Tuesday 28
We can all breath again now that the official 5G logo has been
announced! How many days and nights have you and I spent wondering what it would look like and when
it would arrive (0 for moi)? Finally, here it is in all its black and
green glory (it actually looks pretty nice). "The 3GPP has finally released
an official logo for the 3GPP 5G specifications from Release 15 onwards. The logo has a new wave pattern,
and is based on the existing LTE waves, using the green of the LTE-Advanced Pro version. The idea according
to 3GPP, was to keep a familiar design aspect with
..."
Although not in the title as it used to be, this is a "Mac's
Service Shop" story by John T. Frye. If Mac and Barney are the stars of the saga, then it can
be none other. The story is about how the misdeeds of a few dishonest operators can taint the reputation
of an entire industry - nothing new there. Barney is telling Mac about a 'sting' ploy pulled by a consumer
protection group whereby TV sets with a specific easy-to-troubleshoot problem introduced to see how
repair technicians from a suspect company would bill
...
"The IEEE is seeking a new
executive director,,
announcing this week that E. James Prendergast will retire next year after nearly nine years at the
helm of the prestigious technical organization. E. James Prendergast Prendergast joined IEEE as executive
director in 2009. Under his tenure, the organization expanded its influence and global presence, opening
new offices in Vienna, Austria and Bangalore, India while expanding in China and Singapore, IEEE said.
The IEEE said its board has retained an executive search firm, Korn Ferry
..."
"Skyworks Solutions today introduced a suite of solutions targeting
emerging small cell applications. The new family of industry leading power efficient amplifiers
meet stringent data rate and power consumption requirements for indoor and outdoor network systems.
These innovative devices support the world's most popular frequency bands and can be incorporated in
FDD and TDD 4G LTE, 4.5G and 5G systems, as well as the recently launched Citizen's Broadband Radio
Service (CBRS) ..."
"Two
satellites with Amateur Radio transponder payloads have been selected for future NASA launches.
AMSAT reports that the TJREVERB CubeSat, developed by students at Thomas Jefferson
High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, will carry a 435/145 MHz FM transponder.
The University of Washington-Seattle's HuskySat-1 has a 145/435 MHz SSB/CW transponder and was developed
by students at the University of Washington
..."
"Scientists at the U.S. Northwestern University have accidentally
created a semiconductor junction with the newly-discovered material borophene, that might offer a route
to determining if it is electronically useful.
Borophene is a molecule made of boron atoms. Like graphene, borophene is a two-dimensional
sheet-like molecule, but thought to be a better conductor of electrons than graphene. Unlike graphene,
it is not thought to occur in nature and so there are no handy lumps of borophite from which
..."
Monday 27
After spending four years as a USAF radar technician, I do not
recall ever hearing the term 'radician,' which, according to this article and a few obscure sources
on the Internet, is the name given to a radar technician. OK, so I'm a former radician, but I digress.
The DEW Line, or
Distant
Early Warning Line, was a string of radar installations running across the U.S., Canada, and Greenland,
just above the Arctic Circle. It was established to protect against potential attacks and/or surveillance
by aircraft and/or missiles from the U.S.S.R. Although the radar systems were
...
"The FCC's office of engineering
and technology has authorized the first
LTE unlicensed (LTE-U) devices for operation in the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band. According
to a release from the FCC, the action followed a successful industry collaboration to ensure that LTE-U
can co-exist with Wi-Fi and other unlicensed devices operating in the band. The FCC noted that industry
has developed various standards, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee, that share the
..."
Centre for Terahertz Science and Engineering: The growing and
vibrant Terahertz R&D community is creating major breakthroughs in science & engineering and
now offers the realistic prospect of commercial exploitation for niche applications.
Atmospheric
attenuation has a critical impact on free-space THz applications, ranging from metrology in the
laboratory to hitting the perceived 'THz brick wall' in any future spectral expansion beyond 5G. Moreover,
further exploration
...
"Someday indoor location
could be as widely used as GPS maps. Taking steps toward that day, six vendors certified at least eight
chips for a new Wi-Fi Location
service while another company announced new software for similar services over 4G cellular. Both new
alternatives aim to provide a better approach than today's Bluetooth and ultrawideband beacons. All
sides hope to enable a market that's expected to be big. ABI Research estimates as many as 500
million ..."
NuWaves
Engineering, an international Radio Frequency (RF) and Microwave solutions provider, announces their
broadband low noise amplifier covering C- to X-Band frequencies, extending the frequency range and potential
applications over which the HILNA™ family of low noise amplifier (LNA) products can operate. The
HILNA™ CX is the latest addition to the NuWaves'
High Intercept Low Noise Amplifiers (HILNA™) family of LNA's, covering C- to X-Band
...
"Intel,
Qualcomm and Samsung have issued a flood of announcements all apparently designed to show how incredibly
5G-ready they are. Having regularly dropped the ball on mobile over the past decade
Intel is especially desperate to be seen as a viable 5G player and is bombarding tech hacks with relatively
open messaging intended to convince us of just that. 'Intel is accelerating the 5G future,' wrote Aicha
Evans, GM of the
..."
Sunday 26
For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create
a new engineering crossword
puzzle that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical
words. Clues in this puzzle with an asterisk (*) are pulled from this past week's (2/20
- 2/24) "High Tech News" column on the RF Cafe homepage (see the Headline Archives
page ...
Friday 24
"Researchers at Aalto University
in Finland have discovered large uniform reversible changes in electrical resistance as oxygen ions
migrate in an oxide material. The discovery could open a route to
ionotronic memories. Aalto University ion migration probe It transpires that potential
difference drives oxygen ions away from one electrical contact, causing an abrupt change in oxide lattice
structure and an increase of electrical resistance. Reversal of the voltage polarity fully restores
the original material
..."
If you thought that
custom ringtones have only been around since the mobile phone, you will be surprised to learn that
according to this news brief in a 1956 issue of Popular Electronics, Bell Telephone Labs was
experimenting with such features. Bell was exploiting the convenience, small size, and relatively inexpensive
transistor to enable customers with deeper pockets to hear something other than the standard mechanical
bell ringer. The irony is, of course, that some people nowadays use a ringtone in their smartphones
that sounds
...
"Semiconductors, as thin as a
single layer of atoms, are no longer a dream of the future: Researchers in Germany,
the United States and Poland have together developed a two-dimensional material that could revolutionize
electronics. Its semiconducting properties make this material appear suited for advanced applications
even much better than graphene. The new material, introduced to the public in the scientific magazine
ACS Nano
..."
Arduino has been a sensation
in the techie world for about a decade now. Not too long ago electronics 'starter kits' consisted of
a battery, a solderless breadboard, a handful of Rs, Ls, and Cs, LEDs, a neon bulb, a couple simple
ICs and transistors, and some jumper wires. Compare that to this kit with an
Arduino microcontroller and code IDE, LCD, joystick, remote controller, motion and
ultrasonic sensors, stepper motor controller, keypad, RFID module, and much more PLUS all the
stuff you got with the old type starter kits - all for a paltry
$60 (equiv. to $15 in 1977). Many add-ons available like an übercool robotic arm
...
"A high-altitude
Amateur Radio balloon, K2BSA-11, will be launched from the 2017 National Boy Scouts
of America Jamboree in West Virginia. The balloon is expected to reach an altitude of 48,000 feet and
will transmit on 144.390 MHz APRS. An onboard GPS/computer will shift APRS frequencies based on the
balloon's location around the globe. Carrying out the July 20 launch from the Summit Bechtel Reserve
will be Bill Brown WB8ELK; Keith Kaiser, WA0TJT, and other members of the K2BSA Radio Scouting team.
They are hoping that the balloon will
..."
"The new antennas – including the 5-6 GHz Adaptrix CMM200.A
– feature a patent-pending,
modular interlocking system to help operators scale capacity – when more capacity
or speed is needed at a location, another module is clipped to the side of the existing installation.
This first-in-the-industry antenna system means that when you need to add capacity, you simply attach
extra panels. You can build them up vertically or horizontally like Lego blocks. You don't need to worry
about spacing, alignment or
..."
Thursday 23
Wireless power distribution has been in the news a lot for the
last couple years. It began with a goal of just
wirelessly charging mobile devices like cellphones, smart watches, and tablet computers. Next came
articles about charging electric cars wirelessly while sitting in a parking lot or garage, or even at
a stop light. In each instance, the item being charged needed to sit in close proximity to an electric
induction coil to be effective. Just a couple days ago, however, a new item
...
"Wi-Fi feature delivers indoor navigation, asset tracking, and
network management. Wi-Fi® now includes advanced capabilities that bring location determination indoors
to meet growing market demand for mobile location-based services.
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Location™ brings the same great user experience indoors as is expected
from outdoor location-based services (LBS), and enables the creation of new, feature-rich applications
and services that will benefit many markets including
..."
Z-Communications
announces a new Fixed Frequency Synthesizer model SFS0990C-LF. The SFS0990C-LF is a preprogrammed synthesizer that is phase locked
at 990 MHz to an external 10 MHz reference oscillator. This PLL features an exceptionally
low typical phase noise of -119 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz, -100 dBc/Hz at 1 kHz, and -141 dBc/Hz
at 100 kHz offsets. The RoHS compliant SFS0990C-LF is designed to deliver a typical output power
of +1 dBm
...
"Now that the world has
become addicted to portable electronics, billions of people have come to see the companies providing
these gadgets as the most innovative, and the people who head those companies as the most exalted, of
all time. 'Genius' is a starter category in this discussion. But clever and appealing though today's
electronic gadgets may be, to the historian they are nothing but the inevitable
fifth-order
elaborations of two fundamental ideas: electromagnetic radiation, the theory of which was formulated
by James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s
..."
Triad RF Systems designs and manufactures
RF power amplifiers and systems. Triad RF Systems
comprises three partners (hence 'Triad') with over 40 years of
accumulated knowledge of what is required to design, manufacture,
market, sell and service RF/Microwave amplifiers and amplifier systems. "We view Triad more as a technology
partner than a vendor for our line-of-sight communications product line." Please check to see how we
can help your project ...
When I first saw this picture of Dr. Martin L. Klein,
I though he was Superman. No, it doesn't take a superman to teach electronics on television, but the
familiarity of George Reeves as the star of the "Adventures of Superman" series in from 1953 through
1958 would have been a good reason to use him in the "Wires
and Pliers" TV show. Dr. Klein and his techie sidekick Aram Solomonian performed a weekly show
presenting basic electronics to the audience. BTW, as long as I am
...
"Xilinx
has integrated RF-class analogue technology into its 16nm MPSoCs resulting in a family of
RFSoCs which eliminate discrete data converters resulting, claims Xilinx, in a 50-75%
power and footprint reduction for 5G massive-MIMO and millimeter wave wireless backhaul applications.
Xilinx Large scale 2D antenna array systems will be key to the increase in spectral efficiency and network
densification needed for 5G
..."
Wednesday 22
"Mobile phone provider EE has demonstrated
helium balloons and drones
that could provide 4G mobile coverage following damage to existing infrastructure. The devices are fitted
with small mobile sites that include a base station and an antenna. They could also be used to connect
remote parts of the UK where coverage is thin. EE said it planned to deploy such a network in a UK rural
area this year. The drones can stay airborne for up to an hour at a time and the "helikite" balloons
for several weeks as they have
..."
When this story was written in 1938,
India
was a country of roughly 2 million square miles, while the 48 United States had about 3.1 million square
miles. Radio station growth in the U.S. already had a 3-decade head start in establishing a nationwide
network of broadcast and receiving stations. Manufacturing of the required equipment was well established
within our borders. India, by contrast, relied heavily on outside sources for equipment and the training
of operators and servicemen. The U.S. never has
...
"Nokia has
successfully implemented the world's first connection based on the 5GTF (5G Technology Forum) 'pre-standard', marking a further milestone in Nokia's momentum
to make 5G a commercial reality. The test adds another key component to the development of 5G and the
implementation of the first 5G applications, demonstrating the ability to provide fast pace implementation
based on early standards including device
..."
Anatech Electronics, a
manufacturer of RF and microwave filters, has published its February newsletter. As always, it includes
both company news and some tidbits about relevant industry happenings. In it, Sam Benzacar discusses,
among other topics, the continuing and even growing problem of passive intermodulation (PIM) products
that are generated at the contact point of dissimilar metals - particularly where corrosion is present
- and the resulting nonlinear junction. Even coaxial cable connectors than have the same type of plating
can develop scratches ...
While
looking around the Web for good job search
and career enhancement articles, an article by The Savvy Intern's Lauren Kirkpatrick titled "Millennial
Stereotype Busted: 'Paying Your Dues' is Bullsh*t," struck a chord. It's a short piece and, as you might
guess from the title, somewhat naively attitudinal (a 2013 graduate).
However, she does bring up a good point about how the world has changed from even as recently as the
1980s when I first hit ...
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"Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are brief spurts of radio emission, lasting just one-thousandth
of a second, whose origins are mysterious. Fewer than two dozen have been identified in the past decade
using giant radio telescopes such as the 1,000-foot dish in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. If [an FRB occurred
in out galaxy], astronomers suggest that it would be 'loud' enough that a global network of cell phones
or small radio receivers could 'hear' it. The search for nearby
..."
Tuesday 21
"Engineers
at the University of California San Diego have developed a material that could reduce signal losses
in photonic devices. The advance has the potential to boost the efficiency of various light-based technologies
including fiber optic communication systems, lasers and photovoltaics. The discovery addresses one of
the biggest challenges in the field of photonics: minimizing loss of optical (light-based) signals in
devices known as
plasmonic metamaterials
..."
"Military communications experts at the Rockwell Collins Government
Systems segment in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are starting full-rate production of a secure and jam-resistant
very low frequency (VLF) radio for the U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bomber to enable
the aircraft crew to communicate with national command authorities while on long-range missions. Officials
of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, are awarding
a $12.9M
..."
Since 2001,
Antenna Test Lab Co has evaluated countless antennas and RF transmitter products.
With a fully anechoic chamber, antennas can be
quickly developed and RF products refined and deployed. Antenna maximum
test size is 24" x 24" with a depth of 24" or less. Mounting surfaces like drywall, glass, wood, and
even curved metal 
simulated automobile
available. The price for a standard resolution
2D or 3D field pattern plot is only $450 - for a passive
or radiating antenna. That is an incredible deal!
This is both funny and spooky: "It's nice to have a friend who's
a good listener, but a doll called My Friend Cayla listens a little too well, according to German regulators
who say the toy is essentially a stealthy espionage device that shares what it hears and is also vulnerable
to takeover by third parties. "Cayla ist verboten in Deutschland," says Jochen Homann, the president of Germany's
Federal Network Agency, announcing a ban on the doll in Germany on Friday. His agency oversees electronic
..."
"Disney Research has developed new method that enables users
to charge electronic devices wirelessly by transmitting power throughout a room, like a Wi-Fi Network,
thereby eliminating the need for electrical cords or charging cradles. The researchers demonstrated
the method, called
Quasistatic Cavity Resonance (QSCR), inside a specially built 16-by-16-foot room
in their lab. They safely generated near-field standing magnetic waves that filled the interior of the
room, making it possible to power several cellphones, fans and lights
..."
Lasers Give Space Research Its Broadband Moment
"Thought your Internet speeds were slow? Try being a space scientist
for a day. The vast distances involved will throttle data rates to a trickle. You're lucky if a spacecraft
can send more than a few megabits per second (Mbps) - a pittance even by dial-up standards. But we might
be on the cusp of a change. Just as going from dial-up to
broadband revolutionized the Internet and made high-resolution photos and streaming
video a given, NASA may be ready to undergo a similar
..."
