with Compliance Testing
Compliance Testing, LLC, located in Chandler,
Arizona, has been providing worldwide compliance testing for FCC, IC and CE marks
for over 40 years. We are able to offer services for the U.S., Canada, European
Union, Australia/New Zealand, Korea and Japan and many others. There are currently
Compliance Test Engineer and LabView Programmer positions available for qualified
candidates.
NuWaves Engineering announces the release of the
NuPower Xtender™ Linear Bidirectional S-Band Power Amplifier module, model
number
NW-LBSSPA-10W-2.2-2.5, designed for use with half-duplex RF transceivers
operating amplitude-modulated waveforms (e.g. OFDM, QAM). The product is the first
linearized model to come from the company's new Xtender series of bidirectional
power amplifiers, which are based on the successful NuPower™ broadband, high-efficiency,
miniature PA module product line. Leveraging analog pre-distortion techniques to
maximize power efficiency and reduce power back-off requirements, the Xtender Linear
Bidirectional S-Band PA generates 6 Watts of average RF output power from 2200
to 2500 MHz, given a 10 dB PAPR waveform.
Heroes Sock Thread Player
Hogan's Heroes is my all-time favorite TV
show. I have the complete DVD collection, and every time Melanie makes a German
meal for dinner (sauerbraten, bratwurst, wiener schnitzel, potato pancakes - yum!),
we turn on the boob tube and watch an episode of Hogan's Heroes whilst eating. Today,
while searching for tech headlines, I ran across an article on the EE Times
website titled, "Magnetic Wire
Recorders Rule!" Author Max Maxfield, who comes up with a lot of good topics
and has written about wire recorders in the past, relates a story about an
engineer who built a high-quality version of a wire recorder using modern
components. The engineer believes his grandfather might have been at least
partially responsible for a wire recorder experimenter's kit that was advertised
in a 1949 issue of Wireless World. The company, Park Radio, claimed it would be,
"More thrilling than Radio -- More gripping than Television." I've seen...
The UK's BBC produced a short video showing
what goes on in the cellphone
recycling center operated in south London. I was surprised to see the amount
of manual labor that goes into processing each device. Shipments of 20 to 30 thousand
handsets are received each month from all over the world. The first step is to classify
each phone for dispositioning either for resale to 3rd-world countries, for cannibalization
for useful working parts, or for junking after removing hazardous components and
precious metals. Phones are sorted by make and model, then electrically tested for
degree of functionality. Having disassembled quite a few handsets in my days of
competitive analysis, I can tell you that doing so without harming components can
take skill that is only acquired through experience. Since everything from the outer...
SP4T Absorptive Switch
PMI Model No.
P4T-100M40G-90-T-512-292FF-SP is a 100 MHz to 40 GHz,
Ultra-Compact, High Speed, Single Pole, Four Throw, Absorptive Switch. This switch
offers over 100 dB of port to port isolation from 100 MHz to 18 GHz,
over 90 dB from 18 to 26.5 GHz and over 75 dB from 26.5 to 40 GHz.
This switch has a typical insertion loss of 8.8 dB from 100 MHz to 18 GHz,
5.2 dB from 18 to 26.5 GHz and 5.6 dB from 26.5 to 40 GHz. The
switching speed is less than 100 nsec and is controlled by 2-Bit decoded TTL. The
maximum operating power is +20 dBm.
Their Continued Their Support
Orbel Corp. is the
leading designer and manufacturer of
RF Shielding
and EMI/RFI Isolation Products for printed circuit boards and electronic enclosures.
Orbel also specializes in thin gauge
Photo Etched Metal Parts and
Precision
Metal Stampings made from a wide variety of material options.
(please support RF Cafe)
I'm a big comic strip reader.
Dilbert, of course, is required reading. The
Erie Times-News paper has a
weenie collection of comics, so I have to go online for most of my favorites. Here
is a unique collection of full-color Sunday strips. "Since Dilbert was first syndicated
in 1989, Adams has built a following that would be the envy of any
corporate
sales and marketing team. His work not only generates howls from readers as
they rush to plaster it on lunch-room refrigerators and scan it into interoffice
e-mails, it has those same fans reading about "their" workplaces every Sunday in
a multiple-panel, color format. And that's what this treasury, The Collected Dilbert
Sundays, provides."
Cellphone (using T-rays)
Unlike X-rays which can penetrate metal and
bone (potentially causing harm in the process),
T-rays are in
the electromagnetic spectrum lying between infrared and microwave. They can "see
through" soft tissue, fabric, low density wood, and other low density materials.
Researchers at Caltech figured out a way to integrate a complete transmitter, receiver,
and phased array antenna onto a single silicon substrate. In doing so they were
able to produce enough power in the THz band to enable imaging of high density objects
within low density objects. The thumbnail above shows a handgun round and a #11
X-Acto blade buried within a stuffed dog. Super-low production costs will make them
cheap to integrate into cellphones and specific-purpose scanners. Privacy is about
to take yet another hit as stores, office buildings, public areas, and just about
any venue will be saturated with these kinds of devices. Metal pins in your bones,
plates in your head, dental fillings, and hidden body piercing will be easily imaged
by anyone with a so-equipped phone. Get ready for images...
Receiving information wirelessly or even over
a wire is taken for granted today, but 80 years ago it was considered a miracle
of God - that's what Alexander Graham Bell called it. Some regarded it as being
of the devil. The same is true of today's omnipresent communications - some consider
it a blessing while others call it a curse. I'm somewhere in the middle. In 1934,
the telecommunications world was in its heyday of growth with a reported
17 million listeners of AM radio (no FM yet). Radio dealers and
servicemen were gearing up for customers with unbridled enthusiasm for the fledgling
commercial broadcast industry's offerings. Even in the midst of the Great Depression,
people were joining in on the wireless craze in large numbers, and amateur radio
operators were almost feared for their awesome ability to comprehend and practice
the black art of antennas and radio receivers.
Before the Internet, cellphone apps, and personal
computers, many calculations began with a lookup table, chart, or nomograph. In
the case of
long distance radio operators seeking distance and direction information
for pointing antennas, it took a map like this one published by Radio News &
Short-Wave magazine in 1934. Distance are all relative to New York (NYers have
always considered themselves the center of the universe
), so operators in other locales need to compensate. Here is
one example of many online
great
circle calculators that allow you to enter two sets of longitude and latitude.
re the Theory of Relativity
"The theory of a relativistic universe is
the hostile work of the agents of fascism. It is the revolting propaganda of a moribund,
counter-revolutionary ideology." -- Astronomical Journal of the Soviet Union, quoted
in
The American Mercury, March 1940
via the Boltzmann Constant
Cabe Atwell, Contributing Editor,
Design Hardware & Software for Design News, has an interesting report
on the latest effort to
redefine the
Kelvin by derivation from a new value of the
Boltzmann constant. It's a quick read with a good explanation of the process and
result. Hat tip to Joe Cahak of
Sunshine Design for the link.
Venues to Asia Pacific
Tour
AWR has added three venues in India to its
AWR Design Forum (ADF)
2013 tour: Ahmedabad on Tuesday, August 20th Hyderabad on Thursday, August 22nd
Bangalore on Friday, August 23. The AWR Design Forum is an open event at which designers
of microwave and RF circuits and systems can network, share useful information,
and collaborate on industry issues and trends.
Continuing Support!!!
Networks International Corporation (NIC) has
been helping deliver RF Cafe since 2009. NIC is a designer and manufacturer of
RF & microwave components
including filters, amplifiers, frequency sources, assemblies for military, commercial &
space. Lumped, ceramic, crystal, cavity, combline & interdigital filters, filter/amplifiers,
filter/limiters, and switched filter banks.
Crossword Puzzle
Take a break and work this week's
electrical 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. If you want to exercise
your nerd knowledge, this is the one for you.
Talent War Heats Up
"Engineers Get
Rich as Talent War Heats Up." That's the title of a story on Yahoo! Finance
website, dated July 25, 2013. According to the author, it's a job-seeker's market
out there for engineers - not for all engineers necessarily, but certainly for those
with expertise in the energy exploration, capturing, and generation businesses.
In spite of the politicians' best efforts to kill the carbon-based fuel markets,
the world's high demand for electricity and fuel has created a boom in fields other
than just the government-approved "renewable" energy schemes like wind and solar
power. No sooner were Congress and White House occupants congratulating themselves
for ongoing success in utterly killing the coal industry when the advent of modernized
hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') for extraction of shale gas rose suddenly and
positively in the public and corporate eyes as the new potential economic savior...
As usual, Microwave Product Digest has
a slew of good articles this month. Here are links to them for your edification.
No, I don't get paid to promote them.
-
Measurement System Tests AESA Radar T/R Modules at High Speed
-
Triple Beat IMD Measurement Over 4G-LTE Bands: Can You Really Avoid
the Cavity Filters?
-
Struggling with Amplifier Bias Sequencing? Try a Positive Approach
-
GaN Technology Enables Gain Blocks With Muscle
to Isolator/Circulator Page
DiTom Microwave designs and manufactures
(in California) high quality connectorized
ferrite isolators and circulators for the space and defense markets. Their business
was established in 1987 and since the inception has shipped over 250,000 ferrite
devices to customers all around the world. Connectorized single and dual junction
ferrite isolators and circulators for the space and defense markets out their specialty.
COTS and Hi-Reliability products available covering 700 MHz to 31 GHz.
as My Newest Advertiser!
Test
Parts is America's RF & microwave super store. They sell both new and
quality used RF & microwave
communication parts, routinely stocking more than 35,000 'hard-to-find'
parts as well as standard attenuators, couplers, dividers, adapters, waveguide,
test equipment, coaxial switches, and vacuum tubes. Test Parts acquires high-end,
superior quality products, then offers a substantial reduction from the retail price.
Save up to 75% off retail!
White papers published by manufacturers are often some of the
best concise treatments of specific topics because the engineers and technicians
that write them are intimately involved in the design and manufacturing of the items
covered.
- How to Measure 5 ns
Rise/Fall Time on an RF
-
Best Practices for Making the
Most Accurate Radar Pulse
Measurements
-
Implementation
of Real-
Time Spectrum
Analysis
-
Determination of Capacitor
Life as a Function of
Operating Voltage &
Temperature
-
Design Solution for Achieving
the Lowest Possible Receiver
Noise Figure
-
Tackling Multi-Bit Attenuator
Designs
The Piezoelectric Effect
This is part 8 in a series published by Radio
News and the Short-Wave magazine in the early 1930s. As with most topics pertaining
to electronics, the theory is still relevant and applicable to many modern circuits
and systems. Piezoelectric principles are introduced for determining the frequency
of oscillators. I have to admit to not having heard of the 'pyroelectric' effect. A pyroelectric crystal when heated or cooled
develops charges on the extremities of its hemihedral (another new word for me,
meaning "exhibiting only half the faces required for complete symmetry") axes. read
on to learn more.
New BPFs & Couplers
Anatech Electronics has introduced three new
RF components:
a weatherized 907.5 MHz cavity bandpass filter, surface-mount 5725 MHz
ceramic bandpass filter, and a high-power 800-2170 MHz 30-dB dual directional
coupler.
ETSI E-Band Wireless System
A new application note from AWR highlights the
use of AWR's
Microwave Office circuit design software to develop a Q- to
E-band doubler and a K- to E-band quadrupler circuit (including a medium E-band
power amplifier) for millimeter-wave wireless systems. The design effort resulted
in an increase in gain as well as output power, two critical criteria for E-band
systems.
Most people agree that World War II marked
the point at which a large percentage of American women made a major move from the
role of homemaker to the roles of factory and trades workers. The societal shift
was made necessary because a large percentage of American men were off fighting
the war in Europe and the South Pacific, and therefore were not available to do
those tasks. This article appeared in the September 1942 edition of Radio Retailing
Today magazine less than a year into America's involvement in the War. Even
a militant feminist would probably conclude that, given the state of the world at
the time, it is a very fair assessment and generally exceedingly complimentary.
Note this observation regarding use of women for manufacturing, "Women have made more radio tubes and radio sets than men ever will."
I thought about that recently while preparing for the restoration of my
1941 Crosley Model 03CB console radio.
Antennas and Site Engineering for Mobile Radio
Networks, by Bruno Delorme. This is the first book to discuss the specific antennas
used in cellular and
Private Mobile Radio (PMR) networks. These are the antennas located
on pylons in rural areas and tubular masts on rooftops in more populated areas.
The book presents essential information for engineers, managers, and technicians
working for mobile phone equipment manufacturers, network integrators, and antenna
installation companies. This is the subject of
RF Cafe Quiz #51.
to Vendor Products Pages
RIGOL's premium
line of products includes digital oscilloscopes,
RF spectrum analyzers, digital
multimeters, function / arbitrary waveform generators, digital programmable power
supplies, HPLC and UV-Vis Spectrophotometers, which help the engineers, researchers,
educators to address their measurement challenges in confidence with affordability
than even before. Very affordable!
11th Military Antennas, September 17 - 18,
2013 - Washington Plaza, Washington, D.C. IDGA's Military Antennas East Summit will
address the evolving development of antennas as an ever-critical component of all
military communication capabilities; in doing so, it will delve into the development
of Ground, Air, Sea, and Space-based antennas, along with software radios, vehicle
communications, and SATCOM. It will also uncover the newest in antenna technology,
including small wideband antennas, metamaterial antennas, GPS programs, superconducting
RF systems, adaptable RF, and more.
Marconi's 'Electric Woman'
Eccentricity in
geniuses is not unusual, and accordingly neither is a propensity to make goofy statements.
Wireless pioneer Guglielmo Marconi
was no exception. Dig this little piece I ran across in
a 1934 edition of Radio News and The Short-Wave,
"Marconi Calls 'Electric Woman' Genuine." "ROME - Marchese Guglielmo Marconi, famous
radio inventor and scientist, said today there was no doubt as to the authenticity
of the phenomena of the 'electric woman' Signora Anna Monaro, according to the Times.
From Signora Monaro's breasts, several times nightly while she sleeps, there emanates
enough light to illuminate a room, it is said." It sounds like she's really lighting
up somebody's life.
Development within MilAero
Leveraging Highly Complex Product Design and
Development within MilAero. Outsourcing, especially of printed circuit board
assemblies, is a common realization throughout the Military and Aerospace industry.
Becoming even more common is the expansion of higher level sub-assemblies and assemblies
– either as components or as new product introductions (NPIs) in their entirety. Organizations
are managing the increasing complexity, especially with their outsourced design
and manufacturing partners.
Site Engineering for MRNs
This quiz is based on the information presented
in
Antennas and Site Engineering for Mobile Radio Networks, by
Bruno Delorme. It is the first book to discuss the specific antennas used in cellular
and Private Mobile Radio (PMR) networks. These are the antennas located on pylons
in rural areas and tubular masts on rooftops in more populated areas.
Artech House graciously provided this book. Note: Some of these
books are available as prizes in the monthly
RF Cafe Giveaway.
Microwave for Support
Polyphase Microwave
has a wide selection of stocked specialty
Mixers, Quadrature
(I&Q) Modulators and Demodulators, single-sideband modulators, image-reject
mixers, including models in a caseless configuration. Download
QMSIM,
their free quadrature modulator simulation tool.
July 21, 2013
Take a break and work this week's
wireless
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. If you want to exercise your nerd knowledge, this is the
one for you.
The folks at Rev Response have a pretty big
collection of whitepapers on
a very wide range of subjects that are free for downloading. Well, not quite free
- they do require you to sign in, but no $$$ is involved. I make a few pennies on
each download, so you're helping to support RF Cafe if you participate. Here are
a few of the newer ones that might interest you:
-
10 Tips and Techniques for More Effective Presentations
-
What Is ISO 14001 and
Should I Care?
-
Semiconductor CFOs Focus
on Gross Margin, Market
Cap, and Revenue
-
Google's Universal Search
for Universities
for Guided Missiles
You can go to just about any store these days
and buy a tube of RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) rubber caulk. That was not the case
as recently as the 1960s and 70s (assuming you're old enough to consider that recent).
Here is a short news item about how Dow Corning Corporation's breakthrough new compound
was set to revolutionize hermetic sealing of critical electronic assemblies. It
shows entire subassemblies of connectors, wires, and discrete components (no ICs
at the time) completely engulfed in the stuff. I remember at Westinghouse Electric,
where I worked as a technician after a tour in the USAF, we used RTV for sealing
bulkhead-mounted connectors on torpedo heads and towed sonar arrays. We also used
massive quantities of it to seal off molds for ceramic transducer element arrays
prior to potting them with a polyurethane compound. That was cool work. The heavy
aluminum molds, about 6-feet long, were placed in a huge, thick-walled aluminum
tube and a vacuum was pulled while the compound was curing in order to eliminate
trapped bubbles. After about 6 hours of non-stop, tedious labor, it was as close
as a male can come to experiencing the joy of birth when removing the arrays...
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress long-range
bomber has been in continuous service since 1954. Production of new aircraft ran
from 1952 through 1962. Now59 years hence at version 'H,' it is still our nation's
primary long-range bomber. That is a great testimony to the aircraft's initial design
and construction, but a sad testimony to our ability to design and build a complete
replacement. The B-1 bomber was a dismal failure and the B-2 Stealth bomber is too
expensive to build and maintain in large quantities. This story from a 1957 edition
of Radio & Television News reports on the
"K-System" computerized bombsight gear installed in early B-52s
that used radar for targeting. According to the writer, nearly 1,000,000 American
defense company workers at companies like General Motors, Eastman Kodak, General
Mills...
Assembly Line Video
Videos of automated factory fabrication and
assembly lines are awesome. Watching the robots sling metal panels around for presses
using hundreds of thousands of pounds of pressure to stamp out body panels for the
Tesla Model S electric car is an inspiring reminder of how ingenuous and capable
our fellow homo sapiens can be in spite of politicians' best efforts to enslave
an underclass voting bloc of slackers. Think of the amount of knowledge required
to conceive of and execute the processes show in this video - metallurgy, robotics,
software, production planning, material sourcing and handling, factory environment,
structural analysis, safety, testing, budgeting, training, union demands, human
concerns, massive governmental regulation, surface finishing, marketing, work flow,
and a host of other issues. That doesn't even include the brainpower necessary to
plan, design, test, and build all the electrical and electronics parts of the vehicle.
Utterly amazing. It takes 3-5 days from beginning to end to build a Model S.
Even back in the 'old days' when most of the labor was manual, film reels showing
masses of humans working together to make a complex piece of machinery like a Ford
Model T will bring a tear to the eye of any self-respecting tech aficionado.
Bandpass Filter
PMI Model
7CL5125-1490-CD-SFF is a band pass filter centered at 5125 MHz
and has a nominal bandwidth of 1490 MHz. This filter provides over 40 dB
of rejection between 3.0 to 3.658 GHz and between 6.65 to 7.3 GHz and
over of rejection between 1.5 to 2.5 GHz. This filter has a low insertion
loss of less than 1 dB and measures 1.9" x 0.875" x 0.5".
