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3 of the July 2017 homepage
archives.
Monday 31
 Uh-oh, here we go again. This is yet another
advertisement from a vintage electronics magazine that would never make it past
the
politically-correct editors of today's cowardly corporations.
We live in a time of hypersensitive weaklings who benefit from an army of lawyers
standing ready to come to the aid of anyone who is the least bit offended. The same
people who tell the rest of us that we must not just tolerate, but accept and endorse
their idiosyncrasies, are the first to cry foul when faced with something that insults
their sensibilities (a lot are just compulsive agitators). My guess is that Shakespeare's
antenna sales were boosted by the ad
With Narrowband the Path to IoT Is
Wider
 "If Machina Research, and countless other
analyst firms are right, and the number of
IoT connected devices grows to something like 27bn by 2025 - then
the networks available to carry all the data they will produce are going to need
a whole lot more capacity, and quickly. Of course, there is no shortage of work
taking place within standards bodies such as the 3GPP as they try to figure out
the best way to service the anticipated explosion in demand. And maybe unusually
- at a time when businesses demand, figuratively speaking, ever wider bandwidth
for data - one "
 ConductRF's LSA
coaxial RF cables
provide one of the most optimum and cost effective solutions for applications as
diverse as alternatives to Semi-Rigid cabling, where complex forming is required,
to easy to install jumper cables inside densely packaged RF enclosures where EMI
is of concern. Features: DC to 18 GHz, low loss & low VSWR, multi-layer
90 dB screening, broad connector
Technical Education Webinar Series Title:
Microstrip Cross-Coupled Filter Design,
Date: August 2, 2017, Time:
8am PT/ 11am ET, Sponsored by: Sonnet
Software, Presented by: Daniel G. Swanson,
Jr., Abstract: This presentation builds
on a previous webinar where we designed a microstrip combline filter. In this webinar
we will explore adding a cross-coupling to the microstrip combline. We will add
a capacitive cross-coupling that will produce a transmission zero on the low side
of the passband. There are several ways to physically realize the desired cross-coupling.
We will explore these options before choosing the final
 These couple
tech-themed comics appeared in the June 1969 issue of Electronics
World magazine. The one on page 52 is a bit short-sighted even for its era
given that any advanced civilization would likely no longer use vacuum tubes. The
comic on page 61 made me chuckle out loud when I saw it. That one is worth printing
out and framing to hang in the lab or outside an electronics professor's office
door. A big list of other electronics-themed comics is at the bottom of the
page
 RF Cafe often receives
more than 15,000 page views each day (about half that on weekends). An average of
2.5 pages viewed per visit calculates to about 6,500 unique visitors per day. That
is 39,000 visitors per week, and 2,000,000 visitors per year (4-5 million page views
/ year). It would be nice to get a good profile on visitors. Nearly all the e-mail
I receive comes from engineers, technicians, students, and hobbyists, but I do not
know the degree to which they represent the website visitor cross-section. Please
cast your vote to help decide the issue. Thanks ...
Sunday 30
Please welcome Copper
Mountain Technologies as RF Cafe's newer advertiser. Copper Mountain Technologies
develops innovative and robust RF test and measurement solutions for engineers all
over the world.
 Copper Mountain's extensive line of unique form
factor Vector Network
Anaalyzers include an RF measurement module and a software application which
runs on any Windows PC, laptop or tablet, connecting to the measurement hardware
via USB interface. The result is a lower cost, faster, more effective test process
that fits into the modern workspace in lab, production
 This week's radar and radio
engineering-themed crossword puzzle, as is the case every week,
contains only words pertaining to science, engineering, amateur radio, physics,
mechanics, mathematics, etc. Herein you will never find words having to do with
numbnut actors or world leaders, mountains in places nobody has ever heard of, or
portmanteaus constructed from words describing freakish social behavior
Friday 28
 Although the first patent for a
field effect transistors (FET) was assigned to Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
in 1925, it was not until sometime around 1960 that the first commercial product
was available - a MOSFET designed by Dawon Kahng and Martin M. (John) Atalla at
Bell Labs. This article from a 1972 issue of Popular Electronics introduces
the hobbyist readers to properties and uses for the by-then common junction FET
(JFET) and MOSFET. Nowadays, MOSFETs are the backbone of the vast majority of integrated
circuits
Fairview Microwave, a supplier of on-demand microwave and RF components, has
released 16 new
voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) models covering bands from
10 MHz to 4350 MHz. Unlike traditional oscillators with a single fixed
frequency, VCOs allow the frequency of the output signal to be varied by adjusting
the amplitude of the input tuning voltage. These products are used in military electronics,
SATCOM, test and measurement and wireless communications. Typical applications include
phase locked loops, function generators, frequency synthesizers, receivers, electronic
jamming
 RF Cafe visitor Gary S. sent me a note
about the DoD opening access to the online base Exchange to all honorably discharged
veterans, rather than only to retired members. Army and Air Force Exchange Service
(AAFES) installations
do not collect sales tax, and they offer free shipping for purchases over $49. I
signed up and
will check them out as an alternative to Amazon. Access is slated to begin on November
11, 2017 - this Veteran's Day
 "An engineering breakthrough at the University
of Texas at Dallas could lead to computing devices that can operate as much as 1000
times faster than current processors. Assistant Professor Joseph S. Friedman came
up with the idea, which is based on the quantum mechanical phenomena underlying
spintronics, where electron spin is manipulated in addition to
electron charge. Friedman's proposal exploits a relatively obscure property of graphene
- its magnetoresistance. Friedman likens his device, in a sense, to a standard potentiometer "
Thursday 27
 After a 5-year absence, the RF Cafe Forums are
back! I took them down because the amount of crap being posted got to be a lot of
work to trim out. This time, not only is the built-in spam filtering better, but
I subscribed to a service (at a co$t) that validates
users based on a huge blacklist. The good news is that means signing in to submit
a post is not required. I will continue to monitor and intervene as needed to keep
everything clean. You can, if you wish, log in using your LinkedIn, Twitter, or
Facebook credentials. I primed the forum with some good posts, but your participation
is needed again to make it successful. Please check out the new RF Cafe Forums today!
 Note: "Ionospheric heating" is a Ham radio
insider term similar to "cloud warming" for blasting a lot of RF power into the
sky at a nearly vertical angle. "Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is conducting
an
ionospheric heating campaign July 24-31, using HF. 'The new Arecibo
ionosphere HF heater nominally transmits 600 kW net power and has a unique Cassegrain
dual-array antenna design that increases gain of three crossed dipoles for each
band, using the signature 1000-foot spherical dish reflector,' explained Chris Fallen "
 Here is a brief but informative introduction
to the story behind French physicist
Andre Marie Ampere's discovery of the eponymously named law that
governs the relationships between current flow and a magnetic field. As most RF
Cafe visitors know, both a steady state and time-varying current will generate a
magnetic field, but only a time-varying magnetic field can generate a current flow.
In less than a week after witnessing Hans Christian Ørsted's demonstration of a
current-carrying wire influencing a compass needle, Ampere discovered the Right-Hand
Rule of current flow direction based on the direction of the magnetic field
 AOC Virtual Series:
Introduction to Direction Finding Systems, Thursday, July 27,
2017 (that's TODAY) 2:00 pm EST, presenter
Kyle Davidson. "Direction Finding (DF) is a critical technology across the spectrum
of Electronic Warfare (EW) applications and domains, with increasing demands for
accuracy even as the electromagnetic spectrum becomes more congested. The goal of
this presentation is to provide an understanding of how radio frequency DF systems
work in both communications and radar applications. Starting with amplitude and
phase comparison DF "
Sylatech has secured a multi-million
pound 10 year contract to supply a major European defence contractor with passive
microwave antenna components and assemblies. Sylatech's Managing Director Charlie
Breese commented, "as a strategic supplier to our customer, we have proudly supported
their antenna and microwave assembly requirements for over 25 years. Our microwave
design, manufacturing and testing capability provides a strong customer fit whilst
our reputation in the sector continues to strengthen. Sylatech is currently enjoying
rapid growth with several of our International Prime customers
The gift of a seat at the popular Bits to Waves: Building a Modern Digital Radio
in One Day workshop, which features NI AWR Design Environment, inspired Wilson Chung, a senior at
California Polytechnic University Pomona to produce more than 100 microstrip circuits,
including antennas, amplifiers, couplers, phase shifters, and more, for his senior
project. The workshop, presented by Dr. David S. Ricketts, a professor of electrical
engineering at North Carolina State University, is offered at select IEEE conferences
 "A recent discovery by a team of researchers
led by Tulane University advances fundamental knowledge that could one day lead
to more energy-efficient computers, televisions, cell phones and other electronics.
The researchers' discovery of a new
magnetic topological semimetal is featured in the latest edition
of the journal Nature Materials. The Tulane team was led by physics professor Zhiqiang
Mao, the Tulane School of Science and Engineering's Outstanding Researcher for 2017.
Mao's research, which focuses "
Wednesday 26
Saelig Company has introduced the Pico Technology
PicoVNA 106 Low-Cost Vector Network Analyzer - an economical USB-controlled,
professional-grade 300 kHz to 6 GHz Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) with
excellent performance, portability, and affordability. Despite its small size and
low cost, its full-function, minimal-error, 'Quad RX' four-receiver architecture
supports both 8- and 12-term calibration without the uncorrectable switching errors,
delays, and unreliability of traditional three-receiver designs. The instrument
supports convenient calibration methods such as 'enhanced isolation correction'
 "Demand for radiation-hardened electronics
for space applications continues to grow, with opportunities in traditional
rad-hard spacecraft, as well as for radiation-tolerant small satellites,
industry experts say. Electronic component suppliers for space applications find
themselves serving two distinctly different market segments today, say company officials
this week at the IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference in New Orleans.
The first rad-hard market segment is the traditional QML-V, in which "
 "Hot fields in the U.S. include embedded
engineering, control engineering, and robotics. The key word used in describing
electrical engineering job trends this year is 'high,' according to Angela Keller,
vice president of recruiting at the U.S. recruiting firm Randstad Engineering: 'High
growth, high salaries, high demand, high competition among hiring companies.' That
competition is benefiting EEs, giving them both a plethora of choices and better
entry-level paychecks. By the end of last year, fresh
electrical engineering graduates in the United States earned salaries
that averaged U.S. $73,078—nearly $5,500 more than the prior year "
 For some inexplicable reason, it seems that
most of the articles I read dealing with antenna and feedline efficiencies do not
address the
receive side of the equation. Yes, transmit power is expensive
and there is a legitimate reason to reduce losses when converting power amplifier
output to in-the-air power, especially for DX operations. However, it doesn't do
much good to launch the full permissible 1,500 watts PEP and make a contact on the
other side of the world if your system cannot receive a reply because of the excessive
line loss and/or mismatch loss between your antenna and your receiver. Antennas
and feedlines are reciprocal elements so if
 Anatech Electronics,
a manufacturer of RF and microwave filters, has published its
July newsletter. As always, it includes both company news and
some tidbits about relevant industry happenings. In it, Sam Benzacar discusses,
among other topics, an apparent demise (or near demise) of the Commercial-Off-the-Shelf
(COTS) component usage philosophy that once was a keystone in the Department of
Defense's cost containment strategy. A telling chart illustrates the progressive
decrease in COTS parts begin designed into defense systems. My guess is the same
type of trend occurred in the aeronautics and space industries
 "The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG)
has released a standard for
Bluetooth mesh networking. The mesh capability is based on Bluetooth
Low Energy (LE) and utilizes the PHY and link layer for Bluetooth 4.x. So supporting
it on existing hardware will typically be a matter of providing a suitable protocol
stack and application support. For example, Silicon Labs' Bluetooth mesh stack builds
on the existing Bluetooth link layer "
Tuesday 25
 Poor 'ol Marcelo Claure is at the bottom
of the heap with a mere $7.5M for 2016, while Tim Cook received $145M. Google's
Sundar Pachai topped the list with a cool $200M -
not being evil
pays well. "It's that time of year again when we sift through an avalanche of regulatory
filings to find the highest paid executives. This year, we present the highest paid
execs across pay TV, telecom and wireless as a unified list, since many of the names
are prominent figures in all three industries. These figures are from last year,
but are the most recent available. Click through the above slideshow to see the
25 highest paid executives ..."
 No list of engineering
job hunting
and career issues is complete without an article on LinkedIn, so the obligatory
bit of advice from one source is included. There is also a collection of recommendations
gathered from the standard 'experts' (at least in their opinions)
in the art of professional career enhancement counselors. I have to admit to being
glad of now residing outside the realm of job hunting and its requisite machinations.
After being self-employed for over a decade, it is hard to imagine needing to craft
a resume and cover letter, or go on another interview. But, for those who do, happy
hunting!
Peregrine Semiconductor, founder of RF SOI (silicon on insulator) and pioneer
of advanced RF solutions, introduces the
UltraCMOS®
PE42823, a high-power receiver protection RF switch. Ideal for wireless infrastructure
applications, this reflective switch is optimized for emerging radio architectures
such as massive multiple input, multiple output (MIMO). The PE42823 delivers excellent
single-event peak power handling, low power consumption and high linearity. Offered
in a compact form factor, this high-power switch features built-in ESD protection—a
key benefit for systems that
 "Researchers from nanoelectronics research
institute IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) have shown how to optimize
field effect transistors based on 2D materials high performance
logic beyond the 10nm node. The researchers worked with scientists from KU Leuven
in Belgium and the University of Pisa in Italy and also presented guidelines on
how to select 2D materials in a paper in Nature Scientific Reports. The benefit
of 2D materials, such as graphene, is that they physically constrain electrons in
the plane of the material while creating enhanced mobility in that plane "
 Before plug-in crystals were widely available
for band selection on radios, LC tank circuits did all the frequency discrimination
heavy lifting. Accordingly, owners often had a selection of
swappable inductors on-hand to enable listening to a variety of
shortwave transmissions. During the time period of this article in a 1935 Short
Wave Craft magazine, new 'all wave' radios were hitting the showroom floors that
largely mitigated the need for swapping components for
 "The
semiconductor content of electronics systems is forecast to be
28.1% in 2017 breaking the previous record of 25.9% set in 2010, according to IC
Insights. This is because while electronic system market growth will be just 2%
to take the market to $1.49T the global semiconductor market is expected to surge
by 15% in 2017 to $419.1B. IC Insights forecasts that the total semiconductor market
will exceed $500B in 2021. The growth in global unit shipments of cellphones
(0%), automobiles (2%), and PCs (-2%) forecast to be weak in 2017 "
Monday 24
 Please take a few moments and vote in this new
poll. Thanks for your participation. - Kirt B.
 "Researchers at Brown University have developed
a new kind of polarizing beam splitter for
terahertz radiation, which could prove useful in imaging and communications
systems. The technique uses stacks of carefully spaced metal plates to make a polarizing
beam splitter, a device that splits a beam of light by its differing polarization
states, sending vertically polarized light in one direction and horizontally polarized
light in another. Such a beam splitter could be useful in a wide variety of systems
that make use of terahertz radiation, from imaging systems to future "
 One of the first things a knowledgeable restorer
of vintage electronic gear does prior to plugging in a newly acquired piece of hardware
is to replace all of the original
paper capacitors. Those things notoriously lose the internally
contained smoke that makes them work soon after power is applied. Episodes of conflagration
often ensue. According to Mac McGregor, the typical shelf life of a paper capacitor
(and some mica and ceramics back in the day) is about five years. In that time the
insulation resistance can drop from 5000 MΩ to less than 2 MΩ. Ohm's Law
quickly reveals that with used across
 "The Royal Mint Experience in Wales will
host 'The Royal Mint Radio Experience,' July 30 until August 5 at the
Royal Mint's new visitor center in Llantrisant, Wales. School children and members
of the public have been invited to enjoy a fun, informal, and interactive Amateur
Radio workshop. According to an announcement from the Radio Society of Great Britain
(RSGB), visitors will get the chance to use the FUNcube-1 CubeSat, launched in 2013
and used by schools and educational groups around the world. 'We're delighted to
be supporting this event which will give visitors to the Royal "
 Many moons ago (early-mid
1980s), I did quite a bit of microcircuit assembly and wire bonding in an
engineering prototype lab at Westinghouse. It was a unique and valuable experience.
When this app note notice showed up in a recent edition of NASA tech Briefs, I though
it would be good to let you know about. "The common failure modes of wire bonds,
for instance cratering / peeling, bond wire damage, trailing wire bond tails, poor
adhesion, and missed bond pads, are exacerbated when
wire bonding small MESA chips. There are many variables that need
to be balanced to optimize a wire bond process, and limit the amount of time consuming
and costly "
 "Samsung Electronics has announced that its
wafer fab at Pyeongtaek, South Korea, has started shipping products and that it
will focus on the production of 64-layer vertical NAND ICs. According to reports
Samsung Electronics has earmarked 15.6T won ($13.5B)
over the past two years and coming years to build out Pyeongtaek's line 1.
The company has announced it now plans to spend another 14.4T won
($12.5B) to expand its
semiconductor production capacity there with a Pyeongtaek line
Samsung also plans to invest 6T won in its Hwaseong, South Korea, site "
Sunday 23
 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. Clues in this puzzle with an asterisk
(*) are pulled from this past week's (7/17 - 7/21) "Tech Industry
Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage (see the Headline Archives page for help).
Enjoy!
Friday 21
 I chuckled out loud when I saw this
comic. Of course the situation would never really occur (then
again, maybe it could...). The artist is G. Lyons, who does not appear to have made
many other appearances in Electronics World magazine. He might have been a loyal
reader who submitted it as a one-time stint at fame
 "The use of selected Electrical, Electronic,
and Electromechanical (EEE)
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components in space applications
is slowly expanding - too slowly - and not free of myths. It is imperative to be
aware of the pitfalls posed by these myths to reach a decision whether to use COTS
parts in a specific space mission. Myth 1: The main drive to use COTS in space is
cost savings. The use of COTS in space is not a paved road to cost savings. In order
not to misinterpret the term 'cost savings,' it should be emphasized that for an
EEE component the following applies "
 This Radio Service Data Sheet for the
RCA-Victor Model 15U, which appeared in the April 1938 issue of
Radio-Craft, is the first 3-page instance I remember seeing in all the
vintage electronics magazines. The Model 15U is a fairly sophisticated outfit, but
not that much more so than some other pieces. There is a nice example of the Model
15U on the RadioMuseum.org website (thumbnail at left). It appears to be fairly
clean, but not yet fully restored. A lot of adjustments needed to be made during
the alignment of both the radio (commercial broadcast and shortwave bands) and the
turntable. The electronics repair
Triad RF Systems announces the availability of their
TTRM1081, an L-Band bi-directional SSPA suitable for high data-rate
wireless links. Applications include UAVs and military mesh networks. Rx noise figure
is approximately 1.3 dB and Tx/Rx switching speed is 1 μS. This class
AB LDMOS module is designed for both military and commercial applications. It is
capable of supporting any signal type and modulation format, including but not limited
to 3-4G telecom, WLAN, OFDM, DVB, and CW/AM/FM. The latest device technologies and
design methods are employed
 For more than a decade, RF Cascade Workbook
2005™ has been the de facto standard for spreadsheet-based RF system cascade
analysis.
Wireless System Designer™ is the next phase in the evolution.
If you know how to use Excel and you know anything about cascaded system
calculations, then you know how to use Wireless System Designer™. This
is significantly easier and faster than using the multi-thousand dollar simulators
when a quick system analysis is all that is needed. An intro video takes you through
the main features
 "By day,
Claude Shannon labored on top-secret war projects at Bell Labs.
By night, he worked out the details of information theory. Looking back on the last
months of 1940, Claude Shannon was quite open about his desire to avoid the World
War II draft: 'Things were moving fast there, and I could smell the war coming along.
And it seemed to me I would be safer working full-time for the war effort, safer
against the draft, which I didn't exactly fancy. I was a frail man, as I am now....
I was trying to play the game, to the best of my ability. But not only that, I thought
I'd probably contribute "
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