VCs Invest More But IPO Numbers Shrink
Medium-Wave Transmitters in Germany and France Shutting down at Year's
End
Potential Tesla Competitor Posts Teaser Video of Concept Car
Android Returns to Growth in Europe's Big 5 Markets
Taiwan Neglects Supercomputing
Fairchild Semi Gets New Takeover Offer in Escalated Bidding War
5G
Hurdles Gauged at DesignCon (6G
specifications coming...)
TV Remotes Get Voice Activation with Bluetooth
N. Korea's
Analysis Red Star OS Rife with Spy Tools (U.S. gov't
envious)
"The U.S.-based International Union of Pure
and Applied Chemistry said Thursday that researchers at the Riken institute had
conclusively identified and earned the right to name the element. It provisionally
was named ununtrium. The new name wasn't immediately disclosed. A joint working
group of the IUPAC and International Union of Pure and Applied Physics were due
to announce decisions on naming rights to elements 113, 115, 117 and
..."
Today as I write this it is New Year's Eve.
The year 1935 could be considered 'metal tube's eve' as a new paradigm was about
to hit the world of high frequency circuit design. Thentofore[sic], vacuum tubes
were almost exclusively encased in a glass envelope.
Metal-encased tubes provided, among others, benefits like better
heat dissipation, smaller physical size, ruggedness, inherent RF shielding, and
lower parasitic values of capacitance and inductance due to smaller plate areas
and shorter lead lengths, respectively. The highest barrier to widespread adoption,
history would show, was the higher cost of production that made consumer products
more expensive at a time when not every household saw the need for
...
"Here's one way to end the year on a bright
note. A powerful solar storm set to slam Earth today will make for stunning views
of the Northern Lights just before New Year's Eve. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said the "strong" storm [G3] could
allow the Northern Lights to dip as far south as Oregon and Illinois
..."
RF
Cafe visitor Mike H. sent me these two photos of the same type Silvertone radio
as I discovered in Tony Packo's. He says there is no part number marked anywhere,
so its identity was still a mystery. Well, no more! I decided to use my paid subscription
to newspapers.com to search for an advertisement from an old newspaper. Sure enough,
there was a full-page advertisement by Sears, Roebuck, and Co., in the October 23,
1936 edition of the Rio Grande Farmer that appears to include this model.
Until proven otherwise, I hereby declare the
Tony Packo's radio to be the '7 Tube Silvertone Battery Console.'
Battery powered radios were quite common in 1937 because commercial AC power distribution
lines did not extend to many rural locations, and many urban homes did not have
service, either. Lead-acid storage batteries powered
...
Step by Step Crowdfunding: Everything You Need
to Raise Money from the Crowd, by Joseph Hogue. Ever wonder how some people
raise money crowdfunding and fundraising time and again while 60% of campaigns fail?
Even Hollywood fame hasn't been able to save some crowdfunding campaigns from epic
fails. It's because with all the media attention around crowdfunding, no one covers
the actual process of how to run a successful campaign! In this step-by-step guide,
you will find the actual process you need from idea conception through pre-launch
and fulfillment to make your fundraising or crowdfunding campaign a success.
...
"Materials have uncommon electrical and quantum-level
properties at the nanoscale that disappear at the millimeter-scale, where most chips
are manufactured. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA)
is looking for a way to capture the benefits of both worlds: the nanoscale manufacturing
while upsizing to a more practical millimeter scale. The agency has now set that
challenge to 10 laboratories nationwide in its Atoms to Products program. "These
'atomic-scale' ..."
It seems that creating almost cartoonish-looking
antenna arrays for the purpose of signal gain and directivity are usually relegated
to the domains of military and amateur radio practitioners, but this article from
a 1952 edition of Radio & Television News magazine was done by the
Channel Master Laboratories television antenna company. Successfully
mounting and phasing even two antennas can be challenging, but in this case
four Yagis were arrayed and tuned for operation. Trying to make
the system work over the entire 4 octave band that is the VHF broadcast realm (54
MHz for channel 2 to 210 MHz for channel 13) would be nearly impossible without
extremely
...
"A group of researchers in Japan and China
identified the requirements for the development of new types of
extremely low power consumption electric devices by studying Cr-doped
(Sb, Bi) 2Te3 thin films. This study has been reported in Nature Communications
At extremely low temperatures, an electric current flows around the edge of the
film without energy loss, and under no
..."
Somehow, even with trolling daily for technical
headlines, I managed to miss (until recently) that
back in April of this year, IEEE's Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S)
acquired the copyright to Phillip Smith's legendary eponymous graphing format: the
Smith Chart. Per a
column by 2015 IEEE president Tim Lee in the
Xplore publication:
Mr. Tim Lee, IEEE's 2015 president. "In 2015, the MTT-S had the opportunity to meet
with Mrs. Anita Smith and her family and propose a way to preserve the legacy of
her husband and their father. The MTT-S offered to buy the rights from the Smith
family of the Smith trademark belonging to Analog Instruments, along with the copyright.
In return, the MTT-S would make the Smith chart available to students, practitioners,
and indeed people all over the world involved
...
"In the nanoworld,
tiny particles of gold can operate like snow blowers, churning
through surface layers of an important class of semiconductors to dig unerringly
straight paths. The surprising trenching capability, reported by scientists from
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and IBM, is an important
addition to the toolkit of nature-supplied 'self-assembly' methods that researchers
aim to harness for making useful
..."
"If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels
and give them spoons." - Anon. This part of a quotation is ascribed to various economists
(most often Milton Friedman) and commentators in regard to people and systems
which buck modern mechanization while touting the virtues of manual labor. The story's
setting is usually a canal project, ore mine, or other venue requiring massive digging
and a proprietor's boast of greater concern for the rapid replacement of human workers
with machines. An amazingly thorough investigation into the matter is presented
by The Quote Investigator. See also
Techno-Skeptics' Objection Growing Louder
This is amazing. I remember back in the early
1990s a 10 Msps DAC was the realm of military radar applications and space electronics,
and the cost for a hand-built hybrid flat pack was about $20k per device. Now, Maxim
Integrated has announced the
MAX5869 16-Bit, 5.9 Gsps Interpolating and Modulating RF DAC with
JESD204B interface providing direct RF synthesis with 600 MHz instantaneous bandwidth
from DC to greater than 2.8 GHz. Like I said - amazing. An NDA is required for full
details and pricing. I'm sure it's not cheap, but a heck of a lot less than $20k
...
Here on
page 402 of the Montgomery Ward 1969 Christmas catalog is a special type bar print
head for the company's 'Signature' line of electric typewriters that permits special
characters for engineering, mathematics, international language, and medicine. If
you look down the page here, you'll see a red key on the keyboard that activates
the
Dial-A-Type type bar. The 'type bar,' BTW, is the arm with the
embossed character on the end that strikes the inked ribbon to print a character
on the paper. Although I could not find any instructions online, it appears the
two rows of characters are accessed with the normal and shifted key presses, and
a twist of the Dial-a-Type head
...
Skyworks-BDS-GPS-GNS-LNA-FEM-12-12-2015.htm" >
Skyworks introduces two new global navigation
low noise amplifiers. The
SKY65605-21
and
SKY65611-11 are both designed for BeiDou / GPS / GLONASS / Galileo receiver
applications and are optimized to operate from 1559 to 1606 MHz. Each device integrates
all output matching components, thereby requiring only a single external input matching
component. Ideal applications include smartphones, personal navigation Skyworks-BDS-GPS-GNS-LNA-FEM-12-12-2015.htm" >
...
If Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was still in existence today, undoubtedly they would be running
an advertisement mentioning not just radio and television in their list of wireless
communications accomplishments since Marconi's message "first forged in 1901 from
the mere sound of three dots," but also cellphones, satellite navigation, cable
television, and Wi-Fi. Founded in 1919, RCA was bought by General Electric in 1986
and then subsequently broken into components and sold off to other companies like
Sony, NBC, and
...
"A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry
Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a
super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific
strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of
magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles.
It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to improve
fuel
..."
This is the final
engineering and science themed crossword puzzle for the year 2015.
All 36 crosswords this year, as with every one of the last 16 years, was custom
made by me for RF Cafe visitors who's interest in crosswords ranges from the avid
cruciverbalist to the curious technical type who is looking for an educational way
to pass some time. Have a safe New Year's celebration, and be sure to check back
on January 3, 2016. Thanks for your patronage in 2015!
"As 2015 draws
to a close,
The Engineer takes a look back at some of the biggest engineering
stories of the year, from Crossrail and Bloodhound, to Hinkley Point and Tim Peake's
space adventure. The year started in much the same way as it is now ending: with
controversy over fracking. In January, a bill calling for a moratorium on fracking
was defeated in the House of Commons. We asked our readers via a poll for their
..."
This weather map appearing on a blog by
Steven Goddard shows that roughly 3/4 of the weather stations
in the U.S. reported temperatures of
60° or more on Christmas Eve of 1955. Ashland KS, Geary OK
and Encinal, TX were all over 90°. Fort
Lauderdale was 85°. "Last winter, the East
Coast had record cold.
That was ignored because it was 'less than
1% of the
Earth.' But this week, the Eastern U.S.
defines the global climate." I verified the warm weather via the Newspapers.com
website records (click thumbnails).
Billed at the time as the longest microwave
relay system in the world, this report on Bell Telephone Systems' transcontinental
installation came just a month after being put into commercial service. At a cost
of $40 million ($650 million in 2015 dollars per
BLS Inflation Calculator), the system relays telephone
calls and radio and video program material along a chain of 107 microwave towers,
spaced approximately 30 miles apart. It was a big deal to be able to watch a TV
show from New York City in Los Angeles, and vice versa; we take worldwide broadcasts
for granted nowadays.
Every year a day or two before Christmas I put
up a couple music videos that I particularly like, figuring that many visitors are
like-minded and will appreciate them as well.
This video by Cloverton
is titled "A Hallelujah Christmas." You might recognize the music adapted from Leonard
Cohen's "Hallelujah."
It was on September 11, 1977 that David Bowie
and Bing Crosby joined together at the Elstree Studios in London, England. Crosby
was there to tape what would prove to be his final Christmas TV special
(he died on October 14, 1977 — 33 days after taping
the duet) and he invited Bowie to appear as a guest star.
"Airbus is leading a research group looking
at
terahertz imaging technology and it is claiming a breakthrough
which will see the imaging technology used in space observation, medical imaging,
industrial automation and security screening. The work to develop a new camera that
delivers high accuracy using terahertz waves with lower operating costs in part
of a European Union project called TeraTOP. In security screening applications terahertz
imagers
..."
Antenova, manufacturer of antennas and
RF antenna modules for M2M and the Internet of Things, has just
released two new modules for GPS and GNSS. Both provide an easy drop-in receiver
solution – a neat way to add a location capability to very small consumer devices.
The two modules are similar, both measuring 9.0 x 9.0 x 1.8 mm, with low current
consumption, making them suitable for smaller portable devices, such as smart watches,
navigation devices, OBD II modules, asset tracking Antenova-M10578-Modules-Add-GPS-GNSS-12-23-2015.htm" >
...
"Researchers at TU/e have developed a very
tiny
wireless temperature sensor that is powered in a very special
way: from the radio waves that are part of the sensor's wireless network. This means
that the sensor needs not even a single wire, nor a battery that would have to be
replaced. The arrival of such sensors is an important development on route towards
smart buildings, for instance. But the applications are many and various. The smart
buildings of the future will be full
..."
"ATEC is seeking multiple Entry Level Inside
Sales candidates. Our growing company is seeking multiple strong individuals that
can assist our Inside Sales Department with serving our customers in a fast paced
environment. You will receive and distribute inbound and make outbound calls, via
phone and or web from our customers such as Qualcomm, NASA, Boeing, and other military
and contract work. This position can lead into career path to a Sr. Sales position
..."
"Father Christmas
[aka Santa Claus] looks to be giving Rudolph and his reindeer pals a night
off this year after upgrading his sleigh. American engineering firm
Boston Dynamics has
created a group of robot reindeer that are capable of dragging Santa's sled, as
revealed in its Christmas message. The firm, which develops technology for the U.S.
military, posted the festive video on YouTube, featuring a female member of staff
dressed as Mrs Claus driving the automated animals
..."
What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know: An
Insider Reveals How to Get Smart Funding for Your Billion Dollar Idea, by Brian
Cohen and John Kador. Maybe 2016 will be the year you finally launch a business
using a concept you have been developing. Short of trying a crowd funded scheme
such as Kickstarter,
you'll probably need funding - lots of it, especially if your idea is hardware-intensive.
This popular book promises to provide "Terrific advice from a master of the angel
investing game. Brian Cohen reveals the art and craft of raising angel money. An
investment in this book will pay off a thousandfold
..."
"SpaceX sent a
Falcon rocket soaring toward orbit Monday night with 11 small
satellites, its first mission since an accident last summer. Then in an even more
amazing feat, it landed the 15-story leftover booster back on Earth safely. It was
the first time an unmanned rocket returned to land vertically at Cape Canaveral,
Florida, and represented a tremendous success for SpaceX. The company led by billionaire
Elon Musk is striving for reusability to drive launch costs down and open up space
to more people. SpaceX employees broke into cheers and chants, some of them jumping
..."
This is part 5 in a series that began in
the October 1951 issue of Radio & Television News magazine. Previous
articles dealt with
crystal diodes in AM and FM radios, and this article shift gears
by moving into television applications. Crystal diodes were and are still used in
frequency generation, envelope detection, frequency mixing, and AC signal rectification.
Vacuum tubes could be used for the latter three applications but many physical issues
such as size, weight, power consumption, and heat dissipation proved to be major
drawbacks as designers strived to reduce the size of electronics assemblies, make
them more energy efficient, lower the cost of manufacturing, increase reliability,
and decrease weight. Demands
...
Anatech-Electronics-Cavity-Filter-Band-IV-Wireless-12-22-2015.htm" >
Anatech Electronics today introduced the
AD1747-1842D335 cavity duplexer designed for use in wireless communications
systems (Band IV). The duplexer has a receive passband of 1710 to 1785 MHz
and transmit passband of 1805 to 1880 MHz, passband return loss greater than
14 dB, and insertion loss of 1.2 dB or less. Ripple is 0.8 dB or
less and isolation is at least 50 dB Anatech-Electronics-Cavity-Filter-Band-IV-Wireless-12-22-2015.htm" >
...
"There needs to be something to connect the
shield of the transmission line to, otherwise it is a bit like one hand clapping."
- Joel Hallas (W1ZR), January 2016 QST column: "The Doctor Is In"
Skyworks-BDS-GPS-GLONASS-Galileo-LNA-FEM-12-12-2015.htm" >
Skyworks introduces two new global navigation
low-noise amplifier front-end modules with integrated filters: the
SKY65713-11
and
SKY65715-81. Both solutions support products integrating GNSS functionality
such as smartphones, personal navigation devices, wearables, machine to machine
(M2M) systems, base stations, asset tracking instruments, professional radios and
Internet of Things applications. The devices also provide high linearity, excellent
gain, a high IP1 dB, and a superior NF...
"General Atomics, whose MQ-1 Predator changed
the world, is to start testing another potentially revolutionary weapon next month:
a
150-kilowatt class laser. Several other companies are developing
laser weapons and 'we're looking at all of them,' said Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold,
head of Air Force Special Operations Command, in an interview with Breaking Defense.
'The technology is ripe for application on an AC-130.' General Atomics hopes to
see AFSOC install a version of the weapon on
..."
Actually, the title of this and other news
stories is very misleading regarding exactly what has to be registered. The generally
uninformed or marginally informed public believes the definition of a 'drone' is
anything that flies without a human pilot in the cockpit. It associates the greatly
dramatized and sensationalized reports of public encounters with what are technically
classified as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) - multirotor copters. These are for
the most part the variety sold in toy stores ranging in cost and complexity from
$50 for a basic 4-propeller 'quadcopter' to $500 for a 6-propeller model with an
onboard camera and maybe even a First Person View (FPV) wireless system that allows
the pilot to fly from a vantage point on the craft while remaining at a remote
...
If the
Apple Watch just isn't cool enough for your personal macho image,
then consider Breitling's Exospace B55. "The
Exospace B55 was entirely developed, assembled, finished and tested
in Switzerland, including the production of movement ébauches (blanks) in the workshops
of Breitling Chronométrie. The smartphone application was also developed and produced
in Switzerland. This was an obvious choice for Breitling, which has always defended
Swiss Made tradition and innovation
..."
As evidenced in these mid-last-century magazine
advertisements,
Sylvania Electric marketing moguls learned early what sells products
by exploiting the nature of their audience. The cartoon-style ads shown here appeared
in social publications like Look, Life, and Collier's, where both men and women
- many of them numbnuts - are the expected audience. Compare these with the type
of ad run by Sylvania in a 'serious' magazine like
Radio-Craft.
"UL has released a new edition of UL 1283
the standard for Electromagnetic Interference Filters. This revision of ANSI/UL
1283 is being issued to incorporate a revision to section 27, temperature, to be
in line with IEC 60939. The sixth edition can be purchased on the UL Standard Sales
website. Description '1.1 These requirements cover EMI filters installed on, or
connected to, 1000 V or lower potential circuits, 50 – 60 Hz, or up to 1500V dc,
and installed in accordance with the NEC
..."
Christmastime is upon us once again, and amazingly
another year is coming to an end. This marks my 57th Christmas; where has the time
gone? "Tempus fugit," as the dial of my grandmother clock proclaims. In fine tradition,
this week's engineering crossword puzzle has a special theme that contains a heart-felt
message from all the staff here at RF Cafe (look for the
asterisks). We hope you had a good 2015 and that you will have a safe and
happy holiday season. Carpe diem
...
for Quantum Computer Forward
"Oxford team demonstrates
'hybrid' logic gate as work towards quantum computer continues.
Just over a year ago, the UK government announced an investment of Pounds 270m over
five years to help get quantum technology out of laboratories and into the marketplace.
Oxford was chosen to lead one of four EPSRC-funded 'Hubs' looking at different aspects
of quantum technology - in Oxford's case, shaping the future of quantum networking
and computing, towards the ultimate goal of developing a functioning quantum
..."
Vreeland Corporation was an early radio manufacturer
located in Hoboken, New Jersey, with multiple patents on file for innovative circuits.
The
Vreeland band selector system mentioned here was originally filed
in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August of 1927 and had not been awarded
by the time of this November 1929 article in Radio-Craft magazine. In fact,
it wasn't until five years later, in 1932, that the patent was finally assigned.
The official description reads in part, "The general purpose of the invention is
to receive the component frequencies of such a band with such uniformity as to avoid
material distortion of the modulated wave, and to exclude frequencies outside of
the band which the system is designed to receive. Another purpose of the invention
is to provide means for shifting the position of the band
...
Here are a couple good
Christmas-themed comics from the January 1942 issue of the American
Radio Relay League's (ARRL) monthly magazine, QST.
Ironically, the 'Old Year' Father Time with the sickle would not have been able
to legally key that transmitter by the time readers had received this edition, because
the U.S. government shut down all amateur radio transmissions (except a few specially
sanctioned civil defense units) immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
on December 7th of the previous year (see "War
Comes").
"Future electronic devices and batteries could
become faster and more energy efficient by harnessing new 2-D sheets of electrically-conductive
materials. The latest example of such materials comes in the form of newly-created
sheets of boron atoms, called
borophene, that could outperform even graphene as an electrical
conductor in 2-D form. Carbon-based graphene sheets. Even better, their approach
to making borophene can be easily replicated by other labs around the world
..."
PMI-Product-Announcement-12-17-2015.htm" >
Planar Monolithics Industries (PMI) announces
the availability of new RF/microwave product designs. Included are PMI Model No.
P1T-10M1G-80-T-SFF - an absorptive, high speed, SPST switch capable
of switching within 200 ns maximum for 10 MHz to 1.0 GHz, PMI Model No.
P2T-100M50G-100-T - an bsorptive, SP2T pin diode switch operating
over the 0.1 to 50.0 GHz, and
PMI Model No. P8T-0R5G18G-60-T-SFF-PN - a high speed, SP8T, absorptive
switch is capable of switching within 100 ns for 0.5 to 18.0 GHz PMI-Product-Announcement-12-17-2015.htm"
...
EDI CON USA 2016, taking place September 20-22
in Boston, MA at the Hynes Convention Center, is pleased to announce their
Call for
Papers. Authors are invited to submit technical oral session abstracts/proposals
describing work in RF/microwave, EMC/EMI and high-speed digital electronic component
or system-level design, modeling or testing. The EDI CON Technical Advisory Committee
will review all submissions based on quality, relevance, impact and originality.
Prospective authors are welcome to reference products in a design case study or
as a proof of concept for a design methodology, as long as product references are
presented in an appropriately non-commercial fashion. The deadline for abstract
submissions is February 28 EDI-CON-2016-Call-Papers.htm" ...
The IEEE has created an interactive "Patent Power 2015" chart that ranks companies and their home countries
according to the following formula:
Pipeline Power =
# of 2014 patents x Pipeline
Growth Index x Adjusted Pipeline
Impact x Pipeline Originality
x Pipeline Generality. When
all categories are included, Google, Apple, and Facebook take a significant lead,
with Qualcomm trailing at a little better than half of those. Microsoft has a shameful
1/3 the Pipeline Power as the leaders. Honeywell and Boeing lead the pack for Aerospace
and Military. Apple overwhelms in Electronics. The top three semiconductor companies
are from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. MIT dwarfs other of the world's universities,
with Harvard in the #2 spot. Try it yourself
...
Saelig Company has introduced a new line of
Siglent SDS2000X Series Digital Oscilloscopes with Super Phosphor
technology in bandwidths of 70 MHz, 100 MHz, 200 MHz, and 300 MHz.
With real-time sampling rates up to 2 GSa/s, these new scopes feature waveform
capture rates of up to 140,000 wfms/s, record length up to 70 Mpoints,
and a 256-level color and intensity grading display. Together, these technologies
have been collectively dubbed by the manufacturer as "SPO"
(Super Phosphor Oscilloscope) technology. The low
noise design supports 1-mv/div to 10-V/div voltage settings, with most of the common
adjustments ...
"Jaguar is returning to global motorsport
with confirmation that it is to participate in the
FIA Formula E Championship. In the autumn of 2016, Jaguar
will enter the third season of the all-electric drive championship as a manufacturer
with its own team, a move that gives the OEM a high-profile opportunity to further
the development of EV powertrains. Nick Rogers, group engineering director for Jaguar
Land Rover, said: 'Electric vehicles will absolutely play a role in Jaguar Land
Rover's future product portfolio and Formula E will give us a unique opportunity
to further our
..."
For all its faults, the Internet has definitely
made life better in a lot of ways. Since YouTube was founded 10 years ago, I have
benefitted many times from people who have taken the time to record, edit, and post
instructional videos. The money I have been able to save by fixing stuff myself
rather than paying a serviceman can be measured in the thousands. Subjects range
from car, truck, and tractor maintenance to plumbing, drywall, and now
(again) a furnace. This morning the indoor temperature
was at 70° even though the thermostat was set at 73°. After a little troubleshooting,
I noticed the flame would fire for a few seconds, turn off, then fire again for
a few seconds, and then shut off for good. The fan motor would then turn on and
run ...
According to
Amazon, it is not too late to order and receive many of your items
in time for Christmas. Whether buying something for yourself or for someone else,
some of the best deals are available through Amazon - especially when free shipping
is included. By clicking on the banner below, I will earn a few pennies on whatever
you buy, and it doesn't cost you any extra. Thanks!
"People give all sorts of electronics as gifts
around the holidays: phone chargers, e-book readers, video games, drones and more.
But what should we do with the devices they are replacing? Most of our gadgets end
up in landfills, others stuffed away in a closet, never to be played with again.
In the tech industry, hoarding or disposing of used electronics this way is known
as e-waste, and can leave
toxic materials and pollutants in the environment. The amount
of e-waste is growing every year — by some estimates, consumers threw away 92 billion
pounds of used electronics
..."
