"Despite a considerable hype around
electromobility among German carmakers,
the Chinese market holds an unassailable lead in terms of units. If one looks at
the growth figures, Germany also lags far behind any comparable economy. Market
researcher Center of Automotive Management (CAM) this week came up with the latest
figures
..."
"Unfortunately, good technical ability and
good business ability do not always grow naturally on the same tree." That line
by "Mac," (Mac McGregor) is all too true for lot of us, and I definitely
include myself as part of 'us.' I have often paraphrased the line by Dr. McCoy on
Star Trek as, "Dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not a salesman." Part of the
reason RF Cafe has pretty much remained at the same level of income over the years
is due to my unwillingness to make performance guarantees to anyone in return for
pay - other than to not do anything intentional that will harm them. My advertisers
...
Triad RF Systems has introduced the
TTRM1008 - 4.4 - 5.0 GHz, 25W, Bi-Directional Amplifier. The TTRM1008
is compatible with nearly all military and commercial radio systems operating in
the 4400-5000 MHz band. It offers 25W of peak power for signals such as QPSK/BPSK,
but is also linear enough to provide 4-5W of power with more highly modulated signals
such as 64QAM
"The Pentagon
is looking for the next wave in warfighting technologies, inviting industry to offer
ideas in key areas, such as dealing with the electromagnetic spectrum and ways to
manage the flood of data collected by its growing number of sensors. The Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency is staging a
Proposer's Day Sept. 20 to solicit information
on what it calls 'revolutionary advances' for its Microsystems Technology Office
..."
"Qorvo announced that its Low Power Wireless
business unit (formerly GreenPeak Technologies) is
the first in the industry to receive the ZigBee 3.0 certification for its smart
home gateway platform. A certified ZigBee 3.0-ready platform enables software developers
to quickly integrate the standard into their smart home applications. ZigBee 3.0
combines
..."
Incredibly, 15 years has passed since the extremist
Islamic attack on American soil. Nearly 3,000 citizens died that day. World leaders
have
embarked on a path of colonizing our homelands
with groups of people that are known to harbor sympathies for the terrorists. They
dwell among us now and mean to do us harm when
opportunity presents itself - which it has on
numerous occasions in the past few years. Never forget the people who died in the
burning towers, the Pentagon, and the airplanes, and
those left
behind to grieve and get on with life. Never forget the police and military members
who fought - and some died - keep us safe and free. Never forget the rotten politicians
who imperil our existence with their selfish agendas.
"Instead of relying on thick metals or layers
of conductive coatings with limited shielding effectiveness, the researchers relied
on layers of two-dimensional titanium carbide, a 2D material only a few atoms thick
that conducts like metals and graphite. The novel nanomaterial, part of the
MXene family of 2D transition metal carbides
only recently discovered
..."
"Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter
tells spacetime how to curve." -
John A. Wheeler, astrophysicist who coined
the terms
'black hole' and 'wormhole.' Quote taken from
his book Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics.
"Electronic components have become faster
and faster over the years, thus making powerful computers and other technologies
possible. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now investigated how fast electrons can
ultimately be controlled with electric fields. Their insights are of importance
for the
petahertz electronics of the future. Speed
may not be witchcraft, but it is the basis for technologies that often seem
..."
Over the last decade or two, Vishay has acquired
a slew electronics components companies many of us grew up with, among them Dale,
Sprague, Vitramon, Siliconix, General Semiconductor, and BCcomponents. Vishay has
a handy Ferrite Bead Calculator that suggests one of its surface mount
models based on your frequency and current inputs
...
Did you know that the examinations for
Amateur Radio Operator licenses were originally conducted by the
Commerce Department, and not the FCC? The FCC was established with passage of the
Communications Act of 1934, which abolished the Federal Radio Commission and replaced
it with the FCC. The 'Act' combined and organized federal regulation of telephone,
telegraph, and radio communications. That's right, bureaucracies were renaming and
reorganizing themselves even back then in order to expand and increase control and
regulatory power. After all, the more segments of society
...
With more than 700 custom-built symbols, this has got to be the most
comprehensive set of
Visio Stencils available for RF, analog, and digital system and
schematic drawings!
Every object has been built from scratch to fit proportionally on the provided
A- and B-size drawing page templates (you can use your own
page if preferred). Components are provided for equipment racks
(EIA and ETSI) and test equipment, system block diagrams
and conceptual drawings, and for schematics
...
"Back in the 1990s, observers predicted that
the
single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT)
would be the nanomaterial that pushed silicon aside and created a post-CMOS world
where Moore's Law could continue its march towards ever=smaller chip dimensions.
All of that hope was swallowed up by inconsistencies between semiconducting and
metallic
..."
NI AWR Design Environment
technologies and features will be highlighted in activities at
EDI CON USA 2016, being held
September 20-22 in Boston. In its first year in the U.S., EDI CON brings the high
frequency electronic and high speed digital design communities together to address
the engineering and manufacturing issues that face today's design engineers
"TeleWorld Solutions launched an online marketplace
aimed at matching property owners with carriers looking to deploy small cells.
SmallCellSite.com, which is
scheduled to go live this morning, uses an interactive mapping and photo-based interface
enabling property owners to upload listing information, receive suggested pricing
based on algorithms, and market their space to major carriers. Operators can use
the site to search for property
..."
Part 3 of this 3-part "The Wavelength
Factor" series, titled "Choice of Frequency Bands for Civil Defense and U.H.F.," appeared
in the August 1952 issue of QST. Part 2 appeared in the February edition. In
this series, author Yardley Beers reviews transmitter and receiver powers, antenna
gain, and system range that can be expected based on the presented equations
...
No problemo, Merkel's providing lots of new
potential engineers with refugees. "Between 2016 and 2026, Germany will need 100,000
more
engineers in electrotechnology, electronics,
and computer technology than will graduate from that nation's universities and technical
colleges. The report, published by the German Association for Electrical, Electronic,
and Information Technologies (VDE), bases this estimate on employment figures obtained
for the period beginning in 2005 and ending
..."
September 20, 2:00 PM ET. Manual testing
of the passive RF components of an In-Building (DAS) antenna system can be a lengthy
and expensive process, particularly if retesting becomes necessary. The manual testing
process used for tower work does not scale well for the much more complex DAS installations.
Automation of the
field RF testing process can dramatically reduce common testing
errors, cut testing time up to 90%, virtually eliminate mislabeled traces
...
"In a vision shared by innovators, entrepreneurs,
and planners in both defense and civilian contexts, the skies of the future will
be busy with UAVs. Unseen but central to the realization of this vision is that
wireless communication within and between
these future fleets of UAVs should be reliable and resistant to both unintentional
and ill-willed interference. According to Josh
..."
As you can see by these 1930s vintage electronics-themed
comics from an edition of QST magazine, only the technology has changed - not the
style of humor. Both were drawn by the fabled
Phil Glidersleeve (aka 'Gil'), W1CJD. Enjoy
...
This looks like a variation of the soup can & string phone system! It is
actually a pretty cool radar demo system. Pasternack, a leading provider of RF,
microwave and millimeter wave products, unveils the brand new
PEM11000-KIT and PEM11002-KIT radar demonstration
kits covering the popular 2.4 GHz ISM band with no special licensing required.
These demonstration kits offer a convenient educational resource to study
"A research team has developed a printing
technique for forming electronic circuits and thin-film transistors (TFTs) with
line width and line spacing both being 1 μm. Using this technique, the research
team formed fully-printed
organic TFTs with a channel length of 1 μm on flexible substrates,
and confirmed that the TFTs operate at a practical level
..."
Writing for
IMS ExpertServices, Wendy Pearson, of
the Pearson Research Group, offers this third installment in a series of articles
advising people new to the expert witness realm on how to prepare for the process.
Being an authority in your professed field is not always enough to assure success
in the courtroom - or even for making it as far as a courtroom. Part 3 discusses
"case law," which is where courts cite precedence by higher courts
when deciding cases. Whether or not you consider it a legitimate tactic, your duty
as an "expert" includes being aware of applicable instances and being prepared to
reaffirm or discredit its use to the advantage
...
"Graphene is a wonder material: The carbon
honeycomb is just an atom thick. It's great at conducting electricity and heat;
it's strong and stable. But researchers have struggled to move beyond tiny lab samples
for studying its material properties to larger pieces for real-world applications.
Recent projects that used inkjet printers to print multi-layer
graphene circuits ..."
"It is anybody's guess as to what modulation
system the amateur of 1975 will be using." That forward-looking line appeared in
this 1947 QST magazine infomercial by the National Company. The writers probably
had no real idea how different electronics would be 25 years in the future, especially
since
John Bardeen et al would not invent the transistor until two more
months (December 1947) after the publication of this
issue. In their traditional style, this full-page advertisement was heavy on text
and light on images. The company invested in customer education with the hope being
a well-informed and appreciative hobbyist would reward them with patronage.
"Antennas used in radars are often required
to rotate to provide a 360 degree view of the surroundings. Traditionally this is
achieved by physically rotating the antennas to provide a complete view. Over time
physically rotating antennas were related by
phased array antennas. Phased array antennas
are flat panels made up of miniature transmitters that each emit
..."
"Applying an electric field to some materials
causes their atoms to 'switch' their electric polarization from one direction to
another, making one side of the material positive and the other negative. This switching
property of 'ferroelectric' materials allows them to be used in a wide range of
applications. For example,
ferroelectric capacitors are used
..."
Take a break and work this week's
RF Engineering-themed crossword puzzle. All the words are pulled
from a hand-built list of terms, names, and abbreviations that have only to do with
science, mathematics, and engineering. If you want a crossword with names of movie
stars and obscure countries, try the local newspaper
...
Folded dipole antennas, as the name suggests,
are about half the length of a regular dipole, and work just as well for many applications.
I have had one attached to my FM radio receiver for many years and it does a great
job pulling in stations from as far away as Toronto, Canada, and Detroit, MI
(I'm located in Erie, PA). Receiver sensitivity and
oscillator stability has been able to obviate the need in most cases for super performance
antennas in modern receivers, as evidenced by ear bud wires and even conformal patch
antennas in smartphones sufficing in lieu of a 'real' antenna
...
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
....
I'm having a hard time feeling a sense of
loss about this one. I like SpaceX and wish them well, but
Facebook - no so much
...
"Researchers at Penn State and the Molecular
Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are pushing the limits of electron
microscopy into the tens of picometer scale, a fraction of the size of a hydrogen
atom. The ability to see at this subatomic level is crucial for designing
new materials with unprecedented properties,
such as materials that transition from metals to semiconductors or that exhibit
superconductivity
..."
Mark A., of Carpentersville, Illinois, is
a winner in the August Book Drawing. Mark wisely selected
The Art and Science of Ultrawideband Antennas,
by Hans G. Schantz (Graciously provided by
Artech House). Each month I randomly draw one or two
names from the list of people who contact me during the period and offer to ship
a free top tier engineering book to them.
...
"The DoD's Electromagnetic Spectrum Strategy
outlines goals for accommodating the ever growing number of military devices—from
UAVs to embedded sensors and smart devices of all kinds.
HERMES, which stands for Hyper-wideband
Enabled RF Messaging, was started in 2014 to find way to solve jamming and signal
fratricide problems with wideband spread-spectrum communications
..."
Imagine if this happened to the ISS crew
module! "A tiny piece of debris has punched a gaping hole in the
solar panel of one of its Earth observation
satellites. ESA says a tiny particle has knocked a gaping hole in a solar panel
on one of its Earth observation satellites. This image shows Sentinel-1A's solar
array before (left) and after
(right) the impact of a millimeter-size particle on
the second panel
..."
The first
facsimile (fax) machines for home
use were receive only, and got their data not from the telephone line but from a
commercial broadcast radio receiver. Radio Corporation of America
(RCA) and Finch Telecommunications were two of the
earliest entrants into the realm. As opposed to modern digital fax machines, these
analog systems used a scanning raster light beam and a photodetector to read and
encode the original document image, and then a complimentary scanning method on
the receiving end literally burned the image into special
...
"Aalto University's Radio Science and Engineering
researchers have developed a method that allows
antennas to make the shift from the analogue to the digital world.
The antennas currently in use are mostly based on technology developed half a century
ago. 'Traditionally one antenna works with either one or a few different frequencies.
Now we can take advantage of advanced digital electronics and combine several small
antenna elements to work ..."
Triad RF Systems has introduced the
TTRM1010 - 30-3000 MHz,
3 W, bi-directional amplifier. The TTRM1010 is a bi-directional SSPA for small
to medium size UAS applications. In addition to its broad frequency range it also
contains internal DC conversion circuitry that allows it to be powered by an input
voltage range of 9-36 VDC. This class A GaAs module is designed for both military
and commercial applications. It is capable of supporting any signal type and modulation
format, including
"A device made of bilayer graphene, an atomically
thin hexagonal arrangement of carbon atoms, provides experimental proof of the ability
to control the momentum of electrons and offers a path to electronics that could
require less energy and give off less heat than standard silicon-based transistors.
It is one step forward in a new field of physics called
valleytronics. "Current silicon-based
transistor devices rely on the charge of electrons
..."
Westinghouse's motive for dubbing the Model
WR-8 the 'Columnaire' is apparent when you see a photograph of it. This
model also had a -R version with remote control. The remote, though, has a cable
attached to it; it's not wireless like today's remotes. The Radio Service Data
Sheets for it and the Crosley Model 120 Senior 'Pliodynatron' superheterodyne
receivers
...
"The fastest electronic devices currently
send information at speeds of several gigahertz, a billion oscillations per second.
Some fiber-optic cables feature frequencies approaching a terahertz, a thousand
billion oscillations. But the need for speed is never-ending, and researchers are
beginning to experiment with how technology might move information-carrying electrons
even faster. The next benchmark is the
petahertz ..."
