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4 of the December 2019 homepage archives. Friday 6
 It is probably safe to say that the vast
majority of cellphone users never consider that their cherished devices are fundamentally
radios, and with that capability they would be merely powerful PDAs. Even less likely
to be thought about is that as wireless devices, an antenna is needed to establish
communications. Up until the early 2000s, most cellphones had some form of
obvious antenna protruding from the case - either an extendable type or a molded
stub around an internal antenna. Operational frequencies at the time were
primarily in the 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz bands ,with 1/4
wavelengths of about 3.5 inches, 3.3 inches, 1.6 inches, and 1.5 inches, which
was convenient given the physical size of phones. Always seeking to develop new
features to outclass the competition, manufacturers decided...
 Cobham is seeking a
Software Engineer II. As a growing organization in both commercial and defense
aerospace markets, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to develop
embedded electronic solutions for Cobham's industry leading safety and mission critical
products and test equipment. The position is located in Davenport, IA. Key Responsibilities:
Participate as a member of an integrated product development team for software/hardware
architecture and trade study development of high reliability aerospace applications.
Participate as a member of an integrated product development team to optimize designs
and verify embedded system performance. Design, implement, integrate, and test embedded
software in accordance...
 In this episode of
Carl & Jerry, the teens ponder a question posed by Jerry's mother upon looking
down their hillside home: "[L]ook at all those TV antennas down there. Hardly two
of them are alike; yet they're all intended to receive the same stations. How come
there are so many different kinds?" That was all the pair needed to set them off
in an investigation to determine the answer. Being avid electronics and RF hobbyists
and experimenters, they discuss the principles of how antennas work, various types
of transmission lines, impedance matching, antenna types, bandwidth, and other topics
relevant to the challenge. As with most Carl & Jerry stories, the intent is
to educate the reader. As a bonus, I posted two of the electronics-related comic
panels that were in this edition of Popular Electronics...
 Custom MMIC is excited to announce a new
product category, adding to its growing list of high performance MMICs, with the
introduction of three new
GaAs Sub-Harmonic Mixers. The CMD303, CMD310/C3 MMICs cover frequency
ranges of 13-21 GHz and 20-32 GHz respectively, with excellent conversion loss
and isolation. Sub-harmonic mixers are driven by a local oscillator (LO) signal
that is an integer fraction, or sub-harmonic, of the desired LO frequency. This
eases the design, layout and cost of the LO source for microwave frequency
designs. These new mixers operate with a x2 LO, meaning the user needs to
provide the mixer with an LO at half the desired mixing frequency...
 Rohde & Schwarz has a new video presentation
available entitled, "Demystifying 5G – 5G NR Coexistence with
LTE Based on Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS)." R&S Technology Manager Andreas
Roessler steps through the highlights in a little over 18 minutes. More detail can
be found on the R&S website. "5G New Radio (NR) supports the frequency range
1 (FR1) from 410 MHz to 7.125 GHz that is already intensively utilized
by 4G LTE - in particular those frequency bands organized as paired spectrum (FDD).
Traditionally, selected frequency bands would be cleared from LTE to be deployed
by 5G NR. To avoid the high costs associated with this option, 5G NR added dynamic
spectrum sharing (DSS) that enables to share the same frequency band with LTE ..."
 Electro-Photonics is a global supplier of
RF &
Microwave components. Their products include SMT hybrid and directional couplers,
wire bondable passive components, mounting tabs, filters, transmission lines, 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 Electro-Photonics' website and see how your
project might benefit.
Thursday 5
 When I ran across this "A
Guide to Home Study Education in Electronics" article in a 1972 issue of Popular
Electronics, I did a double-take upon seeing the author's name. This author wrote
pieces for National Radio Institute (NRI) home study courses like the one appearing
in a 1971 issue of NRI Journal, which supports his qualification for penning this
particular article. He has appeared in '73 and Ham Radio magazines since the 1970s.
His name still regularly shows up in the bylines of articles in Electronic Design,
Microwaves & RF, and Nuts and Volts. Many books
have been published in his name including Principles of Electronic Communication
Systems, Handbook of Serial Communications Interfaces, and even one
entitled How to Become a VP. At this point in time, there are not a
whole lot of people who could claim the accomplishments in terms of having been
so widely read over so many years by laymen, hobbyists, students, and
professionals...
 The IEEE and will present a free 1-hour webinar
on December 10th, at noon (12:00 pm) ET, entitled, "3D Electromagnetic Simulation of Antennas
Installed on an Aircraft." Says the registration page: "Learn about the importance
of using a range of methods in the 3D electromagnetic (EM) simulation of installed
antenna performance. 3D EM simulation is a common practice for antenna designers
and analysts. The variety in antenna topologies and design specifications necessitate
a range of simulation algorithms to ensure an efficient or even feasible solution
is available. This range of technology becomes even more important as antennas'
operation in the installed environment is considered ..."
 Download this free e-book entitled, "The Next Generation of Students." Changing student demographics
can pose big challenges to higher education institutions. The ability to adapt is
key to creating a place where everyone can succeed. This report from Inside Higher
Ed dives deep into what these changes mean for your campus and how technology can
help you meet the needs of a new generation of students.
 Cobham is seeking a
Senior Electrical Engineer for electronics design of aerospace life support
and air-to-air refueling equipment. As a growing organization in both commercial
and defense aerospace markets, the successful candidate will have the opportunity
to develop embedded electronic solutions for Cobham's industry leading safety and
mission critical products and test equipment. The position is located in Davenport,
IA. Key Responsibilities: Develops and qualifies highly reliable electronic designs
for military and commercial aerospace applications Develops detailed digital electronic
and embedded microcontroller circuits and schematics including the specification
for components Leads and participates in Design Reviews for compliance with engineering
principles...
 "The University of Technology of Compiègne,
France, has hosted a live demonstration of the first autonomous vehicle to use the
Galileo GNSS constellation. As part of this demonstration, a Renault ZOE electric
car has been autonomously driven on tracks and on public roads in a world's first
for the Galileo program. Participants in the event had the unique opportunity to
ride in an autonomous vehicle fitted with an innovative positioning engine developed
by the ESCAPE project - the
ESCAPE GNSS engine (EGE). The EGE leverages
Galileo signals and services to provide a core positioning component ..."
 MPDevice (MPD) has become a trustworthy and
reliable company in the global RF market as a manufacturer of
passive RF Devices.
Included are attenuators and terminations, coaxial connectors, adapters, and cable
assemblies, DC blocks, surge arrestors, power combiner / dividers, and directional
couplers. The Korean Telecommunication market is now entering into the era of hyperconnected
society. With continuous enhancement in R&D capabilities and quality control,
MPD will continue in an effort to become the No. 1 technologically innovative
company with a focus on the emerging 5G marketplace.
Wednesday 4
 This is part 8 of a series authored by Milton Kiver
entitled, "Theory
and Applications of UHF," that appeared in Radio News magazine in the
mid 1940s. As you might expect it is a very extensive delve into the relatively
new realm of UHF generation, transmission, propagation, and reception. You might
not know that up through the 1930s, UHF circuit and practice had been relegated
to the amateur radio operators because those frequencies from 300 MHz to 3 GHz
were considered too unexploitable for professional use. It was not until Hams
did the hard work of figuring out practical methods of building circuits and
antennas and characterizing geographical and atmospheric conditions that
affected propagation that suddenly industry and government decided UHF might be
useful after all...
 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. In
their December Product Update, Anatech has introduced three new hybrid
directional coupler designs good for use in amplifier combiner and attenuator
circuits as well as in other applications. One is a 6 to 40 GHz hybrid coupler
with SMA connectors, another is a 0.5 to 3 GHz hybrid coupler with SMA
connectors, and the other is a 3 to 3.5 GHz hybrid coupler with N connectors.
Custom RF power directional coupler designs can be designed and produced when a
standard cannot be found...
 If you read through this "Dots
and Dashes" column from the July 1934 issue of Radio News, you will
find many familiar topics -- and a couple weird ones. Among the familiar are
transmitting electrical power via RF waves, an electronics industry convention
and exposition being held in Chicago, elevator control with electric sensors to
assure the cars stop at floor level, global communications, the closing of a
historic radio station (how 'historic' can a radio station be in 1934?),
earth-moon-earth (EME) experimentation, and remote control of beacon stations
with radio signals. The weird ones? How about an "electric woman" with glowing
breasts and a "queer-acting" radio microphone, do they qualify?...
 "Researchers at the MIT in the U.S. have
developed
spin computing circuits using magnetic
spin that need no electrical current, potentially slashing the power consumption
of computations. The spin computing architecture developed by the MIT researchers
uses a nanometer-wide domain wall in layered nanofilms of magnetic material to modulate
a passing spin wave, without any extra components or electrical current. In turn,
the spin wave can be tuned to control the location of the wall, as needed. This
provides precise control of two changing spin wave states ..."
 The free e-book entitled, "Creating a Custom Cable," reviews the key elements to designing
your perfect custom-made cable solution. Creating a custom cable that meets your
unique application specifications can be a difficult task. There are a variety of
elements that make up quality custom cables and many unique factors that must be
considered. This eBook discusses the key questions to review with a custom-cable
manufacturer in order to ensure the development of the best cable solution for your
needs.
 Exodus Advanced Communications is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. Power amplifiers ranging
from 10 kHz to 51 GHz with various output power levels and noise figure
ranges, we fully support custom designs and manufacturing requirements for both
small and large volume levels. decades of combined experience in the RF field for
numerous applications including military jamming, communications, radar, EMI/EMC
and various commercial projects with all designing and manufacturing of our HPA,
MPA, and LNA products in-house.
Tuesday 3
 Certain things about John T. Frye are very
apparent to the many of you familiar with techno-dramas - "Carl & Jerry" and
"Mac's
Service Shop" - and his many magazine articles on topics related to
electronics and amateur radio: Mr. Frye has a good imagination, he is a good
story teller, and he has a very deep knowledge of electronics theory,
troubleshooting, repair, and practical operation. One particular aspect about
him you might not know is that he spent most of his life in a wheelchair, as the
result of polio. Born in 1910, John could not benefit from the polio vaccine
invented by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955. That was a mere three years before I was
born. We are fortunate to live in these times when so much amazing medical
research is happening to prevent, treat, and cure diseases, and while great
advances have been made...
 For a limited time, you can download this
free e-book entitled, "What Motivates the Best Engineers?" The key
to recruitment and retention in the war for technical talent. With engineers in
such hot demand there are only so many strings companies can pull on to ensure that
the candidates they attract stay active in the hiring process and ultimately want
to work for them. Download this new eBook to find out what really impacts candidates'
decisions to choose one company over another, and what they truly value from an
employer straight from Triplebyte's marketplace of candidates.
 ERZIA Technologies S.L. today announced that
it has entered into a
global franchise agreement with Richardson RFPD, an Arrow Electronics company.
The agreement covers ERZIA's commercial off-the-shelf products, including high-power
/ driver amplifier (HPA) modules and low noise amplifier (LNA) modules. ERZIA's
broad product offering covers DC to 100 GHz, with connectorized and wave guide
interfaces. All of ERZIA's COTS products are ITAR-free designs and offer a high
degree of customization. "We are excited about ERZIA's broad capabilities, flexibility,
quality and reliability," said Rafael R. Salmi, Ph.D., Richardson RFPD's
president. "This product range is a good fit for Richardson RFPD's customers and
target markets. Many customers today prefer to purchase amplifiers..."
 Bittele Electronics, with facilities in Canada,
The United States, and China, has an ability to perform "selective
soldering" on through-hole mounted components to target individual pins as opposed
to exposing the entire PCB to a wave soldering process. As described on the Bittele
website, selective soldering is used on assemblies where through-hole components
are distributed across the PCB, as opposed to a high density connector pin array
where applying a single blob of solder (using a "fountain" stream - see image to
the right) would be difficult. In some instances both wave soldering and
selective soldering is used. Since the vast majority of printed circuit
assemblies use surface mounted components, selective soldering and/or wave
soldering is performed first for through-hole component, and then surface mount
components are added and a solder reflow pass...
 "Researchers from ETH Zurich have reworked
the data flow of what was considered as a state-of-the-art quantum transport solver
to boost its capabilities several orders of magnitude on complex atomically-resolved
nanotransistor simulations. The research
group led by Mathieu Luisier from the Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS) at ETH
Zurich started with a so-called quantum transport simulator software named OMEN,
which runs its calculations based on what is known as density functional theory,
allowing a realistic simulation of transistors in atomic resolution ..."
 Withwave manufactures an extensive line of
metrology quality coaxial test cable assemblies, connectors (wave-, end-, vertical-launch,
board edge, panel mount), calibration kits (SOLT), a fully automated 4-port vector
network analyzer (VNA) calibrator, between- and in-series connector adaptors, attenuators,
terminations, DC blocks, torque wrenches, test probes & probe positioner. Special
test fixtures for calibration and multicoax cable assemblies. Frequency ranges from
DC through 110 GHz. Please contact Withwave today to see how they can help
your project succeed.
Monday 2
 For the majority of the last century,
Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs) led the telecommunications
industry, both for wired and microwave links. Whenever you learned of a
breakthrough in telephony, you could assume it was another Bell Labs innovation
and probably be right. Of course there were discoveries in other venues like
university research facilities, but often those were at least partially funded
by Bell. The company grew to be so large and influential that the government
decided breaking them into smaller pieces would reduce their influence over the
nature of communications systems. It is similar to how Google dominates Internet
search engines and advertising, and how Facebook dominates social media, except
nowadays those venues are considered vital to political futures so they are
permitted to continue to grow unabated. This item about how fiber optic
communications will provide a vital link to high capacity, high bandwidth
transmission lines...
Electro-Photonics is a global supplier of
RF &
Microwave components. Their products include SMT hybrid and directional couplers,
wire bondable passive components, mounting tabs, filters, transmission lines, 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 Electro-Photonics' website and see how your
project might benefit.
 Feedback has been widely misunderstood by
many electronics enthusiasts, even those who have a fairly extensive background
in circuit design (that which does not involve
feedback). In fact, there have been instances of articles being printed in magazines
like Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics, etc., where the
authors got relatively simple feedback equations wrong due to improper summing
of nodes, necessitating a correction in a later issue based on reader feedback
(a convenient and appropriate word for this comment). This article discusses
feedback in audio circuits to avoid distortion, but the concepts apply to any
frequency of operation. It is possible in many cases to implement
seat-of-the-pants feedback schemes successfully, but if you need a specific
response and guaranteed stability...
 The
25th anniversary DesignCon 2020 event is being held January 28th through 30th
at the Santa Clara Convention Center, California. It is North America's largest
chip, board, and systems event. The premier educational conference and technology
exhibition, this three-day event brings together the brightest minds across the
high-speed communications and semiconductor industries who are looking to engineer
the technology of tomorrow. Immerse yourself in the expertly curated DesignCon conference
curriculum, created by engineers for engineers, with more than 100 sessions spanning
14 tracks covering all aspects of electronic design, including signal & power
integrity, high-speed serial design, and machine learning.
 A free webinar entitled, "Creating a Culture of Automation: A Real-World Case Study with FIS,"
will be presented on Thursday, December 5 @ 12 pm ET. "For IT automation to
succeed, you need more than just the right technology. You need to develop a culture
that embraces automation and celebrates its transformational potential. You need
champions lighting the way to shift the collective mindset and develop an army of
automators who actively identify and execute on opportunities to automate processes
throughout your IT organization. What does it take to successfully create a culture
of automation? Join our next webcast to find out! Get a front-row seat as Suneel
Tummala, Director of Client Experience & LeanIT, shares how ..."
 "The FCC , in a recent meeting, has proposed
the allocation of specific
portions of the 5.9 GHz band for
unlicensed device use and automotive communications technologies. As announced by
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, while the lower 45 MHz of the band will be allocated for
unlicensed uses like Wi-Fi, the upper 20 MHz will be kept for new automotive
communications technology, Cellular Vehicle to Everything (C-V2X). Back in 1999,
the FCC had allocated 75 MHz of spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band for a service
called Dedicated Short-Range Communications. Commonly known as DSRC, this technology
was intended to enable ubiquitous transportation and vehicle-related communications,
but, the results haven't matched that intent. The technology has evolved slowly ..."
 TotalTemp Technologies has more than 40 years
of combined experience providing thermal platforms.
Thermal Platforms
are available to provide temperatures between -100°C and +200°C for cryogenic cooling,
recirculating circulating coolers, temperature chambers and temperature controllers,
thermal range safety controllers, space simulation chambers, hybrid benchtop chambers,
custom systems and platforms. Manual and automated configurations for laboratory
and production environments. Please contact TotalTemp Technologies today to learn
how they can help your project.
Sunday 1
 For two decades, I have been creating custom
engineering- and science-themed crossword puzzles for the brain-exercising benefit
and pleasure of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. This December 1st
puzzle uses as part of its grid the common schematic symbol for a MOSFET dual gate,
n-channel, depletion mode transistor. A database of thousands of words is used which
I have built up over the years and contains only clues and terms associated with
engineering, science, physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc. You will
never find a word taxing your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the name
of some obscure village in the Andes mountains. You might, however, encounter the
name of a movie star like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location like Tunguska,
Russia, for reasons which, if you don't already know, might surprise you...
These archive pages are provided in order to make it easier for you to find items
that you remember seeing on the RF Cafe homepage. Of course probably the easiest
way to find anything on the website is to use the "Search
RF Cafe" box at the top of every page.
About RF Cafe. I also
have an extensive list of
Recently Added topics.
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