rather than having them sit around taking up space, I am offering to mail them to you on a first come, first served basis. Most of the magazines were purchased on eBay...

Energy Conversion Quiz

This quiz from Popular Electronics challenges (not too much, though) your knowledge of energy conversion in common devices. A few of them might be unfamiliar to people born after about 1990, but even so, you've probably seem them all at some point, especially if you are a regular RF Cafe visitor (meaning you're probably smart). Robert P. Balin constructed many of this type quiz for PE. In fact, clicking on the following hyperlink will find the Popular Electronics Quizzes for you.

R U Sitting Comfortably?
Old Time Radio on Demand

"How to Download and Listen to All the Old Time Radio Shows You Want" That is the tag line on the RUSC (R U Sitting Comfortably?) website. Having been a longtime fan of the old radio shows, I gratefully accepted an offer by co-owner Joy Norris to poke around the website that she and her husband Ned have created. RUSC is a subscription-based collection of hundreds, nay thousands of programs from "The Golden Age of Radio" that are available for your listening pleasure either streaming live or as a download for listening to at a later time. A list of the main show categories appears on every page for easy access. Not only are more familiar comedy titles like Abbot & Costello, Milton Berle, and Father Knows Best included, but lesser known...

Music Power Rating
- Help or Hindrance?

Most of us, long before being introduced to the concept of power in electrical circuits, learn about it in terms of mechanical power and/or sound power. It takes some doing to abandon the esoteric nature of power and  be trained to grasp the scientific and mathematical aspects of power in all its forms. When the driving source is steady state or a pure sinewave, life is relatively simple, but such is more often than not an exception to the system being studied. Here is a nice, short treatise on the concept of sound power that will augment your earlier-learned knowledge of music power rating.

AWR Announces Winners for
Taiwan U. Student Competition

AWR Corporation announces the winners of its 2013 National Taiwan University Student Design Competition. AWR partnered with National Taiwan University in mid-2013 to sponsor the first ever Taiwan Student Design Competition. The objective of the competition was to encourage students in Taiwan to become involved in the dynamic profession of microwave and RF engineering and to apply their knowledge to practical designs using the highly efficient AWR design methodology...

Carl & Jerry: TV Antennas

In this episode of Carl & Jerry, the teens ponder a question posed by Jerry's mother upon looking down their hillside home: "[L]ook at all those TV antennas down there. Hardly two of them are alike; yet they're all intended to receive the same stations. How come there are so many different kinds?" That was all the pair needed to set them off in an investigation to determine the answer. Being avid electronics and RF hobbyists and experimenters, they discuss the principles of how antennas work, various types of transmission lines, impedance matching, antenna types, bandwidth, and other topics relevant to the challenge. As with most Carl & Jerry stories, the intent is to educate...

Sodom & Gomorrah,
aka Agbogbloshie

This story appeared on a news website I found while gathering daily tech headlines... in case you've forgotten where your e-waste is likely to end up. According to German photographer Kevin McElvaney, the 40,000 Agbogbloshie (near Accra) locals call their land Sodom & Gomorrah, after the Biblical city that was destroyed by fire. This is just one small part of the world where such activities are daily routine for those living in abject poverty. BTW, similar sacrifices are made to build our e-devices in the first place during the extraction of raw materials and during manufacturing and transportation of finished goods. Many of our clothes, vehicles, appliances, tools, sports items, food containers, and other items pass through...

Hacking the Van Allen
Radiation Belts

This is scary. Believe it or not, there is a group of scientists who think it might be a good idea to beam very low frequency (VLF) radiation into the upper atmosphere to erase the Van Allen radiation belts. I kid you not. An article in the March 2014 edition of IEEE's Spectrum magazine describes a plan to clear out the proton cloud residing in the inner belt (1,000 - 9,600 km altitude) and the electron cloud hovering in the outer belt (13,500 - 58,000 km altitude). Both Van Allen radiation belts, particularly the outer ring, are hazardous to electronics, i.e., satellites, because of the circuit-frying potential due to a build-up of electric charges that can, under certain conditions, penetrate an imperfect Faraday shield...

R&S Adds Liquid-Cooled
Broadband HPAs to EMC Line

Rohde & Schwarz now offers up to 10 kW of power in a frequency range from 9 kHz to 225 MHz with its R&S BBL200 amplifier family. Thanks to a new liquid cooling system, these models are quieter and more compact than ever before. The R&S BBL200 will be on display at EMV 2014 in Düsseldorf at booth CCD-202.

Please Visit Anatech in
Appreciation of Their Support

Anatech Electronics designs and manufactures the industry's widest range of RF and microwave filters at frequencies up to 40 GHz, as well as power dividers, directional couplers, and many other product types. We specialize in standard and custom designs for commercial wireless, public safety, satcom, and defense applications, and we can meet stringent military environmental specifications.

RF Cafe Software

RF Cascade Workbook

RF system analysis including
frequency conversion & filters

RF & EE Symbols Word
RF Stencils for Visio

RF Cafe Software