"We're not being cocky, engineers are really
better than everyone else. Well, technicians and designers are still cool too, but
engineers are on top. Other than just saying that, what are some ways in which we
can actually prove that engineers are better than everyone? Engineers are a unique
breed of human, our ability to process data and work together on teams is unique
to our profession as a whole. That 4 to 6 years of "
"Launching satellites could be get a whole
lot easier and cheaper if one Californian firm gets its way. Rather than using a
traditional rocket to take payloads into space, Mountain View-based firm CubeCab
wants to fire microsatellites into orbit from to high altitude [F-104 Starfighter]
jets. By packing tiny
CubeSats into a rocket-like canister and
launching them at more than 100,000 feet, the space firm claims it will slash the
costs of sending lightweight space tech into low Earth orbit "
"With the outsourcing of microchip design
and fabrication a worldwide, $350 billion business, bad actors along the supply
chain have many opportunities to install
malicious circuitry in chips. These “Trojan
horses” look harmless but can allow attackers to sabotage healthcare devices; public
infrastructure; and financial, military, or government electronics "
Well, at least I know now why my efforts
to sell things usually don't work out too well. A
salesman I ain't - neither by c1947 standards or by contemporary
standards. I have a hard time even giving things away based on the low response
rate on notifications for winning
free books each
month. My score on this test was around 50% (on the low side),
but that was probably due to being subconsciously biased to answer what I thought
the creator would expect for a good salesman. It would probably be embarrassing
to have a professional assessment of my true personality, assuming that professional
is not a quack with an agenda. Oooh, that added
Mitch Maiman, of
Intelligent Product
Solutions, offers these sage words regarding communications skills engineers
need for success (hope he doesn't mind the montage).
"There was a time when engineers could work within companies and have minimal
(or even bad) communication skills. While it is not
necessarily important for engineers to become great public speakers or authors,
it is increasingly important for them to possess
effective communication skills ..."
"Currently,
wireless optical communication on computer
chips occurs at near-infrared wavelengths. But if visible light could be used in
these on-chip optical communications, the chips could be miniaturized significantly
because the wavelengths in that portion of the spectrum are much smaller. Now researchers
at Boston College have developed a nanoscale wireless communication system that
does just that. The key to the technology, as described "
Anatech Electronics offers the industry's largest portfolio of high-performance
standard and customized RF and microwave filters and filter-related products for military,
commercial, aerospace and defense, and industrial applications up to 40 GHz.
Anatech has introduced 3 new filter designs: a 2-10 GHz highpass filter with "N"
connectors, an 890-915 MHz and 935-960 MHz cavity duplexer with SMA connectors,
and a 7000 MHz stripline bandpass filter with SMA connectors. Custom design are
available
"String theory may not be the fabled theory
of everything, but it is definitely a theory of something." -
Andrew Strominger, Harvard University theoretical theorist, in
the June 2016 Discover magazine article "The Fall and Rise of String Theory." The mathematics of String
theory, originally concocted to create a unified theory of everything in the universe,
is now being appropriated by other realms of physics as well as by practitioners
of pure mathematics to solve longstanding conundrums in geometry.
This
Magic of Rahat
video is a riot!. He disguises himself as a bucket seat to fool fellow travelers
into thinking his Tesla has no human driver. Remember the next time you think you
are witnessing something remarkable that you, too, might be the victim of prank
"The BBSC capacitor series from IPDiA provide
superior broadband performance, stability and reliability for all broadband optoelectronics
and high speed data systems. The
BBSC capacitors are suitable for DC blocking, coupling and bypass
grounding applications in all broadband microwave / millimeter-wave applications.
The BBSC capacitors provide broadband performances better than 0.4 dB of insertion
loss up to 40 GHz "
Rob Spiegel, at Design News, has a short report
on the
engineering grads from the class of 2016 can expect to be paid.
The numbers are amazing. His numbers come from According to the 2016 Salary Survey
from The National Association of
Colleges and Employers (NACE), the average across all realms of engineering
degrees is around $63k. Petroleum engineers top the list once again at $98k. Electrical
engineers can expect a mere $65k - same as our mechanical and sofware engineer brethren.
Aerospace engineers will make a kilobuck less
For a limited
time, I am offering some of the brand new
engineering books
provided by Artech House for FREE for only a $35 shipping & handling charge
to anyone in the lower 48 states. They will be sent via the USPO's Media Mail method.
There is a limit of one book per person
"Laser applications
may benefit from
crystal research by scientists at the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and China's Shandong University.
They have discovered a potential way to sidestep longstanding difficulties with
making the crystals that are a crucial part of laser technology. But the science
behind their discovery has experts scratching their heads. The findings, published
today in Science Advances, suggest that the relatively large crystals used "
"Very soon the ampere - the
SI base unit of
electrical current - will take on an entirely new identity, and NIST scientists
are at work on an innovative, quantum-based measurement system that will be consistent
with the impending change. It won't be a minute too soon. The ampere (A) has long
been a sort of metrological embarrassment embarrassment. For one thing, its 70-year-old
formal definition, phrased as a hypothetical, cannot be physically realized as written
"
Said Jimmy Stewart's character in "It's a
Wonderful Life," George Bailey, "I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town
off my feet and I'm gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum.
Then, I'm comin' back here to go to college and see what they know. And then
I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build
airfields, I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I'm gonna build bridges
a mile long..." It was common dream for an era when Americans were tired of the
struggling economy of The Great Depression and great advances were being made in
technology. The world was still a mystery to most people whose familiarity with
foreign lands
"Speed may not be witchcraft, but it is the
basis for technologies that often seem like magic. Modern computers, for instance,
are as powerful as they are because tiny switches inside them steer electric currents
in fractions of a billionth of a second. The incredible data flows of the Internet,
on the other hand, are only possible because extremely fast
electro-optic modulators can send information
through fibre-optic cables in the shape of very short light pulses. Today's electronic
circuits "
"Polymer semiconductors, which can be processed
on large-area and mechanically flexible substrates with low cost, are considered
as one of the main components for future plastic electronics. However, they, especially
n-type
semiconducting polymers, currently lag
behind inorganic counterparts in the charge carrier mobility – which characterizes
"
Saelig Company has announced the TGP3100 series of
true pulse generators
that can generate precision pulses from 1 mHz up to 50 MHz with pulse width and
delay resolutions of 100 psec. Single and dual channel models are available, both
featuring large graphic LCDs for simultaneous text and waveform information. The
TGP3100 Series are true pulse generators using all-digital techniques, but they
can also act as high performance noise generators and as function/arbitrary generators
- making them truly universal waveform generators. Unlike DDS function generators
that also
Here is an example of smart people doing
dumb things and blaming it on anything other than themselves. I would be so embarrassed
for being such a dummkopf who didn't understand a simple feature of the software,
that I would never take it public and blame Microsoft. "Researchers trying to raise
awareness of the issue claim that the spreadsheet software automatically converts
the names of certain genes into dates. Gene symbols like SEPT2 (Septin 2) were found
to be altered to 'September 2.' Microsoft said the gene renaming "
This week's
Amateur Radio crossword puzzle contains the usual collection of
science, math, and engineering terms, and amateur radio. Words specifically pertaining
to Ham radio have clues marked with an asterisk (*).
You'll never be 'challenged' to know terms relating to movie stars, leaders of obscure
countries, or archaic pottery making terms. Enjoy
"University of Montpellier in France claims
the first continuous-wave (cw) operation at room temperature of a 15μm indium arsenide
(InAs)
quantum cascade laser (QCL) [Alexei N. Baranov et al, Optics Express,
vol. 24, p18799, 2016]. "To our knowledge, the longest emission wavelength of RT
cw operation for QCLs fabricated from other materials is 12.4μm," the team reports.
The thresholds are "
VidaRF offers a new high performance hybrid coupler Model:
VHC-10124A operating frequency 1-12.4 GHz. Type VSWR 1.30:1,
Insertion Loss 1.0 dB and Isolation 20 dB minimum. Power handling Average
≤50 watt ; Peak ≤1 kW with SMA connectors, operating temp -55 to 85 °C.
If required we could seal and paint to meet IP65 standards
"The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
(MIPT) is probing cutting edge diamond technologies
to emit single photons (for uncrackable cybersecurity)
and graphene to detect single molecules . While experts around the world are also
addressing these angstrom scale problems, few laboratories are making headway in
both. Dmitry Fedyanin, a researcher from MIPT's Laboratory of Nano "
EDI CON USA 2016,
a conference that brings together engineers working on high-frequency analog and
high-speed digital designs, taking place September 20-22 in Boston, Mass. at the
Hynes Convention Center, announces its RF Amplifier Design track for this year's
conference and exhibition. The exhibition will host more than 138 exhibiting companies
from the RF, microwave, and high-speed digital industries, including demonstration
pods in the Signal Integrity Zone. Featured keynote microwave and millimeter wave
power amplifiers: technology, applications, benchmarks
Even though the U.S. Army Air Force and other
research agencies around the world were at the forefront of experimenting with
remote control airplanes, helicopters, and rockets, hobbyists
were forging their own paths in the electronic art. I did not know until reading
this article that drones were flown through the radiation field at the Bikini Atoll
atom bomb test site for data collection. In fact amateur radio operators have long
had the privilege of broadcasting for the purpose of remotely controlling a vehicle
- the only scenario of Earth-based* transmission whereby the 'control operator'
is not required
"After a strange series of reports were received
regarding malfunctioning key fobs and disabled cellphone use all within an isolated
area, city officials in Evanston, Illinois turned to the
ARRL lab for help in investigating the
cause of such odd interference. Originally, officials turned to the FCC with their
concerns of intentional radio frequency interference (RFI)
but because key fob malfunctions are considered the responsibility of the automaker
the issue was not of "
"A powerful new material (COF) developed by Northwestern University
chemist
William Dichtel and his research team
could one day speed up the charging process of electric cars and help increase their
driving range. 'Our material combines the best of both worlds - the ability to store
large amounts of electrical energy or charge, like a battery, and the ability to
charge and discharge rapidly, like a supercapacitor "
Location, location, and location. Those are
always half-jokingly cited as the most important three factors to consider when
deciding where to best set up a retail business. Unfortunately, the days of scouting
out a spot to set up an
electronics sales and service shop are long gone. Except for a
cellphone screen replacement service at a mall kiosk and maybe the Geek Squad desk
at the Best Buy store, there are not many places left that do consumer electronics
repair - at least as a primary vocation. This story makes a good read for anyone
contemplating setting up shop where serving the local population is a prime objective
"Often described as the blueprint of life,
DNA contains the instructions for making every living thing from a human to a house
fly. But in recent decades, some researchers have been putting the letters of the
genetic code to a different use: making tiny nanoscale computers. In a new study,
a Duke University team led by professor John Reif created strands of
synthetic DNA that, when mixed together in a test tube in the
right concentrations, form an analog circuit that can add, subtract and multiply
as they form and break bonds "
Skyworks is pleased to introduce two new Wi-Fi switches that are ideal for WLAN
networks, repeaters, ISM band radios, Bluetooth® systems, smartphones, and connectivity
modules. The
SKY13585-679LF is a single-pole, double-throw
(SPDT) switch intended for 1 to 6 GHz applications. Using advanced switching technologies,
this switch maintains low insertion loss and high isolation for all switching paths.
The
SKY13586-678LF is a single-pole, triple-throw
(SP3T) antenna switch for 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi applications
"The Class
of 2016 will enter the most welcoming
U.S. job market in nearly a decade: Sixty-seven
percent of employers say they plan to hire recent college graduates this year, the
highest number since 2007, according to job site CareerBuilder's annual forecast.
Second only to business majors, freshly minted engineers are set to enjoy most of
that hiring goodwill as the U.S. economy continues its slow-but-steady post-recession
growth. According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges
and Employers, at the end of last year, 2/3 of company respondents were planning
to hire engineers "
"China's successful launch of what is billed
as the world's first hack-proof communications satellite promises to transform experimental
ground networks into ultra-secure global links as China raises the stakes in its
ongoing cyber rivalry with the west. The recent launch of the 1,400-pound
quantum satellite aboard a Long March-2D
booster opens the door to a new era of secure communications that leverages the
ephemeral properties of quantum physics, including the mysterious phenomenon known
as quantum entanglement "
"The ring
is made by NFCring. 'Proximity payments based on NFC technology are clearly on the
rise – and payment solutions with
smart wearables will accelerate this trend,'
says Infineon's Thomas Rostek. The global standard EMVCo facilitates worldwide interoperability
and acceptance of secure payment transactions. Management of specifications and
related testing processes is driven by EMVCo's 6 member organisations American Express,
Discover, JCB "
Galvanometers are the basis for most analog
type meter movements - remember those things? They work by having the current flowing
through a fine wire coil armature generate a magnetic field that displaces an attached
needle. Most galvanometers respond nearly linearly to applied current, and therefore
are used in voltmeters and ammeters with simple resistor series and parallel configurations.
The
current-squared galvanometer, on the other hand, responds roughly
linearly to power values. It can therefore be used in a transmitter output monitoring
circuit, for instance, or within amplifier
"In a tiny quantum prison, electrons behave
quite differently as compared to their counterparts in free space. They can only
occupy discrete energy levels, much like the electrons in an atom - for this reason,
such electron prisons are often called 'artificial atoms.' Artificial atoms may also feature properties
beyond those of conventional ones, with the potential for many applications for
example in quantum computing. Such additional properties have now been shown for
artificial atoms in the carbon "
Aemulus, a leader in automated test equipment (ATE)
solutions, and Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., founder of RF SOI
(silicon on insulator) and pioneer of advanced RF
solutions, announce their strategic partnership in the development of a new microwave
frequency tester. Building on the success of Aemulus's Amoeba™ AMB7600 RF tester,
this next-generation test solution will extend its support into microwave frequency
bands and enable more complex testing. "This Aemulus microwave tester is the latest
"Dubbed
KABRA (for Key
Amorphous-Black Repetitive Absorption), the patent-pending process uses a
focused laser to form an amorphous layer of SiC decomposed into its constituents
silicon (Si) and carbon (C),
which becomes the base point for separating the wafer through cleavage. While today's
wafer production typically involves the use of multiple diamond wire saws, taking
several days to slice through an ingot and producing "
Lots of new
job hunting,
job improving, and job retention articles have been published since my last round-up
in early July. The vast majority of articles are, IMHO, useless and appear to be
written by people whose only job experience is writing employment advice for people
who actually work. I'm guessing they'll
-
Communications Skills Needed to
Advance an Engineering Career
-
How to Avoid the Job-Search
Black Hole
-
How Einstein and Edison Solved
-
Problems in Their Sleep
-
Quick and Easy Tips for Writing
Attention Getting Emails <more>
While not many people are likely to build
this R-C bridge circuit with vacuum tubes, the article has a good basic description
of operation of any
calibrated bridge circuit used to measure an unknown value. Interestingly,
a 'magic eye' or 'cat's eye' tube is used in lieu of a meter movement to give a
visual indication of an open, short, intermittence, poor power factor, and low 'Q',
as well as when the selected switch position correctly identifies the value of the
resistor or capacitor under test
"A fleet of tiny satellites could one day
be used to detonate plasma bombs in Earth's upper atmosphere to improve the range
of radio communications. The U.S. Air Force has granted contracts to three research
teams to develop the technology needed to do this, with hopes that
CubeSats could carry massive amounts of
ionized gas to the ionosphere to create radio-reflecting plasma. The ionosphere
begins roughly 40 miles above the surface and becomes denser with charged particles
at night, allowing signals to travel "
Here's a weird headline: "The U.S.
Department of Justice announced this week that three companies have agreed to plead
guilty for their roles in a conspiracy to
fix prices for electrolytic capacitors
sold to customers in the U.S. and elsewhere. The companies are Rubycon Corporation,
Elna Co Ltd, and Holy Stone Holdings Co Ltd. 'The Antitrust Division has now charged
five companies and one individual for their participation in this international
price-fixing conspiracy,' Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brent Snyder . 'The
electrolytic capacitors conspiracy affected millions of American consumers "
No, this is not yet another depiction of
the event horizon of a black hole. It is, however, a new way of visualizing information
on the Smith Chart, as conceived by the originator of the 3D Smith Chart, Andrei
A. Muller, with co-author Esther Sanabria-Codesal. The similarity to relativity
is not so unexpected. Both involve the 2D projection of a 3D surface, both involve
a scientist / engineer enlisting the assistance of a mathematician, and both involve
the work of Poincaré. "The
hyperbolic Smith chart maps the circuits
with positive reactance above the horizontal (real line)
of the ρh
plane and the circuits with negative reactance below the real line of the hyperbolic
reflection coefficients plane." Got that?
, a leading provider of RF, microwave and millimeter wave products, introduces
an all new line of
voltage variable attenuators offering
up to 60 dB of attenuation across broad frequencies from 400 MHz to 18 GHz. This
line of voltage variable attenuators is most commonly deployed in applications such
as electronic warfare, instrumentation, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint radios,
fiber optic and broadband telecom, microwave radio and VSAT, military radios, radar,
ECM, SATCOM and sensors, and R&D. In most communications
Whenever I see advertisements for electronics
training courses, I think of the line in "Duel in the Snow, or, Red Ryder Nails
the Cleveland Street Kid," where it mentions how during the Great Depression years
the magazines were filled with ads "promising successful
careers repairing radios." That story, which ultimately became
the book and movie A Christmas Story, was contained in Gene Shepherd's
book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. Jean Shepherd was a radio
"Nowadays there are many ways in which cell
phones can connect to Internet by switching between the 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi services.
However, these systems can be easily saturated in places where there is a high user
density.
Li-Fi is a complementary system that has
been studied for more than 100 years and data would be transmitted in frequencies
between the 400 and 800 THz, the visible light spectrum. The aim of Li-Fi is to
send information through conventional lighting elements (LEDs) at the same "
When the
FCC forbade amateur radio operators (with
a few exceptions) from transmitting during the years encompassing World War II,
many Hams who were very active in the hobby went a bit stir crazy and began looking
for other pastimes. They could still listen to other broadcasts, but no CW or phone
transmissions were allowed. Author Chester Cunningham recounts here his chosen replacement
avocation - aviation. His humorous story demonstrates one way Hams, whose curtailed
radio activities resulted in equipment that had atrophied
"In a new paper, University of California,
Riverside theoretical physicist Flip Tanedo and his collaborators have made new
progress towards unraveling a mystery in the beryllium nucleus that may be evidence
for a
fifth force of nature. Earlier this year,
an experiment in Hungary reported very unusual behavior in the decays of beryllium-8
nuclei. The experimental collaboration suggested that their results may come from
the effects of a new "
Multi-channel phased arrays using beamforming
and MIMO are key enablers in the next generation of 5G, Radar, and Satellite communications
systems. However, phased array design and verification is complex and crosses multiple
engineering disciplines & tools domains. Viewers will learn tools and techniques
to connect baseband, RF, and antenna domains into a predictive, model-based engineering
flow from spreadsheets to test. This webcast starts at the system-level perspective
and considers both transmitters and receivers
"Researchers at the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst have genetically modified common soil
bacteria to produce nanowires capable
of conducting electricity at a level that surprised even the scientists themselves.
After years of skepticism that this was even theoretically possible, the practical
demonstration could lead to a new generation of 'green' electronics in which nanowires
could be produced in plant waste, without the need for toxic chemicals. The research
"
announces the availability of the
TEA6000-95 0.1
to 6 GHz Digital Attenuator. This new RF signal attenuator operates over
a 0.1 to 6 GHz frequency range and can reduce input signal amplitudes by up
to 95 dB in 0.5 dB steps. It features excellent solid-state repeatability
and performance, and the output signal is uninterrupted when changing attenuation
values. It is powered and controlled using a USB interface. With a power rating
of +23 dBm and a maximum switching speed of 1 μsecond
For the sake of avid
cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new crossword
puzzle that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics,
and other technical words. You will never be asked the name of a movie star unless
he/she was involved in a technical endeavor (e.g., Hedy Lamar).
Enjoy!
"University of Washington researchers have
developed what they call 'interscatter
communication' technology that backscatters (or reflects) existing signals like
Bluetooth in the air, transforming wireless transmissions from one technology to
another. Specifically, the team of UW electrical engineers and computer scientists
has demonstrated for the first time that Bluetooth transmissions can be used to
create Wi-Fi and ZigBee-compatible signals. As a result "
National Company, headquartered in Malden,
MA, was a manufacturer of
radio receivers for military and amateur use in the mid part of
last century. They ran many full-page advertisements that were actually infomercials
in that 
much more of the content presented generally
useful technical information than pitched a product. This particular installment,
which appeared in a 1951 issue of QST magazine, describes how extensive experimentation
and testing on their HRO-50 receiver by a Ham radio guy led to a circuit change
in future production models. It involved
"In a paper recently published in Nature
Photonics Letters titled 'Room-temperature continuous-wave electrically injected
InGaN-based laser directly grown on Si,'
they describe how a carefully engineered Al-composition step-graded AlN/AlGaN multilayer
buffer between the Si and GaN successfully eliminated crack formation while also
reducing the dislocation density. Often, one way to circumvent the large lattice
mismatch between GaN and Si (around 17%) is to "
As one of a dwindling number of people who
still read paper print versions of our electronics trade magazines, I find it more
convenient to scan for noteworthy new products and articles to report about on RF
Cafe. I tear out pages and put them a stack for eventual reference. The April 2016
issue of Microwaves & RF had a feature on a new line of Raychem
(TE Connectivity) heat-shrink
matched-impedance splices. I have used
Raychem's heat-shrink splices
"Walmart's $3.3B acquisition of Jet.com can
be expected to sail through antitrust review, eliciting barely a peep of objection
from the federal government. Like Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp, the Walmart
deal will probably end up being another example of an upstart internet company being
swallowed up to preserve the stranglehold of a giant. This happens because
antitrust regulators are stuck in an outdated
view of the world, while the internet giants are more attuned to their nascent competitive
threats. The deal for "
Anatech Electronics,
a manufacturer of RF and microwave filters, has published its August 2016 newsletter.
As always, it includes both company news and some tidbits about relevant industry
happenings. This month, Sam Benzacar discusses the topics of "," Facebook's OpenCellular,
Passive WiFi, and "AT&T Dreams BIG." Anatech's business is to make certain that
system and circuit designers have capable filters available to assure successful
implementation
"In a process called
amalgamation, ductile metals become brittle
after being exposed to certain chemical environments. Most notable is the dramatic
effect through the physical reaction ensuing after solid metal is exposed to liquid
metals. Aluminum with mercury or gallium provides a specifically fascinating combination
in which sees aluminum get completely destroyed by even a small amount of Al or
Hg. Although pure aluminum is highly reactive "
"As the debate continues over whether Wi-Fi
and LTE-U can be good neighbors in unlicensed spectrum bands, Qualcomm has found
that Wi-Fi access points don't always
share spectrum well either. According
to EE Times, Qualcomm, while researching test parameters for Wi-Fi and LTE-U coexistence,
found that Wi-Fi access points can stray far from the ideal 50/50 spectrum sharing
scenario. Mingxi Fan, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm, said three brands
of high-quality access points vary from 10% to 90% in sharing
In typical Carl & Jerry style, the teen
experimenters ('makers' or 'DIYers' in contemporary lingo)
spent another summer vacation day cobbling together an electromechanical contraption
or even purely electronic device with a specific goal in mind. Whether designing
and building a circuit for tracking down the cause of strangely acting synchronized
wall clocks ("The Crazy Clock Caper") or devising a system for catching
a vandal in the act of vandalizing ("Geniuses at Work" - this story), creator John T. Fry
provides a mix of developing personalities, describing the task at hand, and maintaining
a degree of suspense regarding how the adventure will end.
An International Microwave Symposium 2016 (IMS2016) MicroApps presentations playlist
has been added to the
AWR.TV YouTube channel. These videos showcase
the latest features in NI AWR Design Environment for load pull, radar systems and
antenna design. The videos contained within the playlist include: Advances in System-Level
Modeling of Large Phased-Array Simulations, Phased-Array Antenna Simulation for
5G, Advances in Integration of EM Simulation Within a High-Frequency Circuit Design
"The Air Force is continuing to upgrade its
Global Positioning System performance with a $52.6M contract awarded to Raytheon
for modernization of the Miniature Airborne GPS receiver 2000, known at MAGR-2K.
The work will involve the testing and delivery of a
Military Code (M-Code)/automatic dependent
surveillance and broadcast-capable system. Under the terms of the deal, Raytheon
will also account for future upgrades, designing out anticipated obsolescence issues
while providing for open systems architecture approaches, according "
US Radar is a manufacturer of
ground penetrating radar (GPR)
systems and software, located in Matawan, NJ. GPR units are compact and lightweight
and operate without disturbing the environment. Applications include buried utility
infrastructure components, archeological discovery, geophysical layering, structural
integrity determination, and much more. Operator training available. US Radar has
been added to the Radar Systems vendors & services page. Check out US Radar
to see whether they can assist your project.
"'It makes it real.' That's what Tom Briggs,
acting chief of test for the Navy, said as he watched F-35C after F-35C launched
from the ship's steam catapults during a long Monday. 'For those of us who have
been with the program for a while, this is fantastic.' They'll be testing the plane's
Electronic Warfare capabilities and its
ability to land and take off in crosswinds and with asymmetric bomb loads. The pilots
are checking out the third generation helmets to ensure "
My collection of
vintage electronics magazines
has grown very large. They are where I get the articles that I scan and post here
on RF Cafe. I buy them on eBay for around $3-$4 - sometimes nearly $5 - apiece.
There are others I would like to bid on, but will not until I can clear out some
of my existing inventory of a few hundred. It is really cool to peruse the pages
of these old magazines and see what was considered leading edge technology and what
was popular in the day. The war years often had some of the best features, but there
was always something new and exciting
"AT&T said that its wireless network
is suffering from
interference generated by a range of electronics
operations, including large scale video displays, industrial lighting systems, LED
lights and FM radio stations. 'Lighting systems, including CFL ballasts and LEDs,
such as those used in sports scoreboards, billboards, and other large scale video
displays, can wreak havoc with uplink signals to nearby cell sites operating in
the Lower 700 MHz and 850 MHz Cellular services and will likely impact soon-to-be-
auctioned 600 MHz spectrum "
"While Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are now well established
technologies, there are several advantages gained by shortening the wavelength of
the electromagnetic waves used for transmitting information. So-called
visible-light communication (VLC) makes
use of parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that are unregulated and is potentially
more energy-efficient. VCL also offers a way to combine information transmission
with illumination and display technologies - for example, using ceiling lights
to provide "
'QRM' is the Q-code in Ham-speak for unwelcomed
manmade inband electrical interference. Interference is not just
random signals like noise from motor brush arcing, intermittent electric distribution
system connections or inter-conductor arcing. An improperly tuned or ineffectively
filtered radio transmission, or EM energy leaking from a poorly shielded electronic
device is also QRM. I distinguish such noise as unwelcomed because what might be
considered as noise by one person could be a desired signal by another. 'QRN' stands
for electrical noise generated in nature such as lightning bolts, solar storms,
or even, as discovered by Drs. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, the 160 GHz
Cosmic Microwave Background
"Our planet is nestled in the center of two
immense, concentric doughnuts of powerful radiation: the Van Allen radiation belts,
which harbor swarms of charged particles that are trapped by Earth's magnetic field.
On March 17, 2015, an interplanetary shock - a shockwave created by the driving
force of a coronal mass ejection, or CME, from the sun - struck Earth's magnetic
field, called the magnetosphere, triggering the greatest geomagnetic storm of the
preceding decade. And NASA's Van Allen Probes were there to watch the effects on
the radiation belts. One of the most "
"To accelerate NB-IoT market adoption now
the
Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) standard has been
set, Deutsche Telekom is developing cutting-edge prototypes at its NB-IoT Prototyping
Hub together with selected partners and startups to ensure a swift and easy time
to market. The Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology Narrowband-IoT is driving some
of the hottest innovations for the Internet of Things (IoT). It has great potential
as "
If I had a copy of
EZNEC
software, I would try modeling an end-fed "sky wire" antenna like the one described
in this article and see how it functions when driven from a location high above
terra firma when the transmitter and receiver are connected to Earth ground via
some sort of wire. Author Norman Rowe operated from his attic as did
(and do) many Hams. Although almost any reasonable
mismatch can be accommodated with a proper matching circuit, that has no major bearing
on what the antenna radiation pattern looks like
"A paper in Science Advances provides proof
of a new concept, using new solid 3D
superlenses to break through the scale of things previously visible
through a microscope. Illustrating the strength of the new superlens, the scientists
describe seeing for the first time, the actual information on the surface of a Blue
Ray DVD. That shiny surface is not as smooth as we think. Current microscopes cannot
see the grooves containing the data- but now even the data itself is revealed "
On the May 13, 2005 episode of The Tonight
Show, Jay Leno held a speed contest between two Ham Radio operators using
Morse code and two Millennials using their smartphones for texting
(SMS). At least one member of the audience thought
texting would win. Mr. Chip Margelli (K7JA) did the
sending. He declares, "Let me assure you that we never saw that message before I
flipped the blue card over. Each message, in rehearsal, was different. The character
count was the same as the one during dress rehearsal "
"The development and deployment of
LTE-U devices, which utilize 4G LTE radio
communications technology in the unlicensed spectrum, introduces the possibility
of interference with Wi-Fi equipment operating in the same bands. Small deviations
in LTE-U design requirements may affect Wi-Fi performance when working in proximity
and in the same frequency band. AT4 wireless will conduct independent testing based
on objective tests and an industry-approved methodology to ensure "
