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3 of the December
2017 homepage archives.
Sunday 10
 At least 10 clues in this puzzle with an asterisk
(*) are pulled from this past week's (12/4 - 12/8) "Tech Industry
Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage (see the Headline Archives page for help).
For the sake of all the avid cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words related to engineering, science,
mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy ...
Friday 8
 The
tech-themed comic that appeared on page 59 of the February 1969 issue of
Electronics World magazine is consistent with the prevailing theme of the era
where wives and girlfriends were fairly oblivious to the meaning of technical endeavors
of their husbands and boyfriends, respectively (or not necessarily). The other comic
from that edition is reflective of the times as well, when a television was considered
to be one of the essentials of modern life. Carrying one's essentials wrapped up
in a cloth and tied to the end of a wooden pole represented the stereotypical kid
running away from home. I was a pretty rotten kid, but I don't remember ever running
away from home - probably because I knew that my parents knew that I knew...
 When I saw this story, I was reminded of
a tongue-in-cheek article titled, "The Zero Displacement Engine" in one of my model airplane magazines.
The ZPRR is no joke, though. "Sandia has developed a miniature, zero-power radio
receiver that can be easily integrated in a wide range of devices to provide continuous
wireless connectivity. The underlying principle behind the
Zero-Power Receiver is that the powered radio frequency electronics
that are used in most wireless receivers can be replaced with electronics that require
no power supply or battery. Using this technology, a short range radio receiver
(<100 m) can be ..."
 Much has been learned and published about
the various layers of the
ionosphere since its first being measured with sounding rockets
in the 1950s. Both professional and amateur communications operators are very interested
in its properties. Long term (seasonal) and short term (daily) patterns have been
discerned that help make some of the ionosphere's effect on the propagation of electromagnetic
(radio) signals somewhat predictable, but there are still many unpredictable events
that hamper - and often enhance - communications. Sun spots and coronal mass ejections,
volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and other natural events cause sporadic ...
I love this quote by UK engineer James Newman: "I just got suckered into it bit
by bit." This story about Mr. Newman's effort to build a 16-bit computer using discrete
components appeared in Popular Science magazine. Newman wanted to create
a functional, programmable computer that would provide a visual indication of how
data flow and computation occurs within a microprocessor; the result is his "Megaprocessor." To do that, he constructed this 10-meter-long
by 2-meter-tall rack of circuits consisting of more than 40,000 discrete transistors.
An Intel 8086 microprocessor has ~29,000 ...
 "The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory -
Sensors Directorate (AFRL RY) has developed a high isolation
RF circulator which provides enhanced detection ranges (radar)
and improved reception (communications) by reduction of signal leakage and undesirable
internal reflections between ports, at a tuned frequency (or frequency range) of
interest. Isolation values exceeding 70 dB have been demonstrated which far
exceeds the 20 dB typical to conventional 3-port circulators. The AFRL circulator ..."
Thursday 7
The agenda has been finalized and registration opened for the combined 2017
meeting, taking place in Munich on December 12. ADF brings the latest NI AWR software
solutions to customers, partners and engineering professionals throughout the world,
enabling them to learn, network and collaborate on today's microwave/RF design challenges.
Select presentation highlights include: Complete X-Band 2x2 Phased-Array Antenna
Design and Simulation, Including Low-Temperature ...
 "Scientists at the Department of Energy's
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have shown that
copper-based superconductors, or cuprates - the first class of
materials found to carry electricity with no loss at relatively high temperatures
- contain fluctuating stripes of electron charge and spin that meander like rivulets
over rough ground. The stripes are zones where electrons either pile up, creating
bands of negative charge, or align their spins to create bands of magnetism. They
were previously known to exist in cuprate superconductors at temperatures ..."
 I have always been obsessed with
Christmas - from being a little kid and loving the decorations
(and, of course, presents) to being a father and providing the season's festive
rites for my kids, to now as an old guy. Our house still has a fresh cut Christmas
tree with shiny balls (including ones with family member names written with glue
and glitter) and hand-crafted figures and of course metalized icicles, lights outside
along the roof line (old-fashioned incandescent, of course), decorations hanging
around inside, Christmas cards from years past when people actually mailed them
(we still mail a few), and other holiday memorabilia. You will ...
 Anatech Electronics, Inc. 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 three new filters for your convenience: a 4432 MHz WiFi cavity filter
with N connectors, a 899-944 MHz LC duplexer filter with N connectors (std), and
WiFi cavity bandpass filter with SMA connectors (std) ...
 Each month I try to make the rounds of job
search / career advice columns to see if there is anything worth recommending. A
lot of what's out there seems to be written by people whose only job has been telling
other people how to get a job, so I try for filter them out. This first article
is short but interesting and the conclusion is not surprising. It does not, however,
addresses all the worthless <fill in the blank> Studies (insert any social
warrior cause) degrees that are being paid for ...
-
Americans w/o College Degree Way Worse off Today Than 40 Years Ago
-
Should You Job Search During the Holidays?
-
Young Professionals Say Career Development Top Priority, <more>
 "An international team of researchers has
conducted an experiment that shows that the
arrow of time is a relative concept, not an absolute one. In a
paper uploaded to the arXiv server, the team describe their experiment and its outcome,
and also explain why their findings do not violate the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy, or disorder, tends to increase
over time, which is why everything in the world around us appears to unfold forward
in time. But it also explains why hot tea ..."
Wednesday 6
 Regular RF Cafe visitors know I have a penchant
for creating and solving
crossword puzzles. Since around 2001, I have personally generated
a new crossword almost every week - hundreds in total. Some studies have suggested
lower rates of dementia in people who regularly exercise their brains, but that
is not the primary reason I work crossword, word scramble, and Sudoku puzzles -
I enjoy the challenge. A couple times each year, Popular Electronics magazine
published an electronics-themed crossword puzzle; however, unlike the crosswords
I make, not all of the words and clues have to do with ...
 If, as the saying goes, "Misery loves company,"
then you will appreciate the following. Whilst perusing the December 2017 issue
of NASA's Motion Design supplement to their Tech Briefs publication,
I ran across the image to the right in an article titled, "Trends in Hydraulic Filtration"
(areas of interest are quite diverse here at RF Cafe).
After reading the caption stating that the holes were "fire holes," the first thing
that came to mind was
ESD damage. Sure enough, upon going back and reading more of the
story (provided by Argo-Hytos), I found ...
JFW Industries and IEEE offer this application note titled
An Introduction to Programmable Attenuator Systems. "An attenuator
is an electrical component that reduces the amplitude of a signal passing through
it without significantly degrading the integrity of that signal. In a programmable
or step attenuator, the attenuation is controlled externally by an external analog
or digital signal, either manually or via a computer. Depending on the model, the
maximum attenuation ranges from 0 dB to 127 dB, in steps as small ...
 Maybe it's my imagination, but it does seem
that this year, for the first time in many years, there has been a noticeable increase
in Christmas decorations and even utterances of "Merry Christmas" from checkout line clerks in the local stores.
Magazines of yore used to be chock full of Christmas stories, holiday themes on
the front cover, and advertisements with both religious and secular messages as
part of the sales pitch. Take a look at the December editions of any of the vintage
magazines hyperlinked in the upper right part of the RF Cafe header area to see
what I mean. The December issue of QST for many years has published ...
 At Axiom Test Equipment we provide high-quality services and affordable
solutions such as test equipment rental, test equipment sales, and test equipment
repair. Find out how we help customers select the equipment they need and see our
lab where all of our equipment gets checked & accessorized before securely shipping
to you. The
Keysight / Agilent N5245A PNA-X Network Analyzer 10 MHz to 50 GHz
is our Featured Product for this End-of-Year special offers ...
 "If analog and
hybrid computers were so valuable half a century ago, why did
they disappear, leaving almost no trace? The reasons had to do with the limitations
of 1970s technology: Essentially, they were too hard to design, build, operate,
and maintain. But analog computers and digital-analog hybrids built with today's
technology wouldn't suffer the same shortcomings, which is why significant work
is now going on in analog computing in the context of machine learning, machine
intelligence, and biomimetic circuits ..."
Tuesday 5
 "Nokia is joining together with other technology
leaders, including Virginia Diodes and Keysight Technologies, in becoming founding
members of the mmWave Coalition, which will advocate for the use of radio frequencies
above
95 GHz at the FCC, other U.S. government agencies and the ITU.
'The mmWave Coalition member companies are united in the objective of removing regulatory
barriers to technologies and using frequencies ranging from 95 GHz ..."
 I have to admit that just about everything
I read in this article on
thermoluminescence, not to be confused with incandescence or luminescence,
was new information to me - or at least I had no remembrance of having known it
before. The "memory" characteristic of thermoluminescent materials is especially
interesting. Donald Lancaster's treatise appeared in the March 1969 issue of
Electronics World, so it is safe to assume that there is some relevance to
electronics, right? At least as presented here, electronics plays a role in instrumentation
for measuring thermoluminescence, not for using the phenomenon as part of electronics
devices or instruments. You will still be glad you read through the article ...
Saelig Company has introduced the
Siglent SDS1104X-E (100 MHz) and Siglent SDS1204X-E (200 MHz)
four-channel oscilloscopes that are built on the same platform as the very popular
SDS1202X-E but with many improvements, including two 1 GSa/s ADCs and two 14 Mpt
memory modules. Waveform capture rates are up to 100,000 wfms/s in normal mode
and 400,000 wfms/s in sequence mode. The SDS1000X-E scopes feature a large
7" 256-level color display with intensity grading and color temperature features
to show signal event occurrence ...
 Empower
RF Systems is a global leader in power amplifier solutions. Products include
high power RF amplifier modules, amplifier systems, and custom designed amplifiers.
 Investments in both hardware and software engineering
are yielding next generation products with significant size, weight, and interface
functionality advantages over legacy products in the market ...
 "Smartphones and computers wouldn't be nearly
as useful without room for lots of apps, music and videos. Devices tend to store
that information in two ways: through electric fields (think of a flash drive) or
through
magnetic fields (like a computer's spinning hard disk). Each method
has advantages and disadvantages. However, in the future, our electronics could
benefit from the best of each. 'There's an interesting concept,' says Chang-Beom
Eom, the Theodore H. Geballe Professor and Harvey D. Spangler ..."
Monday 4
Led by Airbus, JUICE is a European Space Agency (ESA) deep space mission to study
the icy moons of Jupiter. The objectives are to explore the atmosphere and magnetosphere
of the moons and investigate whether there are liquid oceans suitable for habitation
under the thick icy crusts of moon Ganymede. Rohde & Schwarz provided two
R&S ESR EMI test receivers to measure the antenna's radiation
pattern during these tests. Uwe Körber of the Test and Measurement Division's sales ...
 "The piezoelectric effect, which causes a
material to expand along the direction of an applied electric field, is common in
many materials and used in a variety of technologies, from medical ultrasound to
vibration-powered electronics. But the
negative piezoelectric effect, in which a material contracts rather
than expands in the direction of the applied electric field, has been considered
a rare and counterintuitive anomaly, and has received little attention ..."
 By the early 1970s, many types of vacuum tubes
had already been replaced by solid state devices. A lot of the resistance by hardline
lovers of glowing tubes was beginning to accept the reality of superior electrical
characteristics of many types of germanium and silicon diodes and transistors over
tube equivalents. During my enlistment in the USAF from 1978-1982, the vacuum tube
diode used to trigger the pulse forming network for the airport surveillance radar
(ASR) circuit was replaced with a plug-in solid state replacement. It seemed to
work just as well. The "fetrode" introduced here by Solitron was designed to be
a plug-in replacement for the 6AK5 vacuum ...
Axiom Test Equipment allows you to
rent
or buy
test equipment, repair
test equipment, or sell
or trade  test equipment. They are committed to providing
superior customer service and high quality electronic test equipment. Axiom offers
customers several practical, efficient, and cost effective solutions for their projects'
TE needs and is committed to providing superior customer service and high quality
electronic test equipment. Please check out Axiom Test Equipment today! ...
 "ANSYS provides free student products perfect
for work done outside the classroom, such as homework, capstone projects, student
competitions and more. Our renewable products can be downloaded by students across
the globe. ANSYS Student products can be installed on any supported MS Windows
64-bit machine. Learn more about ANSYS AIM Student and ANSYS Student so you can
download ..."
 "Today's planar digital image sensors simply
inherit their form factor from the substrates and semiconductor processes used in
their volume manufacture. But more and more research groups are pursuing the benefits
of curved hemispherical sensors, mimicking the optimized optics of biological eye
systems. While vertebrates evolved with globe-shaped eyes, with a concave retina
behind a spherical lens (and the iris as a pin-hole), insects mostly sport convex
multi-faceted ..."
Sunday 3
 For the sake of all the avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, each week I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words related to
engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. At least
10 clues in this puzzle with an asterisk (*) are pulled from this
past week's (11/27 - 12/1) "Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage
(see the Headline Archives page for help). Enjoy! ...
Friday 1
Planar Monolithic Industries
(PMI) recently introduced four new products in their extensive line of RF and
microwave components. Included are a 1-18 GHz low noise amplifier; a 1 to 18
GHz, a 1 to 18 GHz high speed threshold detector; a 11.825 GHz bandpass filter with
a 1,850 MHz pass band; and a single pole, seven throw absorptive switch with phase
and amplitude matching of ±6° and ±0.5 dB. Contact PMI today for more information ...
 For others
out there who like to recondition vintage gear... I was not particularly looking
for a bicycle when scrolling through a list of "vintage" items on the Erie area
craigslist.org website, but when I saw both a men's and a woman's early 1980s era
3-speed bicycles pop up, I had to call. The guy who had them listed said he bought
them both at the local K-Mart sometime around 1980 for his wife and him. As with
many new endeavors that begin enthusiastically and then die out quickly, neither
of them thought the experience was enough to make ...
 Hyperlinks all around the Internet pointing
to Hittite's infamous Mixer Spurious Product Calculator broke suddenly when Analog
Devices swallowed up Hittite in 2014. The good news is that if you still want to
use it, you can find it as the ADI Mixer-Spur Graphical Representation tool on the
ADI website. However, Marki Microwave now has a much nicer
Spur Calculator that you will want to consider. It provides both
a Spur Web format and a Spectrum Analyzer format for presenting mixer spurious products.
The interface is very user friendly both for the input and the output specification.
The Spur Web screen uses a format pioneered ...
 "BAE has been awarded a $12.8 million DARPA
contract to design a testbed for development of
space warfare command and control systems. The goal is to develop
a sandbox that will allow the U.S. military, in particular the Joint Space Operations
Center and the Joint Inter-Agency Combined Space Operations Center, to experiment
with new technologies that will enable real-time space command and control. 'The
software testbed approach allows for tools to be developed and deployed to an ..."
 Alliance Test sells
used / refurbished test
equipment, we offer short- and long-term rentals. We also offer repair, maintenance
and calibration. Prices discounted up to 80% off list price. Agilent/HP,
 Tektronix, Anritsu, Fluke, R&S and other
major brands. A global organization with ability to source hard to find equipment
through our network of suppliers. Please visit Allied Test Equipment today to see
how they can help your project ...
 "The oft-honored
Ulrich Rohde, N1UL, is the recipient of the Wireless Innovation
Forum Leadership Award. The award recognizes 'especially significant contributions
in furthering the global mission of the Wireless Innovation Forum.' A prolific technical
author, academic, and engineer, Rohde is a partner of Rohde & Schwarz in Munich,
Germany, and chairman of Synergy Microwave Corp, in Paterson, New Jersey. While
working under an RCA US Department of Defense contract in 1982, Rohde's department
developed the first software defined radio (SDR) ..."
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