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Friday the 21st
 Anatech Electronics (AEI) manufactures and
supplies RF and microwave filters for military and commercial communication
systems, providing standard LP, HP, BP, BS, notch, diplexer, and custom RF filters,
and RF products. Standard RF filter and cable assembly products are published in
our website database for ease of procurement. Custom RF filters designs are used
when a standard cannot be found, or the requirements dictate a custom approach for
your military and commercial communications needs. Sam Benzacar's monthly newsletters
address contemporary wireless subjects. Please visit Anatech today to see how they
can help your project succeed.
 Together with Amazon's
Kuiper and the EU's
OneWeb, China's
GalaxySpace and SpaceX's Starlink will
forever transform the night sky by launching tens of thousands of small LEO satellites,
each of which will reflect sunlight to observers situated between them and the sun.
Many - if not most - will be visible to the naked eye and will definitely appear
as
streaks in time exposure astronomical images. These systems will provide global
broadband connectivity at a projected cost of about $100 per month to those of us
who will actually shell out our wampum
for it, which is about the cost of equivalent cable-based Internet connectivity
now. As is the case now, our expensive subscriptions will continue to subsidize
the many who pay reduced rate or nothing for the service - another instance of a
few pulling the metaphoric welfare wagon while rest are in it for the free ride...
 My first major high fidelity (Hi−Fi) stereo
system purchase came during my senior year at Southern Senior High School when I
had saved enough money to buy a combination AM/FM receiver, 8-track tape deck, turn
table, and two speakers with separate woofers, midranges, and tweeters. At the time
I thought the setup might impress friends and relatives... until I learned quite
quickly that "serious" stereo sound connoisseurs decidedly did NOT have equipment
with "Reader's Digest" logos on it. Oh well, the price seemed like a really good
bargain to me give the promised tonal superiority. Compared to the clock radio I
used previously for my music listening sessions, the Reader's Digest stereo system
produced music hall quality sound. Ah, the deep bass notes were grand. Spending
most of my earned money on model airplanes, rockets, and my '69 Camaro left little
disposable income for LPs (referred to as "discs" in this article), so the turntable
did not get much use. I did, however, read up on how to balance the tone arm...
 "A TU/e research group has developed a new
near-infrared sensor that is easy to make, comparable in size to sensors in smartphones,
and ready for immediate use in industrial process monitoring and agriculture. This
breakthrough has just been published in Nature Communications, with co-first author
Kaylee Hakkel defending her Ph.D. thesis on January 14th. The human eye is a marvelous
sensor. Using three photoreceptor cells that
convert
visible light into signals for different colors, the eye gives essential information
about the world around us. "When our brain puts the signals together, it makes a
prediction of what the signals mean based on our experiences. For example, a red
strawberry is sweet, but a green one is not..."
 On Friday, January 28th and Monday, the 31st,
Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) will be conducting a webinar entitled "HF in a Nutshell."
You would be excused to thinking that this an amateur radio event because many of
the company's employees are Hams, but in fact it is billed as "An overview of current
beyond-line-of-sight communications solutions." Further, "HF communications technology
is reliable, proven and has been in service for decades. This webinar is the first
in a series covering HF topics and will illustrate that HF communications is in
no way your grandparents' technology, but rather THE communications solution for
the future. You will receive an overview of currently available Beyond Line of Sight
(BLOS) communications solutions and the latest developments in this field, i.e.
HF versus satellite communications (SATCOM)..."
 Author Howard Wright takes the opportunity
here in a 1936 issue of QST magazine to distill the
concept
of modulation down to its basic operation while dispensing with the garbled
mix of "graphs, formulas, charts, vectors, diagrams, and Greek letters which often
enter into various discussions of modulation." Mr. Wright describes how to
the uninitiated radio dial spinner, the culmination of events occurring behind the
scenes in an AM reception process is akin to this: "...it might be compared to the
reproduction of a color photograph in a magazine. How would we ever know that, to
be reproduced, the picture was broken down into its primary colors, if all we had
to go by was the original print and the magazine?" That is a very apt comparison...
 RF
Cafe's raison d'être is and always has been to provide useful, quality content for
engineers, technicians, engineering managers, students, and hobbyists. Part of that
mission is offering to post applicable job openings. HR department employees and/or managers of hiring
companies are welcome to submit opportunities for posting at no charge. 3rd party
recruiters and temp agencies are not included so as to assure a high quality of
listings. Please read through the easy procedure to benefit from RF Cafe's high
quality visitors...
 Aegis Power Systems is a leading supplier
of AC-DC and
DC-DC power supplies for custom and special applications. Aegis has been designing
and building highly reliable custom power supplies since 1995. They offer a complete
line of switch mode power supplies and power converters for a variety of markets
including defense, industrial, aircraft, VME, and telecom. Supports military, aircraft,
EV, telecom, and embedded computing applications. Design and manufacture of custom
power supply solutions to meet each customer's exacting specifications. Please visit
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Thursday the 20th
 The era of nuclear weapons of course began
in August of 1945 when they effectively ended World War II, but it wasn't until
around 1955 that another country - the U.S.S.R. - developed a deployable
thermonuclear bomb. Even before that happened, the U.S. Department of Defense
began planning for systems to detect and ultimately disable enemy ICBMs and aircraft-delivered
nuclear bombs. The nuclear arms race had begun, and continues to this day. Now,
there are five countries recognized as possessing thermonuclear weapons, three countries
declaring possession, and one country implying possession. A somewhat insane concept
dubbed MAD asserts that if everyone can strike and counterstrike with equal capability,
that will prevent nuclear warfare because the aggressor will suffer as significantly
as the victim. This 1961 Bell Telephone Labs promotion in Radio−Electronics
magazine introduced one of the early concepts for intercepting inbound ICBMs. The
most familiar and successful system...
 Modelithics is excited to launch a new monthly
blog series -
Model Rap! These blog posts will provide helpful tips for RF & Microwave
design success using high-accuracy simulation models in the industry's leading simulation
software. EM/circuit co−simulations are both accurate and painless when using Keysight
Technologies' RFPro EM environment in conjunction with Modelithics models. In this
blog post, learn why this approach for EM/circuit co-simulations offers tremendous
advantages in comparison to traditional methods. The premier edition is entitled,
"EM/Circuit Co-Simulation Made Easy and Accurate with Keysight RFPro and Modelithics
Models..."
 "Every
living thing requires energy. This is also true of microorganisms. This energy is
frequently generated in the cells by respiration, that is by the combustion of organic
compounds, in other words: food. During this process, electrons are released which
the microorganisms then need to get rid of. In the absence of oxygen, microorganisms
can use other methods to do so, including
transporting the electrons to minerals outside the cells. Reduction rates vary
considerably. In oxygen-free soils or sediments, iron oxides play a major role as
acceptors of the released electrons. But how do the electrons get from respiration
in the cells to the iron oxides which are..."
 Unlike the Roll Your Own Foil Capacitors
article in the same issue of Popular Electronics magazine, this one advising
how to reactivate leaky capacitors might be of use to a lot more people. The process
is called "reforming," and consists of applying a DC voltage to the faulty capacitor,
beginning at a very low voltage, and then slowly raising the voltage until the rated
working voltage (WVDC) is reached. Doing so, if the capacitor is not beyond rehabilitation,
will reconstitute the oxide layer that serves as the dielectric. This particular
item was presented as the answer to a question posed by a reader. A Google search
on "reform
capacitor" will turn up more detail about the procedure. Most people recommend
against reforming unless you have no other option, as this writer from India might
have faced at the time...
 Sam Benzacar of Anatech Electronics, an
RF and microwave filter company, has published his January 2022 newsletter that
features his short op−ed entitled "AM Radio Is Not Dead. Yet.," where he surveys
the current AM landscape including listener demographics, current technology, and
FCC regulations. As a lifelong AM listener myself, I definitely fit into the age-60-ish
typical adherent, and talk radio is my primary daytime programming preference. In
the evenings I switch over to FM music stations. Over the air broadcasting is also
still my choice, and my radios typically use dials connected to variable capacitors
- no electronic pushbutton tuning. Most AM and FM stations also offer Internet-based
access, where all of the static, fading, and other forms of signal degradation are
eliminated. Truthfully, those "annoyances" are nostalgia to my 64-year-old ears,
so I don't mind needing to occasionally reorient an antenna or tweak the dial a
bit for good reception. Sam believes - probably correctly - that AM radio will be
gone by the end of this decade. The way things are going, I'll be gone by then as
well, so hopefully AM broadcasts will hold on just a little while longer...
 By late 1962, the United States was launching
new satellites at a very rapid pace. Many were destroyed on the launch pad, others
never turned on once in orbit, still more turned on and operated in a crippled form
and/or only for a small portion of their intended lifespans. It was a learning period
for the entire satellite, rocket, mission control, Earth-based tracking stations,
and the communications equipment that dialoged with the satellites. The "race" part
of the Space Race moniker was literal. Popular Electronics, QST,
Electronics World, and other electronics communications publications regularly
printed a list of
newly commissioned satellites. The lists presented here came from five different
1962-1963 editions of Popular Electronics. The feature was repeated for many years.
Incidentally, the "mc" frequency unit used at the time was the common abbreviation
for "million cycles per second." In 1960, the Hertz was adopted by the General Conference
on Weights and Measures...
 With more than 1000
custom-built symbols, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Symbols available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings!
Every object has been built to fit proportionally on the provided A-, B- and C-size
drawing page templates (or can use your own). Symbols are provided for equipment
racks and test equipment, system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, and schematics.
Unlike previous versions, these are NOT Stencils, but instead are all contained
on tabbed pages within a single Visio document. That puts everything in front of
you in its full glory. Just copy and paste what you need on your drawing. The file
format is XML so everything plays nicely with Visio 2013 and later...
 PCB Directory is the largest directory of
Printed Circuit
Board (PCB) Manufacturers, Assembly houses, and Design Services on the Internet.
We have listed the leading printed circuit board manufacturers around the world
and made them searchable by their capabilities - Number of laminates used, Board
thicknesses supported, Number of layers supported, Types of substrates (FR-4, Rogers,
flexible, rigid), Geographical location (U.S., China), kinds of services (manufacturing,
fabrication, assembly, prototype), and more. Fast turn-around on quotations for
PCB fabrication and assembly.
Wednesday the 19th
 Many of Radio-Electronics magazine
editor Hugo Gernsback's articles betray his penchant for writing science fiction
as a sideline. That is not noted disparagingly, rather to emphasize his profound
insight and vision into technology and the promises it holds for the good of mankind
(and hence every other kind of ___kind). Mr. Gernsback is quick to point out
in many of his editorials how he accurately predicted events and inventions occurring
at later dates. This particular prognostication builds upon an earlier one regarding
communications with moon-based colonies of humans. Two primary concerns are
the time delays of one-way and two-way messaging (roughly 1.2 and 2.4 seconds, respectively)
and the fact that the moon, while always presenting the same face toward Earth,
is out of view from any given point on Earth for roughly half of each day. Accommodating
the hidden moon periods would require terrestrial stations and/or orbiting satellites.
When this article was written, the SCORE, Echo, and Courier satellites had been
launched, but they were mostly experimental and short-lived...
 Please take a few moments to visit the
everythingRF website to see how they can assist
you with your project. everythingRF is a product discovery platform for RF and microwave
products and services. They currently have 267,269 products from more than 1397
companies across 314 categories in their database and enable engineers to search
for them using their customized parametric search tool. Amplifiers, test equipment,
power couplers and dividers, coaxial connectors, waveguide, antennas, filters, mixers,
power supplies, and everything else. Please visit everythingRF today to see how
they can help you.
 "Mobile
telephone equipment installed in the trunk of the car takes up relatively little
space, is out of the way." That sentence seems really strange in today's world of
pocket-size mobile phones, but it was a big (literally) deal in 1957 when this article
appeared in Popular Electronics magazine. If you are getting old (but not old yet)
like me, you'll remember the prime time TV show called Mannix, where crafty private
eye Joe Mannix had a "futuristic" Motorola car phone in his convertible. Today,
the only kind of radio you are likely to find installed in a car trunk is a high-power
Ham rig. Two-way messaging was a big deal before the advent of cellphones. Service
trucks were dispatched by operators at the home base. As an electrician back in
the 1970s, most of the trucks I operated from had a two-way radio for directing
workers to job sites. I did a lot of troubleshooting and old work (adding circuits
and equipment to existing establishments, as opposed to new construction work...
 "We are currently witnessing an explosion
of network traffic. Numerous emerging services and applications, such as cloud services,
video streaming platforms and the Internet of Things (IOT), are further increasing
the demand for high-capacity communications.
Optical communication systems, technologies that transfer information optically
using fibers, are the backbone of today's communication networks of fixed-line,
wireless infrastructure and data centers. Over the past decade, the growth of the
internet was enabled by a technique known as digital signal processing (DSP), which
can help to reduce transmission distortions. However, DSP is currently implemented
using CMOS integrated circuits (ICs), thus it relies heavily on Moore's Law, which
has approached its limits in terms of power dissipation, density and feasible engineering
solutions. As a result, distortions caused by a phenomenon known as fiber nonlinearity
cannot be compensated by DSP, as this would require too much computation power and
resources..."
 This quiz is based on the information presented
in
Handbook of RF and Microwave Power Amplifiers, by John L. B. Walker. Whether
you are an RF transistor designer, an amplifier designer or a system designer, this
is your one-stop guide to RF and microwave transistor power amplifiers. A team of
expert authors brings you up to speed on every topic, including: devices (Si LDMOS
and VDMOS, GaAs FETs, GaN HEMTs), circuit and amplifier design (discrete, hybrid
and monolithic), CAD, thermal design, reliability, and system applications/requirements
for RF and microwave transistor amplifiers. Covering state-of-the-art developments
and emphasizing practical communications applications, this is the complete professional
reference on the subject...
 Both professional and amateur astronomers
have warned of the severe negative impact the presence of
thousands (or tens of thousands) of Earth-orbiting satellites will have on optical
astrophotography. Bright streaks running through the field of view are an impediment
to obtaining quality long time exposure images. An occasional airplane or single
satellite is bad enough, but a matrix of regular lines can be debilitating. While
Starlink is the first of the companies deploying a constellation of birds for implementing
global Internet coverage, others are beginning to launch and many more are in the
planning and manufacturing stages. This news item reports on a quantitative study
conducted by Caltech's Palomar Observatory, using the
Zwicky Transient
Facility (ZTF), of current and projected future interference...
 I don't know about you, but I had never heard
of
Augusto Righi before seeing him honored in this "Inventors of Radio" feature
in a 1958 issue of Radio−Electronics magazine. Reportedly Guglielmo Marconi
was an informal student of Righi's when he, Righi, taught at University of Bologna.
Augusto is credited as being the first to generate using the apparatus shown in
the article. Interestingly, as was customary in the era, the frequency of 12 GHz
was reported as 12 kmc, or 12 kilomegacycles. He also is recognized as being
the discovered of magnetic hysteresis. Along with many other scientific endeavors,
Righi worked on Special Relativity in his later years, and was considered one of
the few people who understood the concepts and equations. He lived from 1850 to
1920, which is pretty good for the era...
 It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF & Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols" that
works well with Microsoft Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™.
This is an equivalent of the extensive set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch,
connector, waveguide, digital, analog, antenna, and other commonly used symbols
for system block diagrams and schematics created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000 or
so symbols was exported individually from Visio in the EMF file format, then imported
into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format allows an image to be scaled up or
down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes can be resized in a document
and still look good. The imported symbols can also be UnGrouped into their original
constituent parts for editing. Check them out!
 Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation (BNC) is
a leading manufacturer of precision electronic instrumentation for test, measurement,
and nuclear research. Founded in 1963, BNC initially developed custom pulse generators.
We became known for meeting the most stringent requirements for high precision and
stability, and for producing instruments of unsurpassed reliability and performance.
We continue to maintain a leadership position as a developer of custom pulse, signal,
light, and function generators. Our designs incorporate the latest innovations in
software and hardware engineering, surface mount production, and automated testing
procedures.
Tuesday the 18th
 As I have reminded you many times when posting
these articles from vintage electronics magazine like the 1938 Radio News,
in-home service calls were commonplace for just about everything serviceable
in the house. That included humans - particularly children - who were tended to
in domus by their family doctors. Successful servicemen learned the lesson related
in this story: "I work on the set owner in the house, and save the set work for
the shop." That of course holds true for situations where the radio, television,
record player, etc., needed to go back to the shop for repair. When repairs could
be effected in situ, a combination of customer relations and technical skills was
required. In addition to the aforementioned, another skill that needed to be honed
was getting the customer to pay his bill. There were no credit cards in the day,
so cash or an in-store line of credit was required for payment. In most cases the
customer did not already have that credit line. If a piece of equipment is in the
shop, then it can at least be sold in lieu of payment, but walking out of someone's
house...
 Electronics technicians trained by the U.S.
Navy (and, ahem, the U.S. Air Force) have always been highly regarded in private
industry because of the excellent classroom instruction, rigorous on-the-job training
(OJT), and hands-on experience maintaining both legacy and state-of-the-art equipment.
Electronics tech schools begin with teaching the fundamentals of electricity and
electronics, and then branches off into areas of specialty, depending on the type
of equipment the enlistee will be assigned to maintain. The military works under
the assumption that you have no significant former knowledge of the topic - although
being admitted into certain programs requires passing an aptitude exam prior to
enlistment. This NAVPERS 10622 course chapter introduces
concepts and governing equations for transformers...
 "Researchers at the University of California
at Santa Barbara in the US have reconstructed a representation of the electron's
wave nature - its
Bloch wave function - in a laboratory experiment for the first time. The work
could have applications in the design and development of next-generation electronic
and optoelectronic devices. Like all matter, electrons behave as both particles
and waves. One of the main goals of condensed-matter physics is to understand how
the wavelike motion of electrons through periodically-arranged atoms give rise to
the electronic and optical properties of crystalline materials. Having such an understanding
is especially important when designing devices that take advantage of the electron's
wavelike nature, explains Joseph Costello, who co-led the UC Santa Barbara team..."
 Antenova Ltd, the UK-based manufacturer of
antennas and RF antenna modules for M2M and the IoT, has revealed its latest antenna,
Atta, part number SRFI079, for LTE and smart wireless deployments in the 410 MHz
and 450 MHz bands. The Atta antenna is a flexible printed circuit (FPC)
form and measures 101.0 x 20.0 x 0.15 mm. It is supplied with an I-PEX mating
connector for direct integration to a circuit board, and a self-adhesive pad to
fix it easily in position. It is therefore easy to integrate into a design. The
LTE 450 spectrum is relatively new, with 65 deployments in North America, South
America, Europe, Africa and Asia, and LTE 450 is available in 25 of these. This
is expected to grow, as spectrum is allocated in more regions...
 You have heard of the pumped laser and maser.
Here is a new type of pumped energy system: the "vaser." "Laser" is an acronym for
"light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation," and "maser" is an acronym
for "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." I coined the
term "vaser" after reading an article in the June 2014 edition of Model Aviation
about a relatively new form of radio controlled (R/C) model sailplane sport -
dynamic soaring
- that, using a specially developed technique to exploit geography and prevailing
winds, produces aircraft speeds of more than 400 miles per hour. Per my definition,
"vaser" is an acronym for "velocity amplification by stimulated enhancement of energy"
(OK, it's a lame attempt at being clever). It occurred to me that the mechanism
used to add energy to electrons in atoms is fundamentally the same as that used
to add energy to the sailplane in dynamic soaring. In pumped laser and maser systems,
an external power source (stimulus) is used to cyclically add energy...
 Having spent many years professionally scouring
the Internet while attempting to
identify electronic components as part of a reverse engineering effort, I can
appreciate how difficult life would be when the only resources available were a
few manufacturers' databooks and a magazine article or two. You might think it would
behoove a company to make certain that its products are clearly marked if not with
a part number, at least with an easily identifiable logo. That way a researcher
could call the company, describe the part, and get the required information. Even
with today's nano-size packages, laser marking could do the job. Sometimes, the
maker of the next higher assembly (which might be the finished product) purposely
either removes the identification from select components or instructs the vendor
to only partially mark or not mark the package. That is done for competition reasons
specifically to prevent or make very difficult the reverse engineering of products.
You have likely seen "teardowns" of consumer electronic items like smartphones...
 With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Stencils available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic
drawings! Every stencil symbol has been built to fit proportionally on the included
A-, B-, and C-size drawing page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components
are provided for system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment,
racks (EIA 19", ETSI 21"), and more. Test equipment and racks are built at a 1:1
scale so that measurements can be made directly using Visio built-in dimensioning
objects. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good
presentation that can incorporate all provided symbols...
 ASC designs and manufactures hybrid, surface
mount flange, open carrier and connectorized amplifiers for low, medium and high
power applications using gallium nitride (GaN), gallium arsenide (GaAs) and silicon
(Si) transistor technologies. ASC's thick film designs operate in the frequency
range of 300 kHz to 6 GHz. ASC offers thin film designs that operate up
to 20 GHz.
Monday the 17th
 This episode of John T. Frye's "Carl
and Jerry" technosaga entitled "Joking and Jeopardy" is another of the slightly
far-fetched adventures of the popular pair of electronics hobbyist chums, but as
usual the story is a combination of drama and technical instruction. In this case
it involves a remote-controlled model submarine which is signaled underwater by
a pulsed ultrasonic transducer. The receiver decoded commands by causing a stepper
relay (not a stepper motor) to increment a predetermined number of spaces to make
the craft dive or surface, turn left or right, or start and stop. Remote control
systems for models - be they airplanes, cars, or boats - did not have the luxury
and convenience of proportional control in 1963 when this appeared in Popular
Electronics magazine as we have nowadays...
 Helen Duncan has an interesting article
in the January 2022 issue of Microwave Journal magazine entitled "The RF/Microwave
Industry in the UK and Ireland, Birthplace of Radar and the GaAs MMIC." In it,
she recounts the proud history of her native country's role in research, development,
and system production beginning with "The Father of Radar," Robert Watson Watt (a
great surname for an electronics guy), and Arnold Wilkins during World War II.
She writes, "This review of the microwave marketplace in my home country is inevitably
a more personal one than those in previous years. In addition to profiling some
of the main players in the market in 2021, I will reflect on some of the home-grown
heroes of the microwave industry in the U.K. and Ireland who have influenced my
own career and whose achievements continue to shape the landscape today..."
 When reading technical articles, I very often
see the authors incorrectly refer to a certain point on a curve as being the
inflection point.
It is not merely a point at which a curve changes direction. That was the case in
an article I read today that dealt with open-loop polar modulation in EDGE amplifiers.
There exists an unambiguous definition of an inflection point, and all engineers
were taught it in school. Pardon me if this seems trivial or picayune, but the purpose
of the magazine articles is to teach, so if this factoid can eliminate the misconception
in future articles, then it will have accomplished its objective. Here is a brief
review of what an inflection point is, and, equally important, what an inflection
point is not. An inflection point is the point at which the second derivative of
a continuous curve equals zero. Accordingly, it is the point where a curve changes
from concave up to concave down. A curved region is concave up if all the data points
in that region lie above a line tangent to it (in the positive-going y-axis direction).
A curved region is concave down if all the data points in that region lie below
a line tangent to it (in the negative-going y-axis direction). The Excel plot that
accompanies this article illustrates all of these concepts...
 Bittele Electronics, a Toronto-based
Turn-key PCB Assembly firm specializing in prototype and low-to-mid volume printed
circuit board (PCB) manufacturing and assembly, is highlighting its very successful
Online Ordering Service featuring Live Chat and Zoom meeting support. This new,
state-of-the-art tool allows customers to complete turnkey PCB assembly orders faster
and with up to 25% price discounts. Bittele's Online Ordering Service enables a
customer to complete all steps to complete a PCB Fabrication and Assembly order
in under 20 minutes while qualifying for exclusive discounts that are automatically
applied to the order. Once an online order is placed, it will be immediately processed
and released to Bittele's production team. "Our goal with this service is to help
simplify our customers' ordering experience, as well as giving them attractive benefits..."
 "For many years, a bottleneck in technological
development has been how to get
processors and memories to work faster together. Now, researchers at Lund University
in Sweden have presented a new solution integrating a memory cell with a processor,
which enables much faster calculations, as they happen in the memory circuit itself.
In an article in Nature Electronics, the researchers present a new configuration,
in which a memory cell is integrated with a vertical transistor selector, all at
the nanoscale. This brings improvements in scalability, speed and energy efficiency
compared with current mass storage solutions. The fundamental issue is that anything
requiring large amounts of data to be processed, such as AI and machine learning,
requires speed and more capacity. For this to be successful, the memory and processor
need to be as close to each other as possible..."
 Just before Christmas in 1947, Bell Labs'
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley announced their invention of
the first semiconductor device capable of producing positive signal amplification.
They dubbed it the "transistor"
because it was a transconductance amplifier. In very short order, the laboratory
experiment consisting of a metallic point contact (a piece of gold foil) interfaced
with a slab of purified and doped germanium became commercially available at a price
that easily competed with a vacuum tube amplifier when the cost of the socket and
high voltage biasing transformers were factored in. Transistors would not be able
to entirely replace tubes for many decades, especially for high power and high frequency
applications, but as you can see today, the only vacuum tube the average person
will find anywhere...
 New Scheme rotates
all Banners in all locations on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000
website visits each weekday.
RF Cafe is a favorite of
engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world. With more than
12,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in favorable positions
on many types of key searches, both for text and images. New content is added on
a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough to spider
it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found in a
Google search within a few hours of being posted. I also re-broadcast homepage items
on LinkedIn. If you need your company news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place
to be.
 LadyBug Technologies was founded in 2004
by two microwave engineers with a passion for quality microwave test instrumentation.
Our employees offer many years experience in the design and manufacture of the worlds
best vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, power meters and associated components.
The management team has additional experience in optical power testing, military
radar and a variety of programming environments including LabVIEW, VEE and other
languages often used in programmatic systems. Extensive experience in a broad spectrum
of demanding measurement applications. You can be assured that our Power Sensors
are designed, built, tested and calibrated without compromise.
Sunday the 16th
 This custom made
crossword puzzle for January 16th, 2022, from RF Cafe has an electrical engineering
theme. All RF Cafe crossword puzzles are custom made by me, Kirt Blattenberger,
and have only words and clues related to RF, microwave, and mm-wave engineering,
optics, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical subjects. As always,
this crossword puzzle contains no names of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic
foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort unless it/he/she is related
to this puzzle's technology theme (e.g., Reginald Denny or the Tunguska event in
Siberia). The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate the
effort. Enjoy!
 A few (many, actually) new terms have been
added to the
transistor lexicon since 1958, but this list from Radio-Electronics
magazine contains more than 150 definitions that are still useful today. It is amazing
that this list was created just a decade after the transistor was invented, and
now half a century later the most commonly used terms have not changed much. A huge
number of elemental compounds, configurations, and process terms have been added
since then, though. All of these are included in my custom dictionary used for creating
the weekly crossword puzzles - compiled over more than two decades...
 This assortment of custom-designed themes
by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, and Baseball Caps. Choose from amazingly clever "We Are the World's Matchmakers"
Smith chart design or the "Engineer's Troubleshooting Flow Chart." My "Matchmaker's"
design has been ripped off by other people and used on their products, so please
be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. My markup is only a paltry 50¢ per
item - Cafe Press gets the rest of your purchase price. These would make excellent
gifts for husbands, wives, kids, significant others, and for handing out at company
events or as rewards for excellent service. It's a great way to help support RF
Cafe. Thanks...
 Exodus Advanced Communications is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. Power amplifiers ranging
from 10 kHz to 51 GHz with various output power levels and noise figure
ranges, we fully support custom designs and manufacturing requirements for both
small and large volume levels. decades of combined experience in the RF field for
numerous applications including military jamming, communications, radar, EMI/EMC
and various commercial projects with all designing and manufacturing of our HPA,
MPA, and LNA products in-house.
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 Most(?) RF Cafe visitors are probably familiar
with British engineer John Logie Baird as being considered "the father of television."
His work in the 1920s produced both live and recorded motion pictures transmitted
and received electronically. What most visitors (including me) probably did not
know is that he also developed television apparatus using infrared imaging; he called
it "Noctovision."
Noctovision (noct or nox meaning night) was a moving image form of the still imaging
"Noctovisor," which was an early night vision system that converted an infrared
image into an optical image. Radar was still in its infancy in 1942 when this article
appeared in Radio News magazine, and had not been implemented widely enough
to provided needed surveillance against nighttime bombing raids from Germany's Luftwaffe
(air force) flying across the English Channel. According to author Rosen, infrared
wavelengths have 16x the fog penetrating power of optical wavelengths...
 In response to my solicitation for information
on the origin of band letter
designations, a website visitor offered this: "I just looked at your web page
that gives the names of the various RF bands, and, in one place asked for any information
on origins of the names. I have some history on the band names that apply to UHF
and above. In the early days of radar (during WWII), the British and the U.S. researchers
at MIT chose, arbitrarily I believe, letter designations for radar frequencies.
The frequencies that were then possible to use for radio communication were just
called by their 'meter range' names: HF, VHF and UHF. The new frequencies that were
then only used for deployable radar sets, and for new technology looking for even
shorter wavelength radars, were given letter designations. So, in the 1940s and
1950s, radar sets were identified as being UHF, L-Band, S-Band, C-Band, X-Band and
K-Band. Later they added Ku-Band - presumably for 'K Upper,' but I do not know..."
New Scheme rotates
all Banners in all locations on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000
website visits each weekday.
RF Cafe is a favorite of
engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world. With more than
12,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in favorable positions
on many types of key searches, both for text and images. New content is added on
a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough to spider
it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found in a
Google search within a few hours of being posted. I also re-broadcast homepage items
on LinkedIn. If you need your company news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place
to be.
RF Cascade Workbook is the next phase in the evolution of
RF Cafe's long-running series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are you have
never used a spreadsheet quite like this (click here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system
cascade parameter and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere
$45. Built in MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook 2018 is a cinch
and the format is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster than
using a multi-thousand dollar simulator when a high level system analysis is all
that is needed. An intro video takes you through the main features...
With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Stencils available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic
drawings! Every stencil symbol has been built to fit proportionally on the included
A-, B-, and C-size drawing page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components
are provided for system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment,
racks (EIA 19", ETSI 21"), and more. Test equipment and racks are built at a 1:1
scale so that measurements can be made directly using Visio built-in dimensioning
objects. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good
presentation that can incorporate all provided symbols...
It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF & Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols" that
works well with Microsoft Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™.
This is an equivalent of the extensive set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch,
connector, waveguide, digital, analog, antenna, and other commonly used symbols
for system block diagrams and schematics created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000 or
so symbols was exported individually from Visio in the EMF file format, then imported
into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format allows an image to be scaled up or
down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes can be resized in a document
and still look good. The imported symbols can also be UnGrouped into their original
constituent parts for editing. Check them out!
With more than 1000
custom-built symbols, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Symbols available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings!
Every object has been built to fit proportionally on the provided A-, B- and C-size
drawing page templates (or can use your own). Symbols are provided for equipment
racks and test equipment, system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, and schematics.
Unlike previous versions, these are NOT Stencils, but instead are all contained
on tabbed pages within a single Visio document. That puts everything in front of
you in its full glory. Just copy and paste what you need on your drawing. The file
format is XML so everything plays nicely with Visio 2013 and later...
RF
Cafe's raison d'être is and always has been to provide useful, quality content for
engineers, technicians, engineering managers, students, and hobbyists. Part of that
mission is offering to post applicable job openings. HR department employees and/or managers of hiring
companies are welcome to submit opportunities for posting at no charge. 3rd party
recruiters and temp agencies are not included so as to assure a high quality of
listings. Please read through the easy procedure to benefit from RF Cafe's high
quality visitors...
This assortment of custom-designed themes
by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, and Baseball Caps. Choose from amazingly clever "We Are the World's Matchmakers"
Smith chart design or the "Engineer's Troubleshooting Flow Chart." My "Matchmaker's"
design has been ripped off by other people and used on their products, so please
be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. My markup is only a paltry 50¢ per
item - Cafe Press gets the rest of your purchase price. These would make excellent
gifts for husbands, wives, kids, significant others, and for handing out at company
events or as rewards for excellent service. It's a great way to help support RF
Cafe. Thanks...
|
 "When scientists discovered DNA and learned
how to control it, not only science but society was revolutionized. Today researchers
and the medical industry routinely create artificial DNA structures for many purposes,
including diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Now an international research team
reports to have created a
powerful supermolecule with the potential to further revolutionize science.
The work is published in Nature Communications. The researchers describe their supermolecule
as a marriage between DNA and peptides. DNA is one of the most important biomolecules,
and so are peptides; peptide structures are used, among other things, to create
artificial proteins and various nanostructures. 'If you combine these two, as we
have, you get a very powerful molecular tool..."
 "Thales has partnered with the climate and
aerospace research project Airbus Perlan Mission II, with plans to create the 'highest
ever Wi-Fi hotspot.' Airbus Perlan Mission II Through the partnership, Thales
will aim to fly its latest mobile satellite communications system, FlytLink, in
a zero-emission glider to more than twice the altitude of a commercial airline flight.
Based in Nevada, the Airbus Perlan Mission II team is planning for a possible return
to flight this year in the US and El Calafate, Argentina. The group has already
set aviation world altitude records in the Perlan 2 glider, which was designed,
built and deployed to fly to 90,000ft. Launched in 2015, the Perlan 2 achieved its
highest record-setting flight of above 76,000 in 2018. The organisation's mission
is to conduct climate, atmospheric and aeronautical research at extreme high altitudes.
Applications of its research include informing more accurate climate change models,
innovating zero-emission aviation and demonstrating feasibility of using energy-efficient
winged aircraft on Mars..."
 "Researchers in China have developed an
adaptive liquid
lens based on dibutyl adipate (DBA), a new electrically responsive fluid that
changes focal length when a voltage is applied. According to the team, the lens
is suitable for mobile phone cameras, endoscopes, eyeglasses and machine vision
applications because it is lightweight, compact and simple to fabricate. 'The human
eye can arbitrarily focus on objects at different distances at incredibly fast speeds,'
said research team leader Miao Xu from Hefei University of Technology. 'Inspired
by this functionality, we developed an eye-like adaptive liquid lens that can be
used to diverge or converge light by changing the shape of the DBA liquid.' In Optics
Letters, the researchers describe their new DBA-based adaptive liquid lens..."
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