Homepage Archive - February 2017 (page 1)

These archive pages are provided in order to make it easier for you to find items that you remember seeing on the RF Cafe homepage. Of course probably the easiest way to find anything on the website is to use the "Search RF Cafe" box at the top of every page. About RF Cafe.

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See Page 1 | 2 | 3 of the February 2017 homepage archives.

 

Friday 10

Arctic Antenna Added to the Antenna and Waveguide Vendors Listing Pages

Arctic Antenna - RF CafeARTA (Arctic Antenna) was established in 2006 as an MBO from Nera Networks. The company has its main office in Bergen, Norway with 21 employees with many years Arctic Antenna Test Range - RF Cafeexperience in R&D and manufacturing of quality microwave antennas (ETSI EN 301126-3-1) and waveguide components. Our customers include defence, telecom equipment providers, service operators and industrial manufactures.

NASA & ESA Planning 2021 Manned Orion Mission to Moon

NASA & ESA Planning 2021 Manned Orion Mission to Moon - RF CafeWay overdue! --"The ESA says it will contribute key components for a future NASA mission to take humans around the moon within the next few years. Astronauts haven't gone beyond a low orbit around Earth since 1972, when NASA ended its Apollo program. The agency said today that it and Airbus have now agreed with NASA to build a module for a second, manned mission that will fly around the moon as early as 2021. The Service Module ..."

Carl Kohler: Boner Box

Carl Kohler: Boner Box, March 1956 Popular Electronics - RF CafeRumor has it (according to me) that Carl Kohler and his better half, Sylvia, were a real-life couple who lived in the Syracuse, New York, area, and that his stories came from actual experiences. This one is very believable, even if the details were changed a bit to make it more interesting. Comical side note: Whenever I see or hear the first word in the title, it reminds me of a time in Annapolis Junior High School (early 1970s) when the teacher ...

Silicon IC Transmits and Receives THz Signals

Silicon IC Transmits and Receives THz Signals - RF Cafe"Princeton University has created silicon chips for transmitting and receiving THz signals. According to researcher Kaushik Sengupta, the solution to shrinking THz components to chip size lies in re-imaging how an antenna functions. 'Instead of directly reading the waves, we are interpreting the patterns created by the waves,' he said. 'It is somewhat like looking for a pattern of raindrops by the ripples they make in a pond.' 'When terahertz waves interact with a metal structure inside the chip ..."

Featured Book: Federal Government Proposal Writing

Federal Government Proposal Writing - RF CafeNews reports predict many opportunities for Federal defense and science development and production contracts in the coming years while America tires to rebuild its military, energy, and manufacturing base. Federal Government Proposal Writing was just released last week, so it is about as up to date as possible. It's been a couple decades since I was involved in defense proposal writing - it was a grueling and rigorous exercise. Author George Brown attended the School of Hard Knocks doing many such proposal efforts at Lockheed Martin and General Electric ...

Humans vs. Space Debris

Humans vs. Space Debris - RF Cafe"The problem of space debris has caught the attention of both the public and private sectors. In Japan, the JAXA space agency will reinforce its monitoring system to prevent small pieces of debris from damaging satellites and the International Space Station. While the current system covers pieces of debris larger than 1.6 meters, JAXA will make it capable of tracking objects as small as 10cm or so. For the project, JAXA will install a ground-based radar system ..."

Thursday 9

Electronics Crossword Puzzle, July 1963 Electronics World

Electronics Crossword Puzzle, July 1963 Electronics World - RF CafeThis electronics-themed crossword puzzle was published in a 1963 issue of Electronic World. Crosswords were a fairly standard feature in magazines up through the late last century. Keeping with tradition , every week (usually) I create an engineering-themed crossword puzzle that uses a hand-selected collection of a couple thousand words and clues from a dictionary I built over the last 15 years ...

High-Altitude Radiation Tests Will Protect Airline Travelers

High-Altitude Radiation Tests Will Protect Airline Travelers - RF Cafe"Imagine you're sitting on an airplane cruising at 36,000 feet. Just above you, high-energy particles, called cosmic rays, are zooming in from outer space. While we are largely protected from this radiation on the ground, up in the thin atmosphere of the stratosphere, these particles can affect humans and electronics alike. NASA's RaD-X experiment, launched on a giant helium-filled balloon, has obtained some of the first measurements of their kind at altitudes from 26,000 to more than 120,000 feet above ..."

ARRL Headquarters Closed Due to Snowstorm

ARRL Headquarters Closed Due to Snowstorm - RF CafeThis is a headline you don't see very often. New England is experiencing an extreme consequence of AGW as a major snowstorm moves through the Newington, Connecticut area ...

Saelig Intros Euroquartz Ultra-Low-Jitter Oscillators - RF Cafe

Saelig Intros Euroquartz Ultra-Low-Jitter Oscillators - RF CafeSaelig Company has launched the new EQHJ Series Oscillators designed by frequency control specialist Euroquartz, offering ultra-low phase jitter. The new EQHJ series oscillators deliver frequency stability from ±25ppm over the whole industrial temperature range of -40 to +85 °C. Three industry standard surface mount packages are available - 7.0 x 5.0 x 1.4 mm, 5.0 x 3.2 x 1.2 mm and 3.2 x 2.5 x 1.0 mm. Current consumption ranges from 3 mA typical (5 mA max.) for the smallest package size to 7 mA ...

Free Engineering White Papers & Books

Engineering White Papers & Books, January 2017 - RF CafeThe free whitepapers, pamphlets, books, magazines, and chapter examples listed here are a small sample of a lot of new items that are offered for FREE through TradePub. The publishers make them available to qualifying people as a promotional campaign for their full line of offerings. Topics include careers, manufacturing, engineering, management, meetings and travel. Note: I earn a few pennies (literally) when you download one of these ...

Scientists Measure Single Quantum of Heat

Scientists Measure Single Quantum of Heat - RF CafeA single drop of caloric? "IBM researchers have established experimental proof of a previously difficult-to-prove law of physics, and in so doing may have pointed to a way to overcome many of the heat management issues faced in today's electronics. Researchers at IBM Zurich have been able to take measurements of the thermal conductance of metallic quantum point contacts made of gold. No big deal, you say? They conducted measurements at the single-atom level, at room temperature - the first time that's ever been done ..."

Wednesday 8

O-scope for T&M of Communications Interfaces by R&S

O-scope for T&M of Communications Interfaces Intro'd by Rohde & Schwarz - RF Cafe"Rohde & Schwarz introduces powerful 6 GHz lab oscilloscope for multi-domain applications Rohde & Schwarz has added a new 6 GHz model to its R&S RTO2000 series, opening up measurements on fast communications interfaces and IoT applications. The exceptional characteristics of the compact R&S RTO2000 lab oscilloscopes make them the ideal instrument for demanding measurement tasks such as power integrity measurements ..."

Microsoft, Intel Urge FCC to Reject Operators' Arguments About 64-72 GHz

Microsoft, Intel Urge FCC to Reject Operators' Arguments About 64-72 GHz - RF Cafe"Several commenters in the FCC's Spectrum Frontiers proceeding, including Microsoft, Intel and Boeing, are urging the commission to reject calls for reallocating all or part of the 64-71 GHz band for licensed services, arguing that the band will be better served via unlicensed use. CTIA, T-Mobile USA and the Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) have urged the commission to reconsider its reservation of the entire 64-71 GHz band for unlicensed operation ..."

A.C. Negative-Resistance Devices

A.C. Negative-Resistance Devices, July 1963 Electronics World - RF CafeMost RF Cafe visitors are familiar with the negative resistance region exhibited in tunnel diodes. It is what makes them usable, among other special applications, as oscillators. Although a diode is often part of an AC circuit, it is fundamentally thought of as a DC device since it permits conduction in only one direction (the exception being a Zener diode). An AC device in general refers to something used in a line supply circuit at 50 Hz, 60 Hz, or even 400 Hz. Such is the case with this article, which describes negative resistance characteristics of voltage-variable capacitors ...

Bizarre New Helium Compound May Rewrite Science Books

Bizarre New Helium Compound May Rewrite Science Books - RF Cafe"At school you may have been taught that helium was a noble gas because it was totally unreactive. But, new research suggests it might not be as virtuous as we first thought. An international team of scientists has created a stable helium compound which is composed of both helium and sodium atoms, and say their discovery marks a 'new frontier of chemistry.' Helium is generally understood to be inert due it its extremely stable chemical ..."

CareerBuilder Survey: 2016's Most Outrageous Excuses for Being Late

CareerBuilder website: 2016 Excuses for Being Late to Work - RF Cafe"Are you chronically late for work? The good news is, you're not alone. According to a new CareerBuilder survey, when asked how often they come in late to work, more than 1 in 4 workers (29%) admitted they do it at least once a month - up from 25% last year - and 16% say it's a weekly occurrence for them - up 3 percentage points since last year. More than 2,600 hiring and human resource managers  and more than 3,400 workers across industries participated in the nationwide survey, conducted online by ..."

Gold-Free Vertical GaN Schottky Barrier Diodes

Gold-Free Vertical GaN Schottky Barrier Diodes - RF Cafe"Researchers in China and Japan have developed a gold-free Schottky contact for GaN, claiming record on/off current ratio and breakdown voltage for vertical GaN Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs). The team from Shenzhen University, Shanghai University, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics (SINANO) in China and Tokushima University in Japan believe that such a development ..."

Tuesday 7

10 Bits of Data Transmitted with Single Photon

10 Bits of Data Transmitted with Single Photon - RF Cafe"Researchers at the University of Twente's MESA+ research institute have managed to transmit more than 10 bit of information with a single photon. They achieved this using an ingenious method for detecting individual photons. The knowledge gained from this study can be used to improve the security and speed of quantum communication. The research results were published in the scientific journal Optics Express. When asked 'How much information can you transmit using just ..."

Let's Woo the Woman Engineer

Let's Woo the Woman Engineer, July 1963 Electronics World - RF CafeIf you were to think the effort to encourage women to join the ranks of engineers is a recent thing, you'd be wrong. Contrary to what news media rabble-rousers want you to believe, women have long been welcome in the engineering world. Some, admittedly, were as welcomed by men into engineering as men were by women into nursing, but those who persisted usually excelled. As hard as it is for social engineers to accept, evidently most women, at least at this point in history, would rather pursue career fields other than engineering ...

AWR EuMW RF/μwave PA Presentations Now Playing on AWR.TV

NI AWR 3rd Annual RF/Microwave PA Forum Presentations Now Playing on AWR.TV - RF CafeThe presentations recorded at the third annual RF/Microwave Power Amplifier (PA) Forum during European Microwave Week 2016 (EuMW 2016), featuring both NI AWR Design Environment and partner solutions, are now available for viewing on the AWR.TV YouTube channel. Includes: • Professor Cripps' Keynote: Clipping Harmonic Contours - A New RF PA Design Tool • Source Pull and Device Performance • Circuit-Level Simulation with Polyharmonic ...

Germanium Beats Silicon in Transistors with n- and p- Conduction

Germanium Efficiency Beats Silicon in Transistors with n- and p- Conduction - RF Cafe"A team of scientists from the Nanoelectronic Materials Laboratory (NaMLab gGmbH) and the Cluster of Excellence Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden at the Dresden University of Technology have demonstrated the world-wide first transistor based on germanium that can be programmed between electron- (n) and hole- (p) conduction. Transistors based on germanium can be operated at low supply voltages and reduced power consumption, due to the low ..."

vidaRF Has a New Drop-In Isolator & Circulator Catalog

vidaRF Has a New Drop-In Isolator & Circulator Catalog- RF CafevidaRF has just introduced a new catalog for their extensive line of off-the-shelf drop-in isolators and circulators. These products feature low IMD, low insertion loss, and high isolation, that are BeO-free. Up to 500 W peak power in the 800 to 2,700 MHz band. Custom designs are available on request. Please contact vidaRF today for assistance ...

NASA Space Radio Could Change How Flights are Tracked Worldwide

NASA Space Radio Could Change How Flights are Tracked Worldwide - RF Cafe"Under a new space-based tracking system, no plane would ever have to be off the grid, thanks in part to a reconfigurable radio developed for NASA. NASA's powerful radio communications network allows us to receive data such as pictures of cryovolcanoes on Pluto - or tweets from astronauts aboard the International Space Station. But to send larger quantities of data back and forth faster, NASA engineers wanted higher-frequency radios that can be reprogrammed from ..."

Monday 6

USAF Communications, Intelligence Tech Funding

USAF Communications, Intelligence Tech Funding - RF Cafe"Two U.S. technology companies are moving forward with a U.S. Air Force research program to develop new enabling technologies to enhance military communications and battlefield intelligence capabilities. Officials of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, have announced a $75 million increase in the Air Force Research Lab's Human Interface Research and Technology (HIRT) program ..."

Many Thanks to ISOTEC for Long-Time Support!

ISOTEC Corporation - RF CafeSince 1996, Isotec has designed, developed and manufactured an extensive line of RF/microwave connectors, RF components and filters for wireless service providers. Isotec's product ISOTEC Connectors, Cables, Couplers & Filters - RF Cafeline includes low PIM RF connectors and also low PIM RF components such as power dividers and directional couplers up to 40 GHz. Please contact Isotec today to see how they can help with your current program ...

Sensitive Transistor Has Detectable Current by Δ Temperature

World's 1st Heat Sensitive Transistor Creates a Detectable Current by Changing Temperature - RF Cafe"Researchers - Dan Zhao and Simone Fabiano - at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University, have created a thermoelectric organic transistor, which can be controlled by a change in temperature. A temperature rise of a single degree is sufficient to cause a detectable current modulation in the transistor. The heat-driven transistor opens up the possibility of many new applications such as detecting small temperature differences, and using functional ..."

Electronics-Themed Comics, July 1963 Electronics World

Electronics-Themed Comics, July 1963 Electronics World - RF CafeWell, it's Monday again and there's nothing you can do about it. Hunker down for another 40 hours (maybe only 36 or so by the time you read this) and prepare to battle the forces that seem to work against you be they electronic or human. Hopefully, things aren't all that bad, but the potential is always there. It's commonly known as Murphy's Law: "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." It is said that laughter is the best medicine, some here is a low level inoculation against what's to come ...

Q4 2016 Engineering Career & Salary Survey

Q4 2016 Engineering Career & Salary Survey - RF CafeNote: You need to sign in to see this report. Most respondents were MEs (45%), then EEs (22%). 31% had been engineers >30 years. Most had excellent benefits. "In Q4 2016, Design News conducted a survey of engineers' career and salary information. What follows is question-by-question data based on 1,150 survey respondents from across the U.S. on a wide range of job- and career-related topics including salary and compensation totals, areas of engineering focus, career planning, opportunities ..."

Pending Patents On Electromagnetic Deflector Shields, Spy Lenses

Pending Patents On Electromagnetic Deflector Shields and Spy Lenses - RF Cafe"From our personal homes to the nation as a whole, feeling safe and protected is a commodity we should not take for granted. And engineers are working to use technology to keep us safe, protected, and on top of any possible spy activity that might come our way. These devices that have the power to destroy mortars, kinetic weapons, and missiles. The Laser Developed Atmospheric Lens (LDAL) creates a volume of atmosphere that changes the path of electromagnetic energy. This can redirect the pulses ..."

RF Cafe Crossword Puzzle w/Weekly Headlines February 5, 2017

RF Cafe Crossword Puzzle w/Weekly Headlines February 5, 2017 - RF CafeFor the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new crossword puzzle that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical words. You will never be asked the name of a movie star unless he/she was involved in a technical endeavor (e.g., Hedy Lamar). Clues in this week's puzzle with an asterisk (*) are pulled from this past week's (1/30 - 2/5) "High Tech News" column on the RF Cafe homepage (see the Headline Archives page if necessary). Enjoy ...

Friday 3

A Variable Wavelength Antenna

A Variable Wavelength Antenna, January 1935 Short Wave Craft - RF CafeThere are many designs for multiple-wavelength antennas available. Some use resonant 'traps' and specific length sections of lines to change the effective RF length according to specific frequency bands, and others employ complex phasing of multiple antennas to a single-point feed. Doing so allows operation across bands that do not necessarily fall within or close enough to harmonic ratios, while still presenting decent VSWR to the transceiver for acceptable performance. Still ...

Vaunix Paper: Fading Simulations for Handover / Handoff Testing

Vaunix Technology Tech Brief for Fading Simulations for Handover / Handoff Testing Using USB-Based Digital Attenuators - RF CafeVaunix Technology, a manufacturer of USB controlled and powered test equipment, recently produced an insightful technical brief discussing handover/handoff testing using USB-based digital attenuators for complex and scalable fading simulations. Traditional fading simulations have relied upon complex and expensive single-box testers, which are ultimately limited by the number of ports, internal hardware, and proprietary and inflexible software. Other methods for enabling fading simulations ...

4 New Vintage Vacuum Tube Radio Data Service Sheets Added

4 New Vintage Vacuum Tube Radio Data Service Sheets Added - RF CafeFor many years now I have been scanning and posting Radio Service Data Sheets like this one featuring the Colonial Model 652, 5-tube broadcast short-wave superheterodyne radio receiver for many years now. There are still many people who restore and service these vintage radios, and often it can be difficult or impossible to find schematics and/or tuning ...

Stewart-Warner Model 1271

ERLA Model 4500

Clarion No. TC-31

Patent Power 2016 Competition Getting Tougher

Patent Power 2016 Competition Getting Tougher - RF Cafe"The bar keeps getting higher and higher for companies looking to get into the Patent Power scorecards. In 2010, the lowest-ranked company in each scorecard had an average Pipeline Power score of 145. In this year's scorecards, this average is up to 183, an increase of over 26%. Of course, some industries are more patent-intensive than others, making their scorecards even more competitive. For example, Crossbar's Pipeline Power score of 626 qualifies it for only 20th place in ..."

Featured Book: Experimental Methods in RF Design

Experimental Methods in RF Design - RF CafeThe revised first edition of Experimental Methods in RF Design is now available from the ARRL. Co-written and updated by Wes Hayward (of MicroSmith fame), W7ZOI, Rick Campbell, KK7B, and Bob Larkin, W7PUA, Experimental Methods in RF Design explores wide dynamic range, low distortion radio equipment, the use of direct conversion and phasing methods and digital signal processing. Use the models and discussion included in the book to design, build and measure equipment at both the circuit and the system level. Readers are ...

Hispasat Satellite Uses Active Ku Band Antenna from Airbus

Hispasat Satellite Uses Ground-Breaking Ku Band Active Antenna from Airbus - RF Cafe"The Hispasat 36W-1 (AG-1) will be the first satellite to use active Ku band antennas. The Hispasat 36W-1 (AG-1) is the first mission of the SmallGEO platform, developed by OHB System AG with the European Space Agency and HISPASAT. It will supply multimedia services with 20 transponders in the Ku band and 3 transponders in the Ka band to Europe as well as the Canary Islands and South America. As the provider of the satellite's antenna system, Airbus Defence and Space in Spain supplied a total of three ..."

Thursday 2

Triad RF Systems Intros 700 to 6,000 MHz, 5 W, Broadband SSPA

Triad RF Systems Intros a 700 to 6,000 MHz, 5 W, Broadband SSPA - RF CafeTriad RF Systems has introduced the TA1049, a 700 to 6000 MHz, 5 W, broadband SSPA The TA1049 is a broadband SSPA for applications such as EMC testing, EW/Jamming, and general purpose lab use. It utilizes internal DC DC conversion, so it can operate from a +9 to +33 V supply voltage without any effect on RF performance. The TA1049 can be shipped with an integral heatsink and heatsink/fan assembly if required. This class AB GaN module is designed for both military and ...

Heads Up! - Bus-Sized Asteroid Will Fly Between Earth and Moon Tonight

Bus-Sized Asteroid Will Fly Between Earth and Moon Tonight - RF Cafe"In the fourth 'close shave' of the year, an asteroid will fly between the Earth and the moon tonight, only days after its discovery. Dubbed asteroid 2017 BS32 - the space rock is believed to be between 11 and 25 metres (36 to 82 feet), or around the size of a double decker bus. It will pass closest to Earth at 20:23 GMT (15:34 ET) today, coming twice as close to the Earth as the moon ..."

AT&T Quietly Acquires FiberTower for 24 & 39 GHz Spectrum

AT&T Quietly Acquires FiberTower for 24, 39 GHz Spectrum - RF Cafe"AT&T quietly acquired a company called FiberTower in a move to bulk up its high-end spectrum holdings in advance of 5G. FiberTower, which is in bankruptcy, has spectrum in the 24 GHz and 39 GHz bands covering 8.4 billion MHz POPs, according to Wells Fargo Securities and AllNet Insights. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The carrier revealed the pickup in a media announcement earlier this week outlining Project AirGig, a new initiative that uses power lines to guide wireless ..."

USAF Charts Wideband Global Satellite Future

USAF Charts Wideband Global Satellite Future - RF Cafe"The Air Force has embarked upon a formal Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) to determine a path for its constellation of Wideband Global Satellites (WGS) – a course which could result in wider use of existing commercial technologies or an effort to engineer and build a new dedicated constellation of satellites, Air Force and industry officials said.  The first group of WGS is expected to begin coming to the end of its service life in coming decades ..."

Mac's Radio Service Shop - Taming Transients

Taming Transients, July 1963 Electronics World - RF CafeDealing with the problem of lightning strikes was of concern long before electronic equipment needed to be protected from its effects. (Before I forget to mention it, Mac introduces Barney to the Zener diode in this 1963 saga) Fires that were the result of lightning have always been a problem in nature, but they were really catastrophic to civilization once cities crowded with close-quartered wooden buildings became the norm. Benjamin Franklin observed that when the many lightning-induced fires of Philadelphia were sparked, it was almost always the tallest ...

New Form of Matter: Time Crystals

New Form of Matter: Time Crystals - RF Cafe"To most people, crystals mean diamond bling, semiprecious gems or perhaps the jagged amethyst or quartz crystals beloved by collectors. To Norman Yao, these inert crystals are the tip of the iceberg. If crystals have an atomic structure that repeats in space, like the carbon lattice of a diamond, why can't crystals also have a structure that repeats in time? That is, a time crystal? In a paper published online last week in the journal Physical Review ..."

Flann Involved in Setting IEEE 1785 Standard for Waveguides Above 330 GHz

Flann Involved in Setting IEEE 1785 Standard for Waveguides Above 330 GHz - RF CafeEngineers at Flann Microwave are celebrating the publication of a new three-part international standard that will define how waveguide is used for decades to come. The team at Flann played a key role in the development of the new IEEE standard - IEEE 1785, which sets requirements for waveguides from 75 GHz to 3.3 THz. Previously there was no internationally agreed standard for waveguides operating above 330 GHz. The new standard is set ...

Electricity Flows but Not Heat for VO2

For This Metal, Electricity Flows but Not Heat - RF Cafe"Scientists have discovered that electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat, an exotic property in an unconventional material. The characteristic could lead to applications in thermoelectrics and window coatings. Vanadium dioxide (VO2) nanobeams synthesized by Berkeley researchers show exotic electrical and thermal properties. In this false-color scanning electron microscopy image, thermal conductivity was measured by ..."

Wednesday 1

Ericsson Wants STA for Super-Secret 5G Tests Before Verizon Board Meeting

Ericsson Wants STA for Super-Secret 5G Tests Before Verizon Board Meeting - RF Cafe"Ericsson is asking the FCC for permission to use 27.5-28.35 GHz spectrum so that it can conduct tests using a 5G base station, but it's asking that confidential treatment be given to details of what's being studied and the antenna parameters. The company seeks an 11-month license to do the tests but wants authorization by February 28 in time to conduct a demo at the Verizon Board of Governors meeting, according to the application. Ericsson says the information for which it seeks confidential treatment ..."

What Do Employers Really Think About Online Degrees?

What Do Employers Really Think About Online Degrees? - RF Cafe"In a 2012 poll of U.S. employers, respondents were asked which types of colleges they preferred to hire from. The results were unambiguous: Company executives and hiring managers considered online colleges inferior to every type of on-campus college. They even preferred for-profit colleges to online colleges, despite the shady track record of many for-profit schools. The curious thing about the survey is not the result, but the way the question ..."

Murata Intros Chip Inductor for NFC Circuits

Murata Introduces Chip Inductor for NFC Circuits - RF Cafe"Murata has started production of the LQM18JN Series of chip inductors for near field communication in January. In recent years, an increasing number of electronic devices such as smartphones have included NFC capability. An NFC circuit utilizes a chip inductor for impedance matching, however, current with large amplitude flows in an NFC matching circuit. With a common matching inductor, the effect of magnetic saturation hinders the expected performance ..."

Google Fiber, Nokia Square off Against SIA, NAB in 3.7-4.2 GHz Band

Google Fiber, Nokia Square off Against SIA, NAB in 3.7-4.2 GHz Band - RF Cafe"Google Fiber and Nokia are among the companies arguing for rules promoting more efficient use of spectrum, but satellite companies and their broadcast and content partners - including The Walt Disney Company and CBS Corporation - see the proposed changes as threats. Last year, the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition (FWCC) submitted a petition for rulemaking asking the FCC to approve a policy for what it calls a more efficient use of spectrum by eliminating ..."

Effects of Radiation on Electronic Components

Effects of Radiation on Electronic Components, July 1963 Electronics World - RF CafeThe early 1960s was the era of nuclear apocalypse, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, school children practicing duck and cover tactics, and backyard fallout shelters. Concern over survivability of nuclear radiation was big business for both the civilian and government / military communities not just for food, medicine, breathable air and potable water, but for electronics as well. After all, being cooped up in your subterranean universe for weeks or months while waiting for the outside environment to be habitable could be awfully lonely without some method of contacting other survivors. Consequently, much work was conducted to characterize and ...

Skyworks' Front-End Module for ISM and Connected Home Applications

Skyworks' Front-End Module for ISM and Connected Home Applications - RF CafeSkyworks is pleased to introduce the SKY66105-11, a new high performance, highly integrated RF front-end module (FEM) designed for high power Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) and Connected Home applications operating within the 902 to 931 MHz frequency band. This FCC-compliant module integrates harmonic filters and shielding, making it an ideal design choice for sensors, smart meters (water, gas, electric) and machine-to-machine ...

Nano Dimension Embeds Components in 3D Printed PCBs

Nano Dimension Embeds Components in 3D Printed PCBs - RF Cafe"Nano Dimension, the Israel 3D printing specialist, has successfully 3D printed electrical circuits, in which it embedded electrical components, through placement, as an integral part of the printing process. The company's 3D printer – the DragonFly 2020 – enables 3D printing of PCBs with conductive ink and dielectric ink. Today, the company announced a successful proof of concept of PCBs inkjet printing, in which electrical components were placed during ..."