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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
omnidirectional antenna 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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