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3 of the May 2017 homepage
archives.
Wednesday 10
 "The telecom industry is concerned about
the current legislative debate on the future of
mobile connectivity and spectrum management in Europe. As the
European Parliament and Member States discuss amendments to the European Electronic
Communications Code, The European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association
(ETNO) and the GSMA fear that legislators have abandoned their ambitions for 5G
roll-out in Europe. 5G is set to empower citizens and businesses with widespread
ultra-fast connectivity "
 The very first automobile vanity license plate
issued in Virginia for
mobile radio was evidently to W4CVO per this news item in the
March 1953 edition of Radio & Television News magazine. I could not
find W4CVO in the FCC's ULS database, but did find Mr. Thomas Tyson, of Alexandria,
Virginia, listed as the assignee of the call sign per the Winter 1973 Radio Amateur
Callbook. If anyone out there knows (or knew) him and/or recognizes this photo of
him with his license plate, please send me an e-mail to confirm it. Am I correct
in thinking Mr. Tyson looks a bit like Tom Hanks?
 "Researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women's
Hospital, and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory have devised a way to
wirelessly power small electronic devices in the digestive tract
indefinitely after being swallowed. Such devices could be used to sense conditions
in the gastrointestinal tract, or carry small reservoirs of drugs to be delivered
over an extended period. Finding a safe and efficient power source is a critical
step in the development of such ingestible electronic devices. This new strategy
is based on the wireless transfer of power from an antenna outside the body to "
 RFMD (now Qorvo)
was an early player in the GaN semiconductor field. During the time I was employed
there as an applications engineer in the 2000s, the company bought a start-up GaN
firm called RF Nitro Communications, and moved their equipment and staff onto RFMD's
Greensboro campus. The engineers were struggling to fabricate 2" wafers... I only
mention my GaN story because of the prominence that GaN is gaining in the 5G world,
as evidenced by the first article in the list
•
The Evolution of GaN: from Defense Applications to 5G
•
Frequency Synthesis: Current Status, Future Projections <more>
 "In a joint research effort at Paris-Sud
University, CNRS Orsay (France) and Grenoble's CEA (French Alternative Energies
and Atomic Energy Commission), an international team of researchers have fabricated
flexible inorganic LEDs based on gallium-nitride semiconductor nanowires. While
bulk semiconductors tend to be brittle and rigid, growing the GaN LEDs as vertical
nanowires (NW) only 20µm long and 1 to 3µm in diameter not only provides them with
inherent "
Cobham Antenna Systems, a market-leading antenna manufacturer, draws on its vast
range of resources to provide antenna solutions for systems designed to compromise
the
unlawful use of drones. A selection of these antennas will be
on display on the Cobham Booth, #1631, at Auvisi's XPOnential 2017, 8-11 May, Dallas,
Tx. The range consists of four main types of antenna which can be combined or configured
in arrays for a multitude of scenarios. The antenna types are: Wideband Omni-Directional;
Directional Helix, Directional Flat
Tuesday 9
Saelig Company announces that the Pico Technology
PicoScope
9300 family of sampling oscilloscopes has been expanded with two new 25 GHz
models - the PicoScope 9301-25 and 9341-25 models. These USB-controlled sampling
oscilloscopes, designed for working with repetitive signals, are a low-cost alternative
to extremely expensive high-end GHz benchtop scopes. The PicoScope 9300 series offers
affordable high-integrity options for viewing and measuring RF and microwave signals,
signal paths, and RF networks. These high-speed sampling oscilloscopes
 Mr. Lothar Stern was a fairly prolific
publisher of books and magazine articles during his long career at
Motorola. What remains of the Motorola brand these days is mostly
associated with cellphones, with the venerable Razr model being the most famous.
China-based Lenovo now owns even that aspect of Motorola
(after a short-lived ownership by Google). In its heyday prior to the 2000s,
Motorola was a major manufacturer of analog, RF, and digital semiconductors, radios,
televisions, telephones, vacuum tubes, medical equipment, and more. It is interesting
to note
 Innovative Power Products (IPP) has over 30
years of experience designing & manufacturing RF &
 microwave passive components. Their high power,
broadband couplers, combiners,
resistors, baluns, terminations and attenuators are fabricated using the latest
materials and design tools available, resulting in unrivaled product performance.
Take a couple minutes to visit their website and see how IPP can help you today
"Skyworks Solutions today released a new white paper, '5G in Perspective - A Pragmatic Guide to What's Next,' providing
the company's insights into the quickly evolving fifth generation (5G) global telecommunications
standard. The paper examines the current state of LTE networks, discusses ways it
could evolve to deliver a 5G user experience, and identifies the tools and techniques
required to support a 100x improvement in data throughput. Current projections suggest
5G data rates will approach 10 times the fastest 4G speeds of today. Leveraging
its technology "
 Electro-Photonics
LLC is a global supplier of RF & Microwave components. Our products include SMT hybrid
and directional couplers, wire bondable passive components, filters, and very useful
test boards for evaluating components (spiral
 inductors,
single-layer capacitors). The Electro-Photonics team can support your small R&D
design requirements with RF & Microwave test fixtures and save you valuable
design and characterization time. Please take a moment to visit their website and
see how your project might benefit
 June 6-8,
Olympia, London. "AOC EW Europe
will be held in perhaps the world's most iconic city – London. It will consider
the future of EW and EM Operations in the changing light of current and emerging
threats, including Hybrid Warfare and Anti Access / Area Denial (A2/AD) where potential
opponents are out-performing the West. It will consider the possible responses,
how thinking and attitudes must change, and examine the new capabilities that will
be required across all lines of development, by all services, in all countries in
the free world. The conference will include plenary "
Monday 8
 Copper Mountain Technologies ha published
a white paper titled
Testing & Matching PCB Antennas: Switches and Other Options.
"Connecting to an Antenna Under Test (AUT) integral to a Device (DUT) may involve
some tradeoffs between measurement accuracy, electrical considerations, and mechanical
ruggedness. In this paper, we describe some aspects of this connection with practical
advice for such test and measurement scenarios. A test port will usually be at a
50 ohm point. If the design includes a coax switch for inspection and final test
purposes, an antenna test sample can be produced "
 Radio-Craft magazine founder, editor,
and publisher Hugo Gernsback wrote this piece in the Fall after the United States
officially entered into World War II. I say officially because to some extent
we were participating for many months prior to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor
on December 7, 1941. Recall how FDR justified his March 1941 Lend Lease program
by comparing the action to lending your hose to a neighbor whose house was burning.
We were providing equipment and training to Allied nations in Europe almost immediately
after Hitler's army
 "The Air Force is exploring commercial aircraft
models for its next generation
EW aircraft to replace the EC-130H Compass Call with a smaller,
self-defending, and more powerful jet. With plans to field the first EX-C Compass
Call in 2020, the Air Force hopes to have 10 operational EX-Cs by 2029. According
to a spokesperson for the Air Force, the EX-C will be developed using commercial
off-the-shelf hardware technology for the EX-C airframe. L3 Communications, the
developer responsible for integrating EW software with the C-130H airframe to create
the EC-130H "
Pasternack has released six new
free-running reference oscillators that generate a highly stable
and accurate output frequency response with low phase noise and spurious performance
levels, making them ideal in phase locked loops, function generators, frequency
synthesizers and receivers for communication, radar, navigation, surveillance and
test and measurement applications. These free-running, fixed-tuned oscillators use
a high-stability internal crystal reference as an integral part of the phase-locked
assembly with a buffered amplifier output stage for improved
 "A three dimensional form of graphene is
being explored as a next-generation electronics material by a pair of Moscow Institute
of Physics and Technology (MIPT) researchers who won a Nobel Prize for graphene
research in 2010. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov discovered the new three-dimensional
form of graphene - called
Weyl Semimetals - which was predicted by the late German physicist
Hermann Weyl. The promise of 3-D graphene is that electrons in them have no mass
- like photons "
Sunday 7
 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.
 evissaP
(that's Passive in reverse) upgraded from the Maximum
Exposure plan to occupying both 160x600-px and 728x90-px banner slots on RF Cafe.
evissaP is an interconnect technology company that designs and manufactures millions
of coaxial cable assemblies, connectors and adapters each year. evissaP offers a
wide variety of RF cable assemblies.
Incorporating highly repeatable and high quality cable and connectors covering DC
to 50 GHz. Please visit evissaP today to see how they can assist your project
Friday 5
 "The aerospace industry is one sector that
requires sturdier
PCBs than those needed for average everyday electronics. The components
used in planes, space shuttles, satellites and control towers need to be extremely
reliable in extreme conditions. They're exposed to some unusual circumstances that
would put more stress on standard PCBs than they could handle. And if these essential
components fail, the results could be disastrous. That's why circuit board producers
take extreme precautions and use extra durable materials when it comes to aerospace. "
 "How well do you know your
wireless history? Do you know your CDMA from your GSM? Do you
remember T-Mobile before it was called T-Mobile? Have you used phones that weren't
smart? If you've answered yes to any of these questions, it's time for you to pit
your knowledge of the wireless industry against the editors of FierceWireless. In
the below quiz, we've assembled 15 of the most challenging questions we could come
up with. These 15 questions cover the full gamut, from wireless events to technologies
to companies. Good luck! And no cheating "
 TV antennas in the early days of broadcast
television were typically fairly simple designs that worked well for city dwellers
and anyone living within a few tens of miles of the tower, but rural dwellers struggled
for a good signal. Even urban and suburban TV owners had problems with
multipath reception that created ghost images on the display.
The farm folks needed the high gain of a more complex antenna for pulling small
signals out of the noise, while urbanites needed high directivity to be able to
reject signals that were bouncing off buildings and bridges before combining in
the receiver
 Hot off the press is Stephen C. Thierauf's
new book
High-Speed Circuit Board Signal Integrity. "This thoroughly updated
leading-edge circuit design resource offers the knowledge needed to quickly pinpoint
transmission problems that can compromise the entire circuit design. This new edition
demonstrates how to apply EM theory to solve signal integrity problems with a practical
application-oriented approach. Discussing both design and debug issues at gigabit
per second data rates, the book serves as a practical reference for projects involving
high-speed serial signaling on printed wiring boards "
Here is a note on
multipaction. NuWaves Engineering, a veteran-owned small
business providing advanced radio frequency (RF) and microwave solutions, announced
today that the bandpass filter designed for the Global Positioning System's (GPS)
L1 band as part of the Air Force Research Lab's (AFRL) Technologically Advanced
N-plexer for GPS III Operation (TANGO) Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)
Phase II project has successfully completed
multipaction testing.
The results of the testing proved that NuWaves' TANGO design will raise the bar
for space qualified components. "NuWaves is extremely proud of our progress to help
AFRL
 May 11, Washington, D.C. "Electromagnetic Environmental Effects (E3) can arise from a variety
of natural or man-made electromagnetic sources. These sources may include Electromagnetic
Pulse (EMP), High Intensity Radiated Fields (HIRF) from transmitters and radars
and Lightning Strikes. Other concerns include the hazards of electromagnetic radiation
(RADHAZ) to personnel (HERP), ordnance (HERO) and volatile materials (HERF). The
vehicles of today have a large number of antennas installed for communications,
guidance, radar and other telemetry. Co-site interference (EMI) is a major concern
for "
Thursday 4
 May
23 - 25, Pasadena, CA "Space
Tech Expo USA is America's engineering and manufacturing meeting place for space
technology, attracting industry leaders, decision makers, engineers, specifiers,
buyers and SMEs to meet OEMs and the entire space supply chain, including sub-systems
suppliers, manufacturers and components through to systems integrators for civil,
military and commercial space. Launch market and reusability "
 "Terrifying footage has emerged of an electromagnetic
railgun blowing a truck to pieces with projectiles travelling at 4,500 mph. Described
by researchers as 'Star Wars technology', these powerful missiles don't rely on
chemical propellants and are fuelled by electricity alone. Strong magnetic fields
are created by electricity on the ship and a 'pulse power system'. New test footage
shows the enormous weapon, known as the multi-mission
Medium Range Railgun Weapon System, fire projectiles into the
side of a military-standard vehicle." ...nice, yet we never seem to be actually
winning the war
 Author George Shuart published this first
of a multipart series of
basic electronics theory in the September 1935 issue of Short
Wave Craft magazine. He began with alternating current and the familiar analogy
to various forms of mechanical oscillations, specifically, waves on the surface
of water when agitated in a sinusoidal manner. Translating a point on a rotating
disc into a time-varying plot is also demonstrated. His transformer analogy of voltage
and current ratios as a function of power conservation between primary and secondary
windings uses a hydraulic system that exploits a mechanical
 This posting make my 67th page of
electronics-themed comics from vintage electronics magazines like
Radio & Television News, Radio Craft, Electronics World,
Popular Electronics, and others. Probably due to fear of offending the
sensibilities of some member of Generation Snowflake curled in the fetal position
in a Safe Space, it is rare to find a comic in a trade magazine these days. Some
people have no sense of humor
 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 products for your convenience: a surface mount 12 MHz
LC lowpass filter, a 10-900 MHz LC multiplexer , and a 2,412 MHz WiFi cavity bandpass
filter for outdoors
 "Eight of Iridium's first ten upgraded communications
satellites launched in January started providing voice and data relay service ahead
of schedule, and SpaceX says it can launch up to 40 more
Iridium spacecraft by the end of the year, Iridium officials reported
Thursday. 'I'm happy to report that our initial batch of Iridium Next satellites
are now fully operational and working very well,' said Matt Desch, CEO of Virginia-based
of Iridium Communications. Engineers are repositioning the other two "
Wednesday 3
"Oscilloscopes, Spectrum Analyzers, Power Supplies, Signal Generators, VNAs and
more. Their use is as broad and diverse as the devices developed with them. Numerous
documents exist about what they are and which ones are 'the best'.
RF & Bench Essentials Reference Guide takes a step back and
covers the Essentials of RF and bench instrumentation including vertical resolution,
sample rate and memory depth. What is phase noise, resolution bandwidth or demodulation?
Why should I care about frequency setting time or "
 Since new people are constantly entering
the field of electronics, there is a constant need to post articles covering some
of the basics of the craft. Just as the seasoned practitioner looked to currently
published magazines and books for guidance, so too do contemporary technician and
engineer fledglings.
Decibels have long been a cause of confusion for many - even some
who have been in the field for many years. I have seen on many occasions engineers
who are way smarter than me routinely mix units of dB (dimensionless)
with units of dBm and dBV (power and volts, respectively)
when writing.
 Being the reigning king of the online typos
myself, I had to laugh (from a sense of oneness) when
I saw this headline on the
eeNews Europe website for 'fanout fuffers.' Let's see how long
it takes the editor to correct it. The time now is 11:20 am EST
Since 1961, MECA (Microwave Electronic Components for
America) has manufactured an extensive line of RF & microwave components
for in-building, satellite, radar, radio, telemetry, mobile radio, aviation &
ATC. Attenuators, directional & hybrid couplers, isolators & circulators,
power dividers & combiners, loads, DC blocks, bias Ts and adapters & cables.
MECA has long been the 'backbone' of high performance wired and air-interfaced networks.
Please visit MECA today to learn how they can help with your projects
Southwest Antennas, an industry leader in innovative rugged antenna products,
has released a new line of solutions designed specifically for existing and
upcoming JTRS military radio waveform standards that utilize the UHF, L, and S Bands,
such as the Wideband Networking Waveform (WNW) and Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW).
Designed for use on handheld or manpack radio systems, these antennas are focused
on the band-specific needs of current warfighters and are fully compatible with
deployed radio units currently in use, in addition "
 May
8-12, 2017 in Seattle, WA. "For 2017, the IEEE Radar Conference returns west after eight years and arrives
in the beautiful Pacific Northwest for the first time. The conference timing coincides
with the 100th anniversary of incorporation of Boeing; our theme, 'Building on a
Century of Innovation,' unites the past and future. Looking back, we highlight seminal
radar developments including the development of one of, if not the, first high PRF,
pulse Doppler test radars, advances in civil aviation, and the world's first digitally-processed
Synthetic Aperture "
 "Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory have successfully demonstrated that two-dimensional (2D) layered crystals
held together by van der Waal forces—these include graphene and
molybdenum disulfide—can exhibit intrinsic ferromagnetism. Not
only did the team demonstrate that it exists in these materials, but the researchers
also demonstrated a high degree of control over that ferromagnetism. The discovery
could have a profound impact for applications including magnetic "
Tuesday 2
 "Researchers at the Institute for Molecular
Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences (Japan) have developed a method
for high performance doping of
organic single crystal. Furthermore, they succeeded in the Hall
effect measurement of the crystal - the world's first case. The research has been
published in the Advanced Materials. Controlling 'holes' and 'electrons' responsible
for electric conduction of p-type and n-type semiconductors by doping - adding a
trace amount of impurity
 These schematics, tuning instructions, and
other data are reproduced from my collection of vintage radio and electronics magazines.
This particular Radio
 Service Data Sheet is for the Radiola "28,"
which is a very unique-looking radio set in the fashion of a small writing desk.
As back in the era, similar schematic and service info was available for purchase
from sources such as SAMS Photofacts, but these printings were a no-cost bonus for
readers ...
•
Silvertone "F," "FF," "G," "H," "J"
•
Radiola "28" Super and "104"
 "In a lengthy Report and Order (R&O)
in a proceeding (WT Docket No. 10-119) dating back 7 years, the FCC has announced
rule changes affecting the General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), the Family Radio
Service (FRS), the Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS or 'CB'), as well as other
applications that fall under the FCC's
Part 95 Personal Radio Services (PRS) rules and regulations. Part
95 devices typically are low-power units that communicate over shared spectrum and,
with some exceptions, do not require an individual user license from the FCC. As
the R&O explains, common examples of PRS devices "
Microwave engineers at RCL Microwave have executed their first successful test
and dielectric measurement
of a thin, flexible 200 micron thick glass material using novel measurement fixtures
and methods capable of broadband dielectric material characterization. The test
was performed and successfully completed using unique broadband measurement fixtures
and the phase difference method, which provides 10,000 data points from 1 MHz
to 32 GHz. A 32 GHz broadband test fixture has been combined with the
Phase Difference Dielectric Characterization Method to generate data across the
entire frequency spectrum of interest
 Windfreak Technologies designs, manufactures,
 tests and sells high value USB powered and
controlled radio frequency products such as RF signal generators, RF synthesizers,
RF power detectors, mixers, up/downconverters. Worldwide customers include Europe,
Australia,
 and Asia. Please contact Windfreak today
to learn how they might help you with your current project
 "Batteries could be transformed from our
slowest growing technology to our fastest growing advanced technology if Ilika Technologies
Ltd. (University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton
U.K.) can realize its dream of
self-powered systems-on-chip (SoCs). By eliminating the liquid
cores of every other battery technology under the sun - especially the flammable
lithium ion (Li-ion) - into the solid-state micron-thin-layers of an SoC, each chip
in an electronic circuit could become self-powered, simplifying printed circuit
boards and eliminating the big-iron power supplies required today "
Monday 1
 "Using transistors made from layers of
molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), a 2D material, researchers from
the Graphene Flagship have devised an ultra-thin processor chip integrating 115
transistors and capable of 1-bit logic operations, all in a 0.6mm2 area.
The device can execute user-defined programs stored in an external memory, perform
logical operations and communicate with its periphery. What's more, the design is
readily scalable to multi-bit data, the researchers claim, hoping these ultra-thin
devices, flexible Their paper 'A microprocessor based "
 Discovering new oil reserves usually takes
more than the good fortune of being out shoot'n at some food, when up from the ground
come a bubbl'n crude - oil that is,
black gold, Texas tea. Over the decades, chance has been replaced
by high tech prospecting methods including ground-penetrating radar, radio and acoustic
wave sounding, ultrasonic transponders, and even satellite sensors that discern
telltale variations in gravitational pull, and magnetic fields. This article from
a 1948 issue of Radio News describes the use of radio for coordinating
activities between the point of
Saelig Company has introduced the
Siglent SDM3065X
- an economical 6½ digit dual-display digital multimeter that is suited to high-precision,
multifunction, and automation measurement applications. It combines basic high-accuracy
measurement functions, with multiple math and display choices, and special features
including histogram, trend chart, bar chart, statistics, hold measurement, dBm,
etc. The SDM3065X multimeter's front panel features a 4.3" (480 x 272) high resolution
color TFT-LCD display
 MIT engineering students' history of
pranks took a macabre turn this weekend. "A 24-year-old Massachusetts
Institute of Technology graduate and New Jersey native reportedly plunged to his
death while climbing the school's iconic dome.
Nicholas Paggi reportedly fell multiple stories from the 'Great
Dome' while scaling the prank hot spot on Tuesday night, according to WBZ-TV. The
victim's mother said on Thursday her son and a pal 'jimmied a lock' to access the
century-old rooftop. Helga Paggi told the Boston television station that her son
'slipped going back up to the other side of the roof "
 "Reuters reports that EU plans to try and
standardize on a minimum 25-year lifetime for spectrum licenses are opposed by 15
out of the 28 member states. The 15 are: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the
Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands,
Poland, Spain and the UK. The refuseniks have produced a position paper saying the
EU proposal is 'disproportionate and insufficiently flexible to be able to respond
to market developments.' It says that over-long license periods run the risk of
'preventing innovation if relevant frequency bands are "
Sunday 30
 This week's
wireless engineering-themed crossword puzzle, as is the case every
week, contains only words pertaining to science, engineering, amateur radio, physics,
mechanics, mathematics, etc. Making a special appearance is the name of the most
recent company to support RF Cafe through advertising. You will see their banner
graphical ad appearing in the right page border sometime this week
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