Friday 13
Who knew the 'left leg shake' was a well-known
symptom of Glossophobia? "As a an engineer, there is a good chance that you are
an introvert. There is nothing wrong with being soft spoken unless part of your
job includes
public speaking. You are great at communicating complex ideas,
but just not to large groups of people. You get speech anxiety. In the privacy of
your dim lit office, your fingers dance across the keyboard and you have no problem
expressing yourself. You love what you do, but when the time comes to give "
Dividing network is another name for a
crossover network used to separate and direct parts of the audio
frequency band to specific speakers - bass, midrange, and tweeter, for example.
It is the audio equivalent of a diplexer or multiplexer filter in the RF and microwave
realm. As with many other aspects of consumer electronics, there was a time when
many audiophiles chose to design and/or build their own crossover networks for home-built
speakers. Although never really a bona fide audiophile
Don't miss out on the 10th Annual Military Radar Summit - February 27 through March
1, 2017, in Arlington, Virginia. This conference will have an excellent lineup of
speakers, workshops, and exhibitors that span the entire spectrum of the military
radar community. Recently there has been further improvement on these modern radars
which has led to more enhanced performance. Topics covered include: • Next
Generation Radar for Contested Environments • Upgrades in Military Radar
for UAVs • Transforming the Battlefield Sensor Network
"Molybdenum disulfide, a
2-D semiconductor that's just 3 atoms thick, has had a big year.
In October, a group of researchers made a 1-nanometer transistor from the material,
showing that even if silicon transistors stop shrinking, the new material might
provide a path forward. In December, at the IEEE International Electron Devices
Meeting in San Francisco, researchers presented work they say shows that molybdenum
disulfide not only makes for superlative single transistors "
"Google Fiber and Nokia are among the stakeholders
throwing their support behind a petition by the
Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition (FWCC) that seeks to explore
ways to facilitate greater terrestrial use of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band. The FWCC filed
a petition with the FCC in October asking regulators to update the rules for the
3.7-4.2 GHz band so that more of the spectrum can be used for terrestrial applications.
Not surprisingly, the satellite industry "
Thursday 12
"Technavio has published a new report that
provides an analysis of the most important trends in the global
automotive radar sensors market expected to impact the market
outlook from 2017-2021. They have compiled the data for the automotive radar sensors
market by using a bottom-up sizing approach. They assimilated the sizes for of the
different constituent markets by application. They then further refined the data
by applying selective "
This latest collection of articles from our
industry's magazine publishers with a mix of topics including one of my favorite:
grounding. Items move onto and off of all homepages quickly, so even if you visit
Microwave & RF, Microwave Journal, Microwave Product Digest,
High Frequency Electronics, et al
•
Properly Ground Your Circuits
• Free Software Shows Radar
Coverage
•
Near-Field Scanning: Useful
or Misleading?
"Researchers in Singapore, the USA and Italy
have been developing a modified model of
Schottky contacts between graphene (Gr) and 2D and 3D semiconductors.
The model takes better account of the effective 'zero mass' and zero gap (semi-metal)
conduction/valence band structure of Gr with approximately linear energy-wavevector
relations relations. Metals and semiconductors are usually modeled with quadratic
energy-wavevector relations, giving non-zero effective mass. The Gr material was
produced by chemical vapor "
Transistor basics have not changed since
they were first introduced to the market around 1953. The first available transistors
used germanium substrates, and then in 1954 Texas Instruments introduced the first
commercial silicon transistor. The
hybrid pi equivalent circuit for a PN junction transistor used
in modern circuit simulators has many more 'virtual' components in it that allow
for high frequency and nonlinear operation modeling, but for audio and AM type that
operates entirely within the linear region
"A team of researchers at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has advanced gallium nitride (GaN)-on-silicon transistor
technology by optimizing the composition of the semiconductor layers that make up
the device. Working with industry partners Veeco and IBM, the team created the high
electron mobility transistor (HEMT) structure on a 200 mm silicon substrate with a process that
will scale to larger industry "
"When you think about it, wireless communication
seems nothing short of magic, it is a brilliant, reality-anchored application of
physics and engineering in which
radio signals travel from a transmitter to a receiver in the form
of electric and magnetic fields woven into fast-as-light electromagnetic waves.
However, that very same physics imposes some strict limits, including ones that
frustrate the Department of Defense. Key among these is that radio frequency signals
hit veritable and literal walls when they encounter materials like water "
Wednesday 11
"42.5 dB of low loss
optical gain has been demonstrated in a CMOS waveguide at wavelengths
around 1,500nm. Key to the achievement is a parametric amplifier architecture using
a silicon nitride waveguide with far higher silicon content than usual – Si7N3.
'We have developed an optical amplifier which is able to amplify light by 17,000
times at the telecommunications wavelength "
Raise your hand if your old stereo system
had a "Loudness" control, but you never really knew what it did - other
than change the loudness (my hand is up). Author Rudolph Jacobs addresses the subject
in a technical manner - Fletcher-Munson curves and all - in this 1963 edition of
Electronics World magazine. In a nutshell, in case you don't feel like
reading the entire article, Loudness compensates for the difference in perceived
sound intensity level across the audio frequency spectrum as the reference level
is varied...
Pasternack has launched a new line of USB-controlled Phase Locked Loop (PLL)
frequency synthesizers. These new
PLL synthesizers can be useful in applications involving signal
generators, benchtop test and measurement, electronic warfare, and microwave radios.
Pasternack's six new models of PLL frequency synthesizers cover a broad range of
frequency bands from 25 MHz to 27 GHz. The compact and rugged
"A new method of fabricating
nanoscale optical crystals capable of converting infrared to visible
light has been developed by researchers in Australia, China and Italy. The new technique
allows the crystals to be placed onto glass and could lead to improvements in holographic
imaging – and even the development of improved night-vision goggles. Second-harmonic
generation, or frequency doubling, is an optical process whereby two photons with
the same frequency "
"Most of the celebration and hand wringing
over Moore's law focuses on the ever-shrinking
silicon transistor. But increasingly researchers are focusing
on another critical part of the infrastructure: the copper wires that connect individual
transistors into complex circuits. At the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting
in San Francisco in December, researchers described the coming problems for copper
interconnects, and debated ways of getting around them. One approach studied by
a group led by "
Tuesday 10
If one of your New Years' resolutions was
to finally, seriously look for a new job, now is the time to start. There is reason
to hope that this year will be the beginning of a new era of manufacturing in America,
so there should be a wave of openings for manufacturing, test, and quality control
engineering specialists. Not that doing the design and R&D ...
•
How to Talk About Your
Soul-Sucking Job While You Look
for a Better One (love that title!)
•
Get Your Resume Ready for
a Job Search
•
What You Can Do to Get
Promoted in 2017
"An international team of researchers has
developed a
transistor that can be stretched to twice its length and still
maintain most of its conductivity. As the group notes in their paper published in
the journal Science, such a transistor could prove very useful in the design of
wearable electronic devices, particularly those affixed directly to the skin. As
the researchers note, use of transistors in bendable "
"If you're not using
transistors already, chances are you'll consider them for amplifiers
and oscillators in future circuits." So says the line in an advertisement for General
Electric vacuum-sealed transistors in a 1953 edition of QST magazine. To
say the claim was prescient is an understatement. A lot of people resisted the switch
to transistors for many years - especially hobbyists who had grown accustomed to
working with vacuum tubes. Maybe GE figured pitching the newfangled devices as being
"vacuum-sealed" would help the
"NASA's Langley Research Center has developed
a waveform processing technique to eliminate signal noise resulting from sources
of interference (scatterers) that can degrade continuous
wave (CW) lidar return data. The algorithm was developed
to enable CW lidar measurement of atmospheric gas concentrations as part of NASA's
Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons
(ASCENDS) program, but can be used to test any chemical
species "
"The next time you place your coffee order,
imagine slapping onto your to-go cup a sticker that acts as an
electronic decal, letting you know the precise temperature of
your triple-venti no-foam latte. Someday, the high-tech stamping that produces such
a sticker might also bring us food packaging that displays a digital countdown to
warn of spoiling produce, or even a window pane that shows the day's forecast, based
on measurements of the weather conditions outside. Engineers at MIT have invented
a fast, precise printing process that may make such electronic surfaces "
"Qorvo®, a leading provider of innovative
RF solutions that connect the world, has introduced a new family of 5 GHz and 2.4
GHz
Wi-Fi Front-End Modules (FEMs) that pave the way for smaller,
more energy-efficient wireless routers, gateways and other networked devices in
the home. The seven new FEMs support high-bandwidth throughput with minimal power
consumption in a small form factor and maximum reliable range. With more than 1.2
Gbps throughput per stream "
Monday 9
The 1954 Tournament of Roses was famously
the world's first national
commercial color television broadcast, provided by the National
Broadcasting Company (NBC). Prior to the NTSC finally
settling on an all-electronic scheme for TV sets, many electro-mechanical and electro-optical
types were developed. The integrated RGB color gun within a CRT was a relatively
new concept in 1949. This article presents some of the propositions by the two major
research and development players at the time: RCA and CBS. They might seem ridiculous
in the light of
"Renesas has added
automotive radar microcontrollers to its 32bit RH850 family. Called
RH850/V1R, they are aimed at driver assistance and autonomous driving. “Radar sensors
are required for ADAS [driver assistance] applications, including emergency braking
and adaptive cruise control, because radar sensors are not negatively affected by
adverse weather conditions, such as rain, fog or whether the sun is shining or not.”
In autonomous "
"Imagine if you could walk into your living
room and all your electronics started charging, without a single wire or plug needed.
According to a team of engineers at Duke University and the University of Washington,
this idea isn't too far from reality, and the technology already exists to build
it. They say a single charger mounted high on a wall could
'beam' power to several ..." Just be sure to take it out of your
pants pocket before entering the room :-o
The
ZFR-20000-XA is a multi-octave frequency synthesizer operating
from 4 to 20 GHz with fast switching capability (<100 µSec)
and <-60 dBc spurs across the entire range. The ZFR offers a low profile
design for use as a local oscillator in airborne radar applications capable of withstanding
high vibration and shock. The ZFR-20000-XA locks to an external 10 MHz reference
and exhibits extremely low phase noise at any frequency; <-101 dBc/Hz
What better way is there to begin another
week of long hours, marginally useful meetings, unpredictable customers, nagging
design and/or production issues, and, hopefully, even a success or two, than to
see a couple
electronics-themed comics from a mid-last-century magazine? These
appeared in 1947 edition of Radio & Television News. Seeing a comic
panel in any modern technical magazine these days is rare, if for no other reason
than a fear amongst publishers (and their lawyers)
that somebody, somewhere might be
"Dr. Konstantinos Stavropoulos, Technical
Marketing Lead at Amdocs discusses the biggest elements of a
5G spectrum strategy worth considering. 'Better use of radio frequencies:
Reducing divergences between regulatory practices, long license durations, coupled
with more stringent requirements to use spectrum effectively and efficiently, and
timely release of spectrum […] and more converged spectrum policies.' These are
excerpts from the 2016 State of the Union address of Jean-Claude Juncker "
Avid cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate
this new RF & Microwave 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!
Friday 6
After looking at so many vintage electronics
magazines, the differences in form factors of resistors, capacitors, inductors,
amplifiers, and even hookup wire between then and now is very apparent. Physical
sizes have shrunken significantly, and the packaging materials are noticeably more
refined today. There were no surface mount devices, and nearly all components had
either long leads for wrapping and soldering to posts or lugs, or they had lugs
or posts to which said components leads
Saelig Company, Inc. announces the availability of the - a six-parameter
datalogger that has been designed for recording the position and orientation of
RF antennas (such as the Aaronia HyperLOG X, HyperLOG EMI,
and Magnotracker series) during field investigations. But it is also very
useful for a wide range of non-RF applications where position and movement logging
is required. The Aaronia GPS Logger includes a total of six state-of-the-art sensors
in
This article from an issue of Short Wave
Craft shows that the necessity for
Morse code in order for amateur radio operators to ply their hobby
was in question as early as 1935. Elimination of the requirement to demonstrate
proficiency in Morse code when earning an Amateur Radio license did not formally
begin until 1991 - nearly 60 years later - when the 5-words-per-minute code test
for the entry-level Technician level license was removed. It was done so to prevent
scaring off potential newcomers who might otherwise seek an operator's license.
Licensee numbers had
"Researchers in China and France have developed
photomultiplier tube (PMT)-type performance from
avalanche photodiodes (APDs) that implement periodically stacked
structures (PSSs) of gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminium nitride (AlN). The PSS
APD had a record high gain of order 104 with noise factor as low as 500 and ionization
coefficient of 0.05, according to the researchers. The highest gain for silicon
APDs in linear mode is about 100 "
As far back as the mid 1980s, I remember
going to the technical library at the Westinghouse Electric Oceanic Division in
Annapolis, Maryland to read the latest copy of
NASA Tech Briefs.
During and after doing a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force as an air traffic
control radar technician, I was voraciously consumed all the information I could
obtain on electronics, mechanics, aerodynamics, astrodynamics, etc., and was determined
to earn an electrical engineering degree. In the pre-Internet days, acquiring such
material required finagling a
"An optical atomic clock has been used by
physicists in the U.S. to study the effects of
spin–orbit coupling. Spin–orbit coupling is fundamental to understanding
how electrons behave within condensed-matter systems and could be exploited in the
design of new materials, such as topological insulators and superconductors. The
researchers also plan to adapt their atomic-clock design to study other fundamental
phenomena in "
Thursday 5
"Radar signal processing experts at the Raytheon
Co. will upgrade a
missile-defense radar system in Greenland in place to provide
missile defense and early warning of enemy ballistic missile launches and potential
threats in space. Officials of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in Huntsville, Ala.,
announced a $40.5 million order Friday to the Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems
segment in Woburn, Massachusetts, to upgrade the Solid State "
everything RF
has been sponsoring RF Cafe's publication for many years through direct advertising.
They have a very wide presence across the Internet on engineering websites. "everything RF is a product discovery platform for RF &
Microwave Products/Services." They currently have 203,125 Products from more than
874 Companies across 229 Categories in their database and enable engineers to search
for them using the customized parametric search tool. Please visit everything RF
now to see how they can help your project
"Scientists have officially developed the
world's thinnest possible
electrical wire measuring three atoms wide. The work comes from
scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator
Laboratory. They determined how to use diamondoids, the smallest possible bits of
diamonds, to put together the thinnest electrical wire. Nicholas "
Return on investment for
advertising is always a prime consideration for companies, regardless
of how wide the perspective audience or the size of the competition. Luck plays
some part in whether a certain advertising campaign is successful, but as Mac points
out in the July 1949 edition of Radio & Television News, there is great
advantage to measuring the effectiveness of each strategy. Advertising has never
been cheap, especially in venues with a large contingent of followers. In the Internet
age, one of the more popular schemes is 3rd-party pay-per-click ads that are served
by
"The Boy Scouts of America (-··· ··· ·-) have updated the
requirements for the
Radio Merit Badge for 2017, although a formal announcement is
pending the publication of the 2017 Boy Scouts Requirements pamphlet. A new option
for the Radio Merit Badge is Amateur Radio Direction Finding (ARDF). ARRL ARDF Coordinator
Joe Moell, K0OV, said he's 'really excited' about the move, and he credited Jamboree
on the Air Coordinator (JOTA) and K2BSA trustee Jim Wilson, K5ND, with being the
'spark plug' behind the ARDF addition "
"Autonomous and
connected vehicles are positioning themselves as the way of the
future. For some years now Google has been testing their driverless car, and in
Pittsburgh Uber recently launched its self-driving car service in collaboration
with Volvo. A number of other companies like Apple and Tesla are also working on
their versions of autonomous vehicles. A key challenge to the advancement "
Wednesday 4
"The experimental 1,000-component
optical processor is made for challenges like the 'traveling salesman
problem.' We may use photons to carry our data, but we rely on the electron to put
it to use. One day that division of labor might not be so stark. A team at Hewlett
Packard Labs, in Palo Alto, California, has built a demonstration chip that could
help push some particularly thorny computations into the realm of light, potentially
"
"The European Commission has presented a
proposal to coordinate the use of the
700 MHz band for mobile services. It will improve internet access
for all Europeans and help develop cross-border applications. Radio frequencies
know no borders: spectrum needs to be better coordinated at EU level to avoid interferences
and to allow innovative services, such as connected cars or remote health care,
to work across the continent. The EU also has to cope with the growing demand "
Something that is always in the forefront
of my mind when reading these articles from vintage American electronics magazines
is how most of the products - including even the smallest components - were made
in the United States. When I read vintage British electronics magazines
(e.g., Wireless World), most of the products
were produced in Europe. The
technical and manufacturing know-how was spread throughout the
regions of the world where its citizens dreamed up and realized the wonders that
made the modern world. Part of the reason is supply and distribution chains were
not as capable due to
"Cortec Corporation has developed a
static dissipative corrosion inhibiting paper that serves as a
complete packaging paper for valuable electrical and electronic items. Sensitive
electronic metal items can be wrapped in EcoSonic ESD Paper to be protected from
damaging static electricity buildup and corrosion. The EcoSonic ESD Paper eliminates
static electricity buildup through the use of an environmentally friendly coating
made from soybean oil and coated on the surface of the paper "
"The rumors have been swirling for months.
Though they couldn't be confirmed, their persistence suggests that something significant
may be coming from Samsung, possibly as early as this year: a
foldable mobile. Today, the world of mobiles consists of two major
realms - tablets and smartphones. Tablets are good for reading magazines and books,
typing long messages on a linked keyboard, looking at pictures, and surfing the
Web "
Tuesday 3
"The FCC has approved Globalstar's request
to build a
terrestrial wireless network using 11.5 MHz of its satellite spectrum
at 2483.5-2495 MHz. 'We thank the Commissioners, their staff and the staff of the
Bureaus and Offices who worked tirelessly to bring this proceeding to a successful
conclusion. We look forward to a busy 2017 as we plan to put our terrestrial authority
to use for American consumers and pursue similar authority internationally,' Globalstar
CEO Jay Monroe said "
I have been scanning and posting Radio Service
Data Sheets like this one featuring the
Emerson Model 678 "Auto-Dynamic" 5 Tube superheterodyne radio
receiver for many years now. There are still many people who restore and service
these vintage radios,
and often it can be difficult or impossible to
find schematics and/or tuning information. The
RCA Victor Model 261, 555 to 107 meter, dual-range, 10-tube superheterodyne
radio receiver is also available now.
The
TTRM1054 class AB LDMOS amplifier by Triad RF Systems operates
at a frequency range of 2,300 MHz to 2,500 MHz and has a power output
of 40 watts, while still maintaining a compact form factor of 5.3" x 3.25"
x 0.57". This unit also features internal protection against over/under voltage
and excessive temperature conditions, which coupled with its rugged construction,
ensure fault-free operation in even the most
"The giant
CES tech show
marks its 50th anniversary this week. As it gets under way in Las Vegas, we look
back at some of the hundreds of thousands of gadgets to be have been put on show
in past years." Slideshow
"T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray said that the carrier
recently conducted tests in its lab using LTE technology that he said reached peak
speeds of close to
1 Gbps. The results, he said, indicate that T-Mobile will be able
to at some point provide gigabit speeds over its existing LTE network. 'Just last
week we reached nearly 1 Gbps (979 Mbps) on our LTE network in our lab
thanks to a combination of three carrier aggregation "
"Before the extraordinary range of short waves
was discovered by amateurs, it was held as incontrovertible that the electric waves
followed the surface of the earth, and that the strength of the field decreased
in proportion to the distance." -
Ferdinand
Bödigheimer in December 1931/January 32 Short Wave Craft article titled
"How Are Shortwaves
Monday 2
"Researchers with the University of Alberta's
AlbertaSat team have developed a miniature fluxgate magnetometer. This magnetometer
has been developed to go atop the Ex-Alta 1 CubeSat which is set for launch in the
spring 2017. The miniature, low-cost instrument will take world-class measurements
of the near-Earth magnetic field which influences space weather, demonstrating the
potential of nanosatellite technology to significantly reduce barriers "
"Talks on a funding project valued in the
billions of euros and that could include support for European chip manufacturing
are making progress, according to a senior executive with ECSEL. ECSEL, which stands
for
Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership, is
a public-private partnership and secretariat that selects and funds projects of
collaborative research in Europe. Speaking at the European Nanoelectronics Forum
held in "
'Nuclear' this and 'nuclear' that were big
attention getters after the dropping of the uranium and plutonium bombs that ended
World War II in August of 1945. Science was at the cusp of its foray into understanding
and manipulating atoms at the nuclear level - a realm that at the time was not directly
observable. 'Shadows' of
elementary particles were successfully imaged, but many theorized
that it would never be possible to directly 'see' an electron, proton, or neutron.
One cause
"At the IEEE IEDM conference, imec, reported
for the integration of vertically stacked gate-all-around (GAA)
silicon nanowire MOSFETs on a CMOS Process. Key in the integration
scheme is a dual-work-function metal gate enabling matched threshold voltages for
the n and p-type devices. Also, the impact of the new architecture on intrinsic
ESD performance was studied, and an ESD protection diode is proposed. These breakthrough
results advance the development of GAA "
"The
BY70-1 CubeSat launched on December 28 from the Taiyuan Space
Launch Center in China, but in a lower orbit than intended. The satellite carries
an Amateur Radio FM transponder. BY70-1 was intended to go into a 530-kilometer
(approximately 329-mile) circular Sun-synchronous
orbit, but it appears the orbit is 524 × 212 kilometers, which will give the spacecraft
an orbital lifetime of just a month or two "
This is the first RF Cafe crossword puzzle
of 2017, which marks the beginning of the 16th year that I have been creating weekly
crosswords. Avid cruciverbalists amongst us appreciate that 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
