"In
meetings around the globe this week, engineers started in earnest reviewing proposals
for a broad suite of standards for 5G. Their work is expected to take at least two
years, touching every aspect of wireless networks in ways more sweeping than any
prior cellular generation. The 3GPP,
which acts as a central organizer for 5G standards, has broken the job initially
into nearly a dozen separate study groups covering topics ranging from radio access
technologies to network architectures. 'You eat an elephant in small pieces…it
takes lots of people to develop these new technologies,' said Karri "
How RF circuits work have long been referred
to as 'black magic,' even sometimes by people who fully understand the
theory behind the craft. To me the ways in which a transmission line - be it coaxial
cable, microstrip, or waveguide - can be manipulated and controlled with various
combinations of lengths and terminations is what most qualifies as 'magic.' Sure,
I know the equations and understand (mostly) what's
happening with incident and reflected waves, etc., and how the impedance and admittance
circles of a Smith chart graphicaly trace out what's happening, but you have to
admit there's something wonderfully mystical about it all
Graphene's Imperfect Cousin
"Seeking an alternative, a team of researchers
is looking to
graphene oxide - graphene's much cheaper, imperfect form. Graphene
oxide is graphene that is also covered with oxygen and hydrogen groups. The material
is essentially what graphene becomes if it's left to sit out in open air. The team
fabricated nanoscrolls made from graphene oxide flakes and was able to control the
dimensions of each nanoscroll, using both low- and high-frequency ultrasonic techniques.
But there's a catch: Graphene does not come cheap. The material's exceptional mechanical
and chemical "
I wonder why today's editions of the ARRL's
QST magazine does not have a column dedicated to the 'YL'
(Young Lady, or female in general) contingent of the amateur
radio realm? Ham radio, as most -if not all - historically male-dominated hobbies
has fairly significant outreach efforts to try attracting women into activities.
My Model Aviation magazine has a monthly column written by a
lady whose enthusiasm for model airplanes equals that of most males - and she's
funny to boot! - but it is not dedicated to female modelers. If there is a girl
or woman present at a competition, she is almost guaranteed to receive coverage
Images with Unusual Fields of View
"The Columbia team led by professor Shree
K. Nayar, T.C. Chang, which includes research engineer Daniel Sims and postdoctoral
researcher Yonghao Yue, designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts
its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. This optical adaptation enables
the sheet camera to produce high quality images over a wide range of sheet deformations.
Sims will present the work at the International Conference on Computational Photography
(ICCP) at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, in May. 'Cameras today capture
the world from essentially a single point in "
to Launch in April
"The first-ever satellite to carry a D-STAR
(Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) Amateur Radio payload into space
is expected to launch on April 22 from Guiana. The
OUFTI-1 (Orbital Utility For Telecommunication Innovations) CubeSat
is one of three CubeSats developed by student teams under the European Space Agency
(ESA) Education Office
'Fly Your Satellite!' program, which is
aimed at training the next generation of aerospace professionals. The satellites
arrived in South America on March 25, followed by the student teams a few days later
"
Introduction to Radar Webinar
NI will sponsor an "Introduction
to Radar" webinar on April 27, 2016 through Microwave Journal's Technical Education
Webinar Series. This free, one-hour event will be presented by Scott Bullock, instructor
for Besser Associates. The webinar provides an introduction to the theory and operation
of radar, which has its roots in military and government systems but is now being
adopted commercially—with radar in every automobile not far off. Topics include:
Radar Detection and Ranging, Pulse vs. Continuous Wave With Applications, Radar
Modulation, Radar Path Budget - Basic Radar Equation
Approach for Remote Sensing
"A team from the University of Rochester has
shown that fluctuations in 'twisted light' could be exploited for
a range of applications, from detecting rotating black holes to object detection
by lidar, the light-equivalent of radar. In a paper, published in Science Advances
today, the researchers demonstrate that for light from a source such as the Sun,
random fluctuations of intensity give rise to correlations of twisted light beams.
They showed the presence of these correlations by modifying a now classical experiment
called Hanbury Brown - Twiss (HBT) interferometry to focus on the angular "
Here's a topic that never goes out of style.
Without bothering to worry about source and load impedances, this brief tutorial
on the fundamentals of
power supply filter design using series inductors adn parallel
capacitor combinations. The author offers a rule-of-thumb type formula for guessing
at a good inductor value based on peak-to-average expected current. This is by no
means a comprehensive primer on power supply filter design and is directed more
toward someone new to the concept
Using Light and Sound
"Physicists in the US are the first to use
a combination of light and sound to control the state of a diamond-based
quantum bit (qubit) of information. The
team used a laser pulse and a sound wave to modify the energy state of an electron
in a nitrogen vacancy (NV) centre in diamond. According to the researchers, the
technique could be further developed for controlling qubits in a chip-based network
of NV centers. A nitrogen vacancy (NV) center occurs when two neighboring carbon
atoms in diamond are replaced by a nitrogen atom and an empty lattice site. For
anyone trying to build a quantum computer "
Dual Band SP4T for WiFi
RFMW, Ltd. announces design and sales support for Skyworks dual-band, internally
matched, SP4T switch developed for WiFi applications in the 2.4 and 5 GHz ISM
bands. The Skyworks
SKY13575-639LF supports access points and CPEs along with WLAN
test and measurement equipment. Frequency coverage is from 100 MHz to 6 GHz
with a maximum insertion loss of 1.4 dB. Isolation ranges from 26 to 40 dB
and the SKY13575-639LF can handle up to 32 dBm of input power for demanding
applications
Frivolous Lawsuits?
"Inventors and entrepreneurs have logged years
of complaining about the patent system, and there are some good reasons. In 2015,
patent litigation rose 13% from the previous year according to a study by Unified
Patents, and two-thirds of those suits were brought by non-practicing entities,
or so-called 'patent trolls.' Trolls don't make products
— trolls buy up patents so they can sue companies that do actually make products.
Given that patents on an invention last for 20 years, that's plenty of time to bring
a lot of lawsuits. Critics of the system say there are too many frivolous patents.
Patents such "
Seeks RF / Microwave Technician
Cobham is seeking an RF / Microwave Technician
to work at our San Jose, CA facility. The RF Technician's responsibilities are focused
in the area of microwave circuit test, subsystems test to meet shipping schedules.
The RF Technician will support production activities within a group concentrating
on advanced microwave subsystems for applications including missile front ends,
radar receivers, wideband tuners and synthesized sources. Duties include CCAs, and
subsystem products, collecting and documenting test data and providing feedback
to manufacturing engineers on production products. ...
"The Japanese semiconductor industry's downfall
– by way of a slow death over the past quarter century — is undeniable and well
documented. Theories about why
Japan's semi industry fell apart are many. But the single reality
facing Japanese semiconductor firms is this: They no longer matter in the global
market. Tracing the top 10 semiconductor sales leaders all the way back to 1990,
Brian Matas, vice president of market research at IC Insights, observed that compared
to '1990 when Japanese semi suppliers wielded their greatest influence on the global
stage and held six of the top 10 positions "
In the opening scene of "Gladiators," Quintus
remarks to Maximus (Russell Crowe), "A people should
know when they've been conquered." Such truth is applicable to society today regarding
ubiquitous surveillance. Less than two decades ago the media was
filled with stories of outrage over the discovery of some new form of monitoring
and reporting system having been installed on highways, in shopping malls, along
sidewalks, even bathrooms. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, anything goes with
government snooping. Count the numbers of freedoms you have lost and the inconveniences
suffered because of those 19 men with no identifiable common cause
(wouldn't want to profile). This story from 1956 shows
how long stealth installation
5G and Interference Coming in 2020
Anatech Electronics,
a manufacturer of RF and microwave filters, has published its . As always, it includes
both company news and some tidbits about relevant industry happenings. This month,
Sam Benzacar discusses the significantly higher level of RF interference that is
inevitable with the coming 5G networks and the expected increase in noise levels.
Sam refers to 5G as "the most significant change to the wireless industry since
Dr. Martin Cooper made the first cellular phone call," because of opening of spectrum
beyond the current 3 GHz region - up to as high as 60 GHz
Connecting a diode backwards across a solenoid
coil to shunt potentially damaging current and/or voltages when the supply is turned
off is a common trick for saving connected circuitry. Depending on the magnitude
of the magnetic field and how quickly the field collapses, some really high voltages
can be produced. In fact, the ignition coil and point (now
solid state) system in exploits exactly that principle to turn the 12 volts
from your car battery into 20-40 kV for firing the spark plugs. Engineers that
designed this early
cyclotron had limited options for what to use given the state
of the art in the early 1940s, and chose to keep the generator permanently connected
to the coil (no switch) so that if the controller failed, the coil's energy 15 kgauss
magnetic field) would flow back
"For the first time, Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory researchers have shown that
carbon nanotubes as small as eight-tenths of a nanometer in diameter
can transport protons faster than bulk water, by an order of magnitude. The research
validates a 200-year old mechanism of proton transport. A nanometer is one billionth
of a meter. By comparison, the diameter of a human hair is 20,000 nanometers. The
transport rates in these nanotube pores, which form one-dimensional water wires
"
Synthesis & Optimization Technology
AntSyn™ antenna synthesis and optimization technology has been
added to the NI AWR software product portfolio. AntSyn is a new cloud-based Software
as a Service (SaaS) antenna design, synthesis, and optimization solution that enables
designers to input their antenna engineering requirements and produce antenna designs
as outputs. Designed to be used by both experts and those who are relatively new
to antenna design, AntSyn addresses the growing need for rapid
to Threats on the Fly in 15 Years
"As Chinese anti-satellite weapons reach
ever higher, the U.S. military is getting serious about
satellite constellations that can absorb
combat damage and keep transmitting data. It's been almost a decade since China
startled the world by destroying a weather satellite in low-Earth orbit about 500
miles up; two years ago, a Chinese test rocket reached an altitude of 6,250 miles.
Increasingly, the barriers to attacking the most valuable satellites — the ones
22,300 miles up in geosynchronous orbits that keep them over "
Spacecraft Wrap Around Asteroids
"From two-dimensional spacecraft that can
wrap around an asteroid to
printable electronics made from the Martian
environment, NASA has revealed the 'pioneering technologies' it has funded in a
bid to explore the Universe. While these concepts are still in the early stages,
NASA says they have potential to revolutionize future aerospace missions, and those
which prove to be feasible may move on to further development. Last week, the space
agency revealed the 13 proposals "
Combining High Current/Breakdown
"HRL Laboratories LLC in the USA has developed
a GaN vertical tunneling
Schottky barrier diode that gives good combined on and off performance,
compared with vertical Schottky barrier diodes. Gallium vertical SBDs suffer from
trade-offs between on-current and reverse bias breakdown. By applying a thin layer
of aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) as a tunneling barrier, the HRL team allowed
a more highly doped drift layer to be used, increasing on-current, without compromising
the breakdown voltage. Vertical Schottky diodes and other power devices built using
GaN technology could lead to higher current "
Meteor scatter communications is an excellent
example of where hobbyists - in this case amateur radio operators - have contributed
mightily to technology. It could be argued that a big part of the reason for such
occasions is that many people involved in science type hobbies are employed professionally
in a similar capacity, and their extracurricular activities are a natural extension
of what pays for the pastimes. It seems amazing to me that
meteor scatter as a means of achieving upper atmosphere reflections
of radio signals went undiscovered until 1953, but evidently that is the case. Meteor
scatter is a very popular form of amateur radio challenge
as RF Cafe's Newest Advertiser!
Founded in 1980, Integrated Device
Technology (IDT) develops system-level solutions that optimize its customers'
applications. IDT's market-leading products in RF, timing, wireless power transfer,
serial switching, interfaces and sensing solutions are among the company's broad
array of complete mixed-signal solutions for the communications, computing, consumer,
automotive and industrial segments. These products are used for development in areas
such as 4G infrastructure, network communications, cloud datacenters and power management
for computing and mobile devices.
in Superconductor Theory
"University of Houston physicists report
finding major theoretical flaws in the generally accepted understanding of how a
superconductor traps and holds a magnetic field. More than 50
years ago, C.P. Bean, a scientist at General Electric, developed a theoretical explanation
known as the 'Bean Model' or 'Critical State Model.' The basic property of superconductors
is that they represent zero 'resistance' to electrical circuits. In a way, they
are the opposite of toasters, which resist electrical currents and thereby convert
energy into heat. Superconductors consume zero "
Just the other day I saw a greeting card with
a sailboat on the front with the words "Anchors Away," on it. It was not meant to
be a pun on "anchors aweigh;" the card writer didn't know any better. This
episode of "Carl & Jerry" has our teenage Ham radio operators and electronics
hobbyists running a newly built model tugboat powered by a steam engine and navigated
via a radio control system. As is always the case, no activity of the pair goes
without drama of some sort. Author John T. Frye used his writings to present
technical topics within the storyline, both in the "Carl & Jerry" series here
in Popular Electronics and his earlier "Mac's Radio Service Shop" series
that appeared
High-Temp Superconductivity Closer
"A research team led by the U.S. DOE's Argonne
National Laboratory has discovered that only half the atoms in some iron-based superconductors
are magnetic, providing a conclusive demonstration of the wave-like properties of
metallic magnetism in these materials. The discovery allows for
a clearer understanding of the magnetism in some compounds of iron, the iron arsenides,
and how it helps induce superconductivity, the resistance-free flow of electrical
current "
Needs an RF Calibration Technician
Cobham is seeking a RF Calibration Technician to join our Quality Assurance team.
The successful candidate will test, calibrate, and repair of test and measuring
equipment, electrical and mechanical, to conform to established standards. Plans
sequence of testing and calibration procedures for instruments and equipment according
to drawings, schematics, technical manuals, and other specifications. Minimum three
year of calibration experience which can be offset by formal metrology training
or three years of RF / Microwave technician experience ...
Crossword Puzzle for April 10, 2016
For 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). Enjoy!
Transistors Can Be Stacked
"In a paper titled 'Exploiting the colloidal
nanocrystal library to construct electronic devices,' co-authors Cherie Kagan, Professor
in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Ji-Hyuk Choi, then a member
of her lab, describe how they exploited the diversity of colloidal nanocrystals
to design materials, interfaces, and processes to construct all-nanocrystal electronic
devices using solution-based processes. The inks formulated with the tunable colloidal
nanocrystals included metallic silver and semiconducting cadmium "
Here is a fascinating story of the ordeal
one Catholic priest experienced while serving in the Philippines during the Japanese
occupation in World War II. Father Visintainer exploited his personal interest
in radio communications to help keep local residents apprised of the war's progress
and talk to the outside world. Japanese troops confiscated all the existing
shortwave radios and converted them to their own frequencies.
Some were re-converted by daring servicemen and then hidden. Batteries were recharged
using covert water wheel powered generators located in the woods. Drama hit a peak
one day when an attempt to formulate a make-shift battery electrolyte resulted
with Chip-Based Atomic Physics
"A University of Oklahoma-led team of physicists
believes
chip-based atomic physics holds promise
to make the second quantum revolution--the engineering of quantum matter with arbitrary
precision - a reality. With recent technological advances in fabrication and trapping,
hybrid quantum systems are emerging as ideal platforms for a diverse range of studies
in quantum control, quantum simulation and computing. James P. Shaffer, professor
in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy "
For not an awful lot of money
(about $1.50 each) you can buy business cards that
have an NFC antenna and chip built in that will transfer your selected information
to an associate's cellphone or tablet computer. Bump your card on someone's phone
and have it connect to your LinkedIn or Facebook page, go to your website and/or
have a bookmark added, open an e-mail with your address already typed in, have a
digital version of your business card appear, download an app, or open a video chat.
Each company has its own variety of functions available. A nice feature of the
NFC
business card is that you can update it online with new information and functionality
to reflect contact changes or just about anything that comes as part of the original
design package. Many manufacturers provide the capability to monitor
Used for Satellite Shielding
"A team of engineers has developed and tested
a
new type of steel with a record-breaking
ability to withstand an impact without deforming permanently. The new steel alloy
could be used in a wide range of applications, from drill bits, to body armor for
soldiers, to meteor-resistant casings for satellites. The material is an amorphous
steel alloy, a promising subclass of steel alloys made of arrangements of atoms
that deviate from steel's classical crystal-like structure, where iron atoms occupy
specific locations. Researchers are increasingly looking to amorphous "
Than Helium Are Metals?
Factoid:
Astronomers consider all elements heavier than helium to be metals. That definition
obviously does not jive with the standard chemical definition of a metal, but a
concept called 'metallicity' argues that from a star (and
therefore the universe) formation perspective, extremely high temperatures
and pressures in first generation stars (like our sun)
preclude the identification of distinct elements other than hydrogen and helium.
Heavier elements, such as lithium - #3 on the periodic chart and actually considered
a metal in
"According to the University of Cambridge
website, an entirely new state of matter has been detected in a two-dimensional
material. The state is known as
quantum spin liquid and it causes electrons to break into pieces.
This new state of matter is mysterious because it was previously thought that electrons
were indivisible building blocks of nature. This new state was predicted forty years
ago but had not been observed until now. Quantum spin liquids were thought to be
hiding in certain magnetic materials but they had never before been seen in nature
"
As you might know, particularly if you are
a frequent RF Cafe visitor, amateur radio operators (Hams)
were prohibited from broadcasting during the entirety of World War II,
(see
War
Comes) ostensibly as a security measure. The concern was that people
might unintentionally (or intentionally) convey information on troop positions and
family names, domestic factory locations and activities, and the general state of
the nation in regards to attitude and finance. Unlike today, that type of data was
not easily gathered even by a dedicated deployment of internal spies. In the early
1940s, the majority of amateur radio activity was carried out in the form of Morse
code, and operators were understandably concerned
for Terahertz Communication
"Scientists in Switzerland have discovered
yet another unique property of graphene, the 2D version of carbon. Not only is graphene
fast, strong, thin, and lightweight, but now we know that it is also both transparent
and opaque to radiation. The Swiss team took advantage of this property to develop
a microchip that filters out unwanted radiation. Their device, called an optical
isolator, works in the previously untapped frequency band called the
terahertz gap. With further development, wireless devices that
use the chip to communicate via the terahertz
Merton Horne Checks In
The unofficial USAF
MPN-13 & MPN-14 Radar Maintenance
Shop member list has just been expanded to include
Merton Horne! From
1971 to 1973, Merton worked on an MPN-14 at Grand Forks AFB, in North Dakota. He
wrote asking whether I recall the weight of the ASR transmitter chassis, which I
do not. He estimates 180 lbs. If anyone knows for sure, please apprise me and I'll
pass it on. If you were or are currently a radar maintenance technician and send
me your service info, I will be glad to add you to our list
"Turn on an electric field, and a standard
electrocaloric material will eject heat to its surroundings as
its internal dipoles reorder themselves. Do the same thing, and a negative electrocaloric
material will absorb heat, cooling the environment, thanks to the blend of ferroelectric
polymers that make up each. While these materials have been investigated as a method
of on-demand microclimate control for quite some time, there's a catch - the external
field needs to remain active, which is energy-consuming and ends up heating the
material. Recently, however, researchers at Pennsylvania State University "
These might be the last two Radio Service
Data Sheets that I have to post for a while since I believe they are the last from
my current collection of vintage magazines. One is for the
RCA Victor Model 5M 5-Tube Auto Superheterodyne Receiver and the
other is for the
International Kadette Model 400 4-Tube Battery-Operated Superheterodyne
Receiver. This makes a total of 104 scanned and made available for collectors,
restorers, and researchers.
Is Just One Piece
"With an eye toward building space-qualified
RF components for Earth observation and science instruments, the European Space
Agency (ESA) has
3D printed a satellite antenna designed
as a single part. The antenna is now being tested in the agency's Compact Antenna
Test Facility, located at ESA's ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands. The prototype
antenna is the agency's first dual-reflector type to be 3D printed, according to
its designer, Maarten van der Vorst. It incorporates the two reflectors and a corrugated
feedhorn "
48 VOA Towers in North Carolina
This item appeared on the ARRL news website.
It links to a video showing an engineered demolition of a shortwave antenna farm
in North Carolina commissioned by the Voice of America (VOA) in 1963, during the
Cold War. The video provides an aerial view of the entire line of towers collapsing
as the precisely timed charges go off. The most impressive aspect is that explosives
are detonated only on every other tower in such a way that the falling tower takes
out the one next to it almost in a dominoes manner (see yellow
circle). 25 pounds of explosives were used rather than possibly 50 if every
tower's guy lines had been
Noise Sources up to 60 GHz
Pasternack, a leading provider of RF, microwave and millimeter wave products,
has greatly expanded their lines of
coaxial packaged noise sources covering
frequency bands up to 60 GHz. Various types of noise source design configurations
are available including octave band and broadband noise sources, amplified noise
sources, noise sources with integral isolators, and precision calibrated instrumentation
grade noise sources. Pasternack's new noise sources might generally be used as a
reference source to measure system level noise figure for test and measurement applications.
But more specific
Antenna for Ultra High Frequencies
A new word has been added to my personal lexicon:
'sphenoidal.' Author John Kraus used it to describe the wedge shape
of a corner reflector. The Oxford Dictionary defines 'sphenoid' thusly: "A compound
bone that forms the base of the cranium, behind the eye and below the front part
of the brain. It has two pairs of broad lateral 'wings' and a number of other projections,
and contains two air-filled sinuses." This 'square corner' configuration - essentially
a "V" shape, is shown to exhibit up to 10 dB of gain while being relatively (compared
to a parabolic reflector) insensitive to physical size and driven radiator placement
across a wide band when made sufficiently large. No radiation pattern was
Digital Radio and EW
"U.S. Army researchers are reaching out to
industry for new ways to build combination
digital radio, surveillance, and electronic warfare (EW) systems
that are compact enough for Army aircraft and ground vehicles. These systems must
be small size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP), and make maximum use of open-systems
standards like OpenVPX for embedded computing, VICTORY for on-board networking,
the Modular Open RF Architecture (MORA) for RF and microwave systems, and REDHAWK
interfaces for software interoperability. Officials of the Army Contracting Command
at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., issued a sources-sought "
The Official Arduino Starter Kit
Don't let not knowing how to pronounce "Arduino"
(click for audio) keep you from joining in on an immensely
popular hobby / professional opportunity (Tip: the word is
Italian, so you need to make that circle with thumb and forefinger when saying "Arduino,"
like a chef does when talking about a delicacy). Many books and videos have
been produced to help you get started - for less than $80. The
Official Arduino Starter Kit walks you
through the basics of using the Arduino in a hands-on way. You'll learn through
building several creative projects. The kit includes a selection of the most common
and useful electronic components with a 170-page book of 15 projects. Starting the
basics of electronics, to more complex projects, the kit will help you control the
physical world with sensor and actuators
of Age in Fabless Ecosystem
"While it is still lagging about 30 years
behind electronic integration in terms of maturity, it is a quickly evolving technology.
It experienced its greatest development at the telecom bubble around 2000, where
millions of passive optical components for fiber networks started to be integrated
into
planar lightwave circuits (PLC) made out of silica. Nowadays,
there are several mature material platforms available for fabless chip development,
each of them excelling at different features: PLC because of its low loss and low
cost passive circuits, silicon (Si) because of its compactness and CMOS compatibility,
indium phosphide (InP) because of its capability of generating and amplifying light
on a chip, and silicon nitride (Si3N4) "
If you are just starting out in the realm
of electronics or maybe just need a little freshening up of your
basic math skills, this rather extensive article from a 1942 issue
of QST magazine is just what you need. Author Dawkins Espy does a really
nice job of laying out the basics of algebraic operations, Ohm's law, trigonometry,
and logarithms. Examples are provided for each category. In this day of calculators
doing all the hard work of calculating logs, antilogs, and trig functions, it does
even seasoned veterans at electronics calculations a bit of good to do a quick read-through
to knock off cobwebs in the gray matter. How long has it been since you have seen
tables of sine, cosine, and tangent values and/or tables of logarithms? Not long
enough, you say?
Anon Profundities
"Dear algebra: Stop asking us to find your
'x': He's not coming back."
"Möbius strippers never show you their backsides."
"All generalizations are false, including this one."
"A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform."
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."
"I don't care what it is, when it has an LCD screen, it makes it better."
"We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts."
"Polaroids /n./: what polar bears get from sitting on ice caps."
to Support $7.2B Electronics Program
"The Pentagon plans to spend up to $7.2B
over the next dozen years to upgrade old and/or unreliable electronics through the
Defense Department. The Defense Microelectronics Activity has awarded contracts
to eight companies for the work under the Advanced Technology Support Program IV
(ATSP4) program. Under the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, multiple award
contract, the companies will compete for work in solving problems with 'obsolete,
unreliable, unmaintainable, underperforming, or incapable electronics hardware and
software,' according to a DOD announcement. The goal is to apply advanced
technology insertions and applications to raise the performance "
Somehow, I missed this. After attending the
funeral for my uncle Rick Blattenberger at Arlington National Cemetery, Melanie
and I spent a few hours at the nearby Udvar-Hazy Center annex of the Smithsonian
National Air and Space Museum. I photographed a lot of cool stuff, including electronics
packages used on airplanes, rockets, balloons, and satellites, but in some inexplicable
way I managed to not see this bright red "Flying Flea" that was owned by Powell
Crosley, Jr., owner of the
Crosley
Radio Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. It wasn't until a couple nights ago when
I saw it featured in the April/May issue of Air & Space magazine that I even
knew it existed. Mr. Crosley's company dabbled in many types of domestic products
other than just radios
Revolutionary Potential
"Salvador Pane was on a trolleybus in Zurich
one day after work. He was deep in thought when the bus came to a sudden stop because
the cable was disrupted. He was struck by an idea: 'Why can't we create a icrorobot
that
generates an electric field wirelessly?' The idea stayed with
him and, as a result, the ETH researcher and his colleagues have since succeeded
in creating tiny particles that can be precisely controlled by magnetic fields and
also generate electric fields. This may sound relatively unspectacular to the uninitiated,
but it is a breakthrough. What makes it unique is that a microstructure with a single
source of energy is not only moved, but also can be "
If anything qualifies for meeting the criteria
of the old adage that says "Necessity is the mother of invention," it is
coaxial transmission cable. Wireless communications during World
War II was the necessity that drove the rapid development and continuous improvement
of coax. Other than materials technology for wire, dielectric, protective jacket,
etc., the basics of coax cable have not changed. It was during the war that polyethylene
was developed and adopted as a dielectric material much superior to previously used
copolene. Understanding of how electromagnetic fields propagate within and, under
non-ideal conditions - on the outside of the cable has increased significantly
"Rice University scientists have determined
that two-dimensional boron is a natural low-temperature superconductor.
In fact, it may be the only 2-D material with such potential. Rice theoretical physicist
Boris Yakobson and his co-workers published their calculations that show atomically
flat boron is metallic and will transmit electrons with no resistance. The work
appears this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. The hitch,
as with most superconducting materials, is that it loses its resistivity only when
very cold, in this case between 10 and 20 kelvins. But for making very small superconducting
circuits, it might be the only game in town "
Technician Jobs for April 4, 2016
As a service to RF Cafe visitors, I offer to list
open job listings for engineers, technicians, engineering managers,
engineering sales, etc., at no charge. Only positions relevant to my readers are
included. Your company is welcome to submit job descriptions, so please let your
HR department know bout this invitation. Beginning today, I am also going to peruse
the websites of RF engineering companies in search of qualifying job postings and
will link directly to them. Don't let the news about layoffs and hiring freezes
scare you
•
Project Engineering Manager
- General Dynamics
•
Electronic Technician - Aeroflex
•
Radar Test Engineer
- General Dynamics <many more>
in Engineering History
"What better time to read about some of history's
greatest hoaxes than
April Fools Day? This year we've compiled
another list of some more of our favorite hoax inventions, scams, conspiracies,
and urban legends. Did you ever get an email about a secret super car? Maybe you
have a friend who has warned you about chemtrails, or maybe you'd like to use a
nanotech spray to make yourself invisible? Come take a look at our latest crop of
great hoaxes "
This article reports on the very earliest
form of
voice mail - recording a message on a reel-to-reel tape deck,
placing it in an envelope, and snail mailing it to its recipient. Sure, it was slow,
but unless you were under surveillance for some suspected crime, there was just
about zero chance that some government agency was going to hear your private message.
I had forgotten about it until reading this, but I remember that back in the 1960s,
my father bought an el cheapo tape deck for our family and one for his parents,
who lived in Buffalo, New York. My parents and four sisters and I had a pretty good
time hamming it up on the tape, and looked forward to receiving a reply tape a month
or two later. "Grandpa B," as we kids called him, was a real funny guy
Lithium-Ion Battery Greatness
"Silicon electrodes crack and break after
just a short number of charge/discharge cycles. Meanwhile, the use of graphene on
electrodes is limited because graphene's attractive surface area is only possible
in single stand-alone sheets, which don't provide enough volumetric capacitance.
Layer the graphene sheets on top of each other to gain that volumetric capacity,
and you begin to lose that attractive surface area. Now researchers at Kansas State
University claim to have developed a technique that uses
silicon oxycarbide that makes the combination
of silicon and graphene achieve its expected greatness as an electrode material
"
Winner Marek K. of Ottawa, Canada !
Marek K., of Ottawa, Canada, is one of
the the March 2016 RF Cafe Book Drawing winners! Marek wisely selected
Space-Time Adaptive Processing for Radar,
by J. R. Guerci. (graciously provided by
Artech House).
Each month I randomly choose one or more names from a list of people who either
buy my
software products or send me an e-mail asking to be entered
(empty e-mails go to the trash bin). The name list
starts fresh each month, so your entry only counts for the month it is received.
Note: I have never sold, lent, traded, or given e-mail addresses to anyone for
any reason.
Hypersonic Weapons
"The race is on to build
hypersonic weapons, missiles that blow through a target's defenses
at more than five times the speed of sound. Or should that be 'the race to grow
hypersonic weapons?' It turns out an unrelated cutting-edge technology, 3D printing,
may be the key to making hypersonics work. The whole aerospace world is intrigued
by so-called additive manufacturing - especially for government and/or unmanned
applications not subject to laborious FAA safety testing on new technology. NASA
has a 3D printer on the International Space Station; the Navy has tested one on
a ship. Several rocket engine companies have built key components "
The 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. Note: I earn a few pennies
(literally) when you download one of these or the
many other pubs available, so please help yourself.
Unwanted Signals
"A new simpler, cheaper and potentially more
effective way to prevent
radio antennas from picking up unwanted
signals has been created by researchers in the US. With further development, the
technique could also be used to help prevent thermophotovoltaic cells from re-emitting
radiation they absorb – according to the team. The laws of electromagnetism work
exactly the same way if you run time in the opposite direction. One logical consequence
of this is that an antenna designed to broadcast at a certain radio frequency will
also be very good at absorbing radiation at that frequency. This is problematic
for broadcast radio antennas, which "
Questions asked by interviewers at Google
are objects of much ballyhoo. Depending on the job being sought, questions range
from relatively simple and objective to massively esoteric and subjective. Perform
a search on "Google Interview Questions" and you will find a host of websites
that collect experiences from recent interviewees. Some people curse Google for
their insanely difficult questions, but what is fundamentally a form of profiling
and discrimination is what provides Google with exactly the employees they
need to be at the leading edge of all sorts of technology - networking, software,
hardware, publishing, website design, social media, global politics, search optimization,
etc. As you can see, many questions require the interviewee to state assumptions
and conditions prior to asserting a solution. For instance, "Estimate the number
of tennis balls that can fit into a plane" has no single answer because while the
size of a tennis ball
Yet Extremely Sensitive
"A tiny device that can make very precise
measurements of the
Earth's gravity has been unveiled by physicists
at the University of Glasgow in the UK. While their gravimeter is not quite as sensitive
as the best available sensors, the team says that it could be produced for a 1000th
of the cost. It is also significantly smaller and lighter than current devices,
and could be deployed in drone aircraft or in multi-sensor arrays to perform a range
of tasks, including mineral exploration, civil engineering and monitoring volcanoes.
Gravimeters are sensors that measure the local force "
Leaded Solder Heads to Supreme Court
Lyon Legal Justice Partners, a not for non-profit
legal foundation based in Hill Valley, California, has announced in the wake of
a crushing and unexpected loss before the United States 9th Circuit Court of appeals
against manufacturers using leaded solder in their products, that his legal team
will appeal the unprecedented 12.4 billion dollars awarded to class action members
from its client companies that comprise the International Brotherhood of Electronics
Assemblers. Plaintiffs originally sought 5 billion dollars as recompense for pain,
suffering, lost wages, and lost opportunity by its class of more than 25,000 electronics
manufacturing workers worldwide. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge M.R. Strickland;
however, after finding defense counsel in contempt on multiple occasions during
