Homepage Archive - May 2018 (page 3)

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.

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Thursday 31

Clean Layout Technique

Clean Layout Technique, August 1965 Popular Electronics - RF CafeUsually an article about clean layout techniques would be about printed circuit board layout; however, this one refers to chassis layout. Having built many electronics chassis in my days as an electronics technician (prior to earning an engineering degree), I have a great appreciation for a professional-looking job. Some of the work done by hobbyists that appear in magazines like QST, Nuts & Volts, and the older titles like Poplar Electronics looks pretty darn nice - both for kits and homebrews. It's a short article, but worth a quick look ...

Zero-Power Wireless Sensor Connectivity

Conductive Plastic, Wi-Fi Backscatter Yield Zero-Power Wireless Sensor Connectivity - RF Cafe"Using additive manufacturing, researchers devised a way to remotely sense motion via Wi-Fi backscatter, without any interconnecting wires or need for power at the sensor. IoT and other sensor-based applications have a constraint: how to connect the switches and other motion-based sensors to a local Wi-Fi network. Running even a small switch-closure wire between a transducer source point and a local wireless node is often a physical nuisance, especially if that point is on a moving object such as a door or a bottle. To address this problem ...

RF Industry News - 1966 Popular Electronics

RF Industry News, December 1966 Popular Electronics - RF CafeLooking forward is essential for the advancement of technology, but looking backward to see from whence we came is beneficial as well. That is why I post so many articles from vintage tech magazines. Not only does familiarizing yourself [hopefully] help prevent making the same mistakes over again, but it give you an appreciation for the sacrifices and innovations that paved the way to the current state of the art. The same argument can be made for social sciences and politics. Unlike social scientists and politicians, technologists do actually learn from the past. What caught my attention in this "Zero-Beating the News" feature in a 1966 issue of Popular Electronics was the photo of IBM engineers integrating and testing the electronics equipment ...

Wireless Bandpass Filters Build on Metamaterials

Wireless Bandpass Filters Build on Metamaterials - RF CafeDGS, SNG, DNG, CRLH, SRR, and CSRR are amongst the abbreviations you need to be aware of these days when considering the design of compact, high selectivity filters for wireless applications. Ahmed Ibrahim, Mahmoud Abdalla, and Adel Abdel-Rahman wrote a paper titled, "Wireless Bandpass Filters Build on Metamaterials" that gives an introductions to these and related terms. Metamaterials have the unique property of a negative dielectric coefficient (and correspondingly negative refraction) that allows for a whole new set of opportunities for poles and zeroes ...

Where the Silicon Valley Tech Internships Are

Where the Silicon Valley Tech Internships Are - RF Cafe"The 2018 interns are about to descend upon Google, Facebook, Apple, Adobe, and other Silicon Valley companies. Colleges around the country are winding down their academic years, and in just a few weeks, hordes of tech interns will descend upon Silicon Valley. They're already combing Airbnb and Craigslist for housing, trying to align apartment locations with corporate shuttle schedules, and to decide if they need kitchen privileges or if it's really true that they'll eat of all their meals at work - for free. Right now, job site Indeed reports that intern listings are healthy. According to Indeed, the companies with the most STEM internships ..."

Wednesday 30

New Book: Electrical Engineering: A Pocket Reference

Electrical Engineering: A Pocket Reference - RF CafeElectrical Engineering: A Pocket Reference, 6th Edition, is a "well-organized resource for accessing the basic electrical engineering knowledge professionals and students need for their work." More than 500 diagrams and figures, 60 tables, and an extensive index. "The book is organized to help engineers find the information they need in an instant, from DC and AC systems, electric and magnetic fields, networks, to signals and systems, digital and analog electronics, and power supplies." Take a look at the table of contents preview pages to see how extensive it is. Available in soft cover and Kindle formats ...

Advanced GaAs Integration for Single Chip mm-Wave Front-Ends

Advanced GaAs Integration for Single Chip mm-Wave Front-Ends - RF CafeDavid Danzillio, of WIN Semiconductors, published an article in Microwave Journal magazine titled, "Advanced GaAs Integration for Single Chip mm-Wave Front-Ends." Active beam-forming antenna arrays are emerging as the configuration of choice for multiple reasons, including a need for gain in user's direction due to high path losses at millimeter-wave frequencies. Last week there was a new blurb about Analog Devices' new beamforming chip targeting the same type application. 5G is arriving at a snail's pace, largely because the technology it requires has not been invented yet ...

Mac's Service Shop: Safety in Medical Electronics

Mac's Service Shop: Safety in Medical Electronics, July 1969 Electronics World - RF CafeIt should come as no surprise that in the pre-safety-ground era which included the 1960s that electrical shocks of patients in hospitals was not uncommon. If the jolt came intentionally from a cardiac defibrillator, then it would be a good thing. However, these shocks, which were the subject of a Time magazine story in the April 18th, 1969 issue cited by Mac's technician, Barney, were being administered unintentionally by patient monitoring and ancillary life-sustaining equipment. Per the article, no Underwriter's Laboratory (UL) certification was required for hospital equipment. Maybe it was felt that it wouldn't be so bad if someone got zapped in the hospital since there would be a doctor on-hand to resuscitate the zapee. Since that time medical equipment has been required to undergo stringent safety conformance requirements that makes electrocution virtually impossible. Now, if we could just keep doctors from cutting off the wrong limb or removing the wrong organ...

Industry Days 2018 – Additive Manufacturing for RF/Microwave

Industry Days 2018 – Additive Manufacturing for RF/Microwave Hardware - RF CafeAfter a successful first edition for the Industry Days – Additive Manufacturing for RF/Microwave Hardware [2016], we have initiated the preparation of a second edition. Our main purpose is to trigger the discussion regarding the manufacturing of RF/Microwave parts using additive manufacturing. We are sure that, considering the multi-disciplinary environment we will have, the discussion will be very fruitful. The format for the Industry Days is the same than previous edition. We will have presentations distributed in two days. To build the agenda, we will open a period for a call for abstract where any potential presenter can summarise the scope of the talk and the benefit ...

Flux Capacitor Invented That Breaks Time-Reversal Symmetry

Flux Capacitor Invented That Breaks Time-Reversal Symmetry - RF Cafe"In the popular movie franchise "Back to the Future", an eccentric scientist creates a time machine that runs on a flux capacitor. Now a group of actual physicists from Australia and Switzerland have proposed a device which uses the quantum tunneling of magnetic flux around a capacitor, breaking time-reversal symmetry. The research, published this week in Physical Review Letters, proposes a new generation of electronic circulators, which are devices that control the direction in which microwave signals move. It represents a collaboration between two Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence: the Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems ..."

Tuesday 29

Tech Themed Comics - May 1966 & December 1965 Popular Electronics

Comics with an Electronics Theme, December 1965 & May 1966 Popular Electronics - RF CafeTelevision (TV) and high fidelity stereo (HiFi) were a big deal from the 1950s through the 1970s as electronics technology underwent major improvements in component capabilities and research produced high-complexity circuits that featured sophisticated methods of signal processing. The industry went through the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors during that three decade period, setting the groundwork for the next generation of microprocessor-based audio-visual entertainment. Printed comics and TV and radio shows favorite themes included jokes having to do with Joe Sixpack and his family's anecdotes involving television and HiFi stereo. Here are a few more from the mid-1960s ...

How to Synthesize and Build a Custom HDTV Antenna

How to Synthesize and Build a Custom HDTV Antenna - RF CafeSure, this is basically an infomercial for NI AWR's AntSyn™ antenna design and synthesis software, but it serves as a useful introduction to designing and simulating antennas for specific applications. Dr. Derek Linden, of AWR, demonstrates how to use AntSyn to design and build a customized high-definition TV (HDTV) antenna by generating a set of antenna specifications such as frequencies, bandwidth, and gain, for planar antennas such as Yagi and ultra-wideband dipoles. The article appears in the May 2018 issue of High Frequency Electronics magazine. The prototype he made for the printed antenna is impressive and cheap ...

DEV Systemtechnik Listing Added to Vendor Pages

DEV Systemtechnik Listing Added to Vendor Pages - RF CafeDEV Systemtechnik is the manufacturer of a complete range of next generation high performance products and systems for the optical and electrical transmission of RF signals in HFC cable networks. DEV Systemtechnik has been added to the following Vendor pages: RF Amplifiers, RF Power Combiners, Couplers, Splitters & Dividers, RF Switches, Relays & Matrices, Fuses, Circuit Breakers, and Lightning & Surge Protectors. Their customers include top tier media companies like Huawei, FOX, Cisco, Harmonic and Liberty / Unity Media ...

The Trinitron - Still a Mystery?

Trinitron-Still a Mystery?, February 1972 Popular Electronics - RF CafeExplaining the working of the Trinitron color cathode ray tube (CRT) with black and white pictures is a little like explaining a fourth dimension within the confines of three dimensions. How do you visualize red, green , and blue in shades of gray? It's like being told to grasp the concept of tesseract being the 3−D projection of a 4−D cube. Still, that was the challenge author Forest Belt had when writing this article for a 1972 issue of Popular Electronics, an era where multicolor print was the realm of high−end glossy−page magazines. Those of us who were around in the days when Sony's Trinitron hit the market remember well the hype that surrounded it. Of course my parent's B&W television suffered the same handicap as this printed page when the commercials ...

May 2018: A Pair of Radar-Related Articles

Fast Numerical Analysis of Scattering and Radar Cross Section - RF Cafe

Power Supply Management of GaN MMIC Power Amplifiers for Pulsed Radar, by David Bennett and Richard DiAngelo. "Systems that incorporate highly integrated and highly sophisticated, high power RF GaN PAs, such as pulsed radar applications, are a constant challenge for today's digital control and management systems ..."

GaN MMIC Power Amplifiers for Pulsed Radar - RF CafeFast Numerical Analysis of Scattering and Radar Cross Section, by Jiyoun Munn. "To demonstrate the effectiveness of 2D axisymmetric modeling, the author presents a radar-cross-section (RCS) analysis that utilizes this modeling technique ..."

Memristor Adds Cybersecurity Layer to IoT Devices

Memristor Adds Cybersecurity Layer to IoT Devices - RF Cafe"While we embrace the way the Internet of Things already is making our lives more streamlined and convenient, the cybersecurity risk posed by millions of wirelessly connected gadgets, devices and appliances remains a huge concern. Even single, targeted attacks can result in major damage; when cybercriminals control and manipulate several nodes in a network, the potential for destruction increases. UC Santa Barbara electrical and computer engineering professor Dmitri Strukov is working to address the latter. He and his team are looking to put an extra layer of security ..."

Monday 28

The "Scrounge" - an Instant "J" Antenna

The "Scrounge" - an Instant "J" Antenna, December 1966 Popular Electronics - RF CafeJ-pole antennas (aka "J" antennas) are so named due to their physical shape. The basic "J" antenna is a half-wave vertically polarized antenna that has an integrated parallel feed quarter-wave tuning stub. It is very popular with amateur radio operators and is still used with some commercial radio installations. The azimuth radiation pattern and gain are very similar to the half-wave dipole antenna, as shown in the Wikipedia plot below. The J-pole was invented in 1909 for use on the German Zeppelin airships as a trailing wire antenna. Variations of the J-pole have evolved over the years that in some cases significantly change the radiation pattern, but the characteristic quarter-wave stub match is retained in all of them ...

Download Pentek's Software Defined Radio Handbook

Software DEfined Radio Handbook (Pentek) - RF CafePentek co-founder and VP Rodger Hosking has written a reference titled, "Software Defined Radio Handbook," which is a free download from their website. "Software Defined Radio has revolutionized electronic systems for a variety of applications that include communications, data acquisition and signal processing. Recently updated, this handbook shows how DDCs (Digital Downconverters), the fundamental building block of software radio, can replace legacy analog receiver designs while offering significant performance, density, and cost benefits ..."

These 3 Stocks Could Help You Benefit from the 5G Revolution

These 3 Stocks Could Help You Benefit from the 5G Revolution - RF CafeThe Motley Fool sez: "5G is the next step in the evolution of mobile wireless technology, promising faster speeds, better coverage, and lower network energy consumption. With most smartphones currently running on 3G or 4G networks, 5G deployment is still at least a couple of years away. Tech companies are starting to prepare for what will be the key to powering fast data speeds required by the Internet of Things (IoT) and self-driving cars. Skyworks Solutions provides radio frequency chips to enable wireless connectivity in smartphones and other devices. It could have a key role in the 5G era through its connectivity modules ..."

Sunday 27

May 27 RF Cafe Engineering Crossword Puzzle w/Weekly Headlines

RF Cafe Engineering Crossword Puzzle w/Weekly Headlines May 27, 2018At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*) in this technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (5/21 - 5/25) "Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage. For the sake of all the avid cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. You will never find among the words names of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort. You might, however, see someone or something in the exclusion list who or that is directly related to this puzzle's theme, such as Hedy Lamar ...

Friday 25

Diode Function Quiz

Diode Function Quiz, August 1965 Popular Electronics - RF CafeIt's Friday and therefore time for a pop quiz (does that line give you a fearsome flashback to your school days?). Whenever I have one available, I like to post quizzes from vintage electronics magazines, like this one on diode circuit functions. Many of them have vacuum tubes, but this one has the solid state symbols so the under-40 folks won't be uncomfortable. Your job is to look at the diode circuits and match them with the names of the functions. A couple of them will probably cause some head scratching, but you should do well. Don't jump to a quick conclusion with circuit "E" without noticing the two signal generators attached to it ...

Tunable 3rd Harmonic Generation in Graphene

Tunable 3rd Harmonic Generation in Graphene - RF Cafe"Graphene Flagship researchers have shown for the first time gate tunable third harmonic generation in graphene. This research, led by Graphene Flagship Partner University of Cambridge, in Collaboration with Politecnico di Milano and IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genova and published in Nature Nanotechnology, could enable on-chip broadband optical switches for data transport in optical systems. Optical harmonic generation is the creation of new frequencies (colours) when high intensity light interacts with a nonlinear material. Third Harmonic Generation (THG) can create light ..."

Solder-Wick Trick Characterizes Bypass Caps

Solder-Wick Trick Characterizes Bypass Caps - RF CafeIstvan Novak has a clever low budget, close-enough type fixture for quickly measuring the impedance (and determine the self-resonant frequency) of capacitors up through a few tens of MHz. Mr. Novak's application is bypass capacitor characterization. "Bypass capacitors are used in large numbers in power Istvan Novak - RF Cafedistribution networks. Most vendors today supply not only typical characteristics, but also various simulation models. Nevertheless, doing our own characterization of these components is still useful and often necessary. In this short article, I'll show you how to create simple home-made fixtures for these measurements. For bypass capacitors, measuring impedance over a reasonably wide frequency range ..."

Super Selectivity for Your Receiver

Super Selectivity for Your Receiver, August 1965 Popular Electronics - RF CafeRestoring and/or upgrading vintage radio receivers is still a very popular pastime for hobbyists, and for that matter for some professional servicemen who preform maintenance on established equipment installations. Three of the most significant changes that can be made to older receivers to improve sensitivity are to clean up the power supply DC output, replace noisy components like vacuum tubes and leaky capacitors, and tune / modify / replace RF and IF filters. This article discusses a method of replacing a stock LC filter with a high selectivity mechanical filter. The nice thing about an analog receiver is that narrowband, steep-skirt filters can be substituted without concern for group delay at the band edges that can (and will) wreak havoc on digital signals ...

Saelig Introduces LoRa/FSK Smart Modem Transceiver

Saelig Introduces LoRa/FSK Smart Modem Transceiver - RF CafeSaelig Company has introduced the Circuit Design SLR-434M Smart Modem - a compact, easy to use narrow-band embedded radio modem operating in the 434 MHz ISM band. It incorporates LoRa® technology to achieve extremely long range for low bit-rate data with low power. The SLR-434M's excellent receiving sensitivity allows communication into areas once considered difficult for RF to penetrate, and making it possible to transmit 1800 feet or more. The SLR-434M is also switchable to accommodate ...

Supersonic Waves Might Help Electronics Beat the Heat

Supersonic Waves Might Help Electronics Beat the Heat - RF Cafe"A new discovery may dramatically improve heat transport in insulators and enable new strategies for heat management in future electronics devices. The discovery was made by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory who made the first observations of waves of atomic rearrangements, known as phasons, propagating supersonically through a vibrating crystal lattice. The discovery gives a different way to control the flow of heat. It provides a shortcut through the material ..."

Thursday 24

Plug-and-Play Chip Cuts Size, Weight of Radar Antennas

Plug-and-Play Chip Cuts Size, Weight of Radar Antennas - RF Cafe"A new beamforming chip promises to shrink the size and weight of aircraft antennas by eliminating the need for mechanical steering linkages. The chip could serve in radar for defense aircraft and for in-flight broadband on commercial jets. Analog Devices, maker of the new chip, also foresees it being used in air traffic control, surveillance, weather monitoring, and even 5G communications. ADI engineers say the key is the product's inherent ability to cut size and weight. “By going to an electronically steered antenna design, we are able to reduce the size of the antenna element itself and eliminate the mechanical arm and motor ..."

5G Update: Standards Emerge, Accelerating 5G Deployment

5G Update: Standards Emerge, Accelerating 5G Deployment - RF CafeRF component manufacturer Pasternack Enterprises has a useful article in the May issue of Microwave Journal titled, "5G Update: Standards Emerge, Accelerating 5G Deployment." I am still a bit fuzzy on what exactly 5G entails, other than it must be better than 4G since it's a whole number higher. This helps a little. "Though the expected features and use cases for 5G are diverse and extensive, the start of the 5G rollout will likely address only a few of the featured use cases: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) and massive Internet of Things (mIoT) or massive machine-type communications (mMTC) ..."

Recent Developments in Electronics 

Recent Developments in Electronics, December 1959 Electronics World - RF CafeSugar Grove, West Virginia, is within the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), which also encompasses the Green Bank, WV area. It was established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1958 to protect hypersensitive, cryogenically cooled radio astronomy receivers from manmade terrestrial signal sources. As you can imagine, there are not many places remaining in human-inhabited regions of earth that are not massively invaded by radio frequency energy. If you visit the area today, you had better not have your cellphone, computer, or other RF-producing device turned on or you can be subject to a hefty fine. Roving signal detecting trucks monitor the region for offenders. This 1961 report on advances in electronics also features the world's first computerized bank check ...

Gowanda Expands Magnetics Offerings with Acquisition of HiSonic

Gowanda Expands Magnetics Offerings with Acquisition of HiSonic - RF CafeGowanda Components Group is pleased to announce that its offerings of RF and microwave passive magnetic components are expanding in connection with the acquisition of HiSonic in Olathe, Kansas. "HiSonic's designs, technologies and customers complement those within our Magnetics Division," said GCG CEO Don McElheny. "The synergy in our capabilities and applications will enable us to offer a broader range of innovative inductor and transformer solutions to design engineers in commercial, medical, microwave, military, space and other markets around the world ..."

Achieving Unprecedented Frequency Control in Miniature Lasers

Achieving Unprecedented Frequency Control in Miniature Lasers - RF Cafe"Only a few decades ago, finding a particular channel on the radio or television meant dialing a knob by hand, making small tweaks and adjustments to hone in on the right signal. Of course, we now take such fine tuning for granted, simply pressing a button to achieve the same effect. This convenience is enabled by radio frequency synthesis, the generation of accurate signal frequencies from a single reference oscillator. The need for better radar in World War II drove the development of radio frequency control, and its miniaturization in subsequent decades revolutionized a host ..."

Wednesday 23

How to Get the Most out of Your Key and Bug

How to Get the Most out of Your Key and Bug, July 1966 Popular Electronics - RF CafeWith a fair helping of chagrin, I admit to being a "10-4 Good Buddy" type of Ham radio operator. That moniker is applied liberally by pre-1991 (February 14, to be exact) amateur radio licensees to post-1991 licensees because that was the year in which the FCC no longer required aspiring Hams to pass a Morse code proficiency test for an entry level license. It was a sort of Valentine's Day gift. In 2003, the ITU announced the rescinding of its code requirement and allowed countries to set their own standards. By 2007, General and Amateur Extra exams no longer required code tests. I earned my Technician license in 2010 ...

New Book: Technologies for RF Systems

Technologies for RF Systems - RF CafeWritten by Terry Edwards, "Technologies for RF Systems" is a comprehensive resource provides an introduction to the main concepts, technologies, and components in microwave and RF engineering. This book presents details about how to design various amplifiers, circuits, and chips for communication systems. It offers insight into selecting appropriate ADC and DAC technology. Several worked examples are found throughout the book. This book provides a summary of 21st century RF systems and electronics and discusses the challenges of frequency bands and wavelengths, software-defined radio (SDR) and cognitive radio. RF semiconductors are covered, including band gap, drift velocity ...

Magnetic Lattice Material Promises Dramatic Increase in Battery Life

Magnetic Lattice Material Promises Dramatic Increase in Battery Life - RF Cafe"A new magnetic lattice material developed by researchers at the University of Missouri could be used to increase the battery life of electronic devices by more than a hundred times, it is claimed. Singh's team developed a two-dimensional, nanostructured material created by depositing a magnetic alloy, or permalloy, on the honeycomb structured template of a silicon surface. The new material conducts unidirectional current, or currents that only flow one way. The material also has significantly less dissipative power compared to a semiconducting diode, which is normally included in electronic devices ..."

Lafayette Radio Electronics Advertisement

Lafayette Radio Electronics Advertisement, January 1965 Popular Electronics - RF CafeA lot of nostalgia gets waxed here on RF Cafe, to which frequent visitors can readily attest. Old timers (if you're not one now, you some day will be) often like to see remembrances of days of yore, the halcyon days of past hobbies, family, long naps, school (yuk), vacations, and other pleasurable times. Hopefully, you already have or will soon have a few of your own. This 3-page Lafayette Radio Electronics spread from a 1965 issue of Popular Electronics magazine is typical of what what avid electronics hobbyists would have read and drooled over with so many great items in the offering. If you were like me, the cost of most of the things I wanted were well outside my budgetary reach. Prices for electronics gizmos were quite high ...

everythingRF Adds Searchable RFID Vendor Catalog Resource

everythingRF Adds Searchable RFID Vendor Catalog Resource - RF Cafeeverything RF has created the largest database of searchable RFID products. We have compiled complete catalogs from the leading RFID manufacturers across 6 categories and make the products searchable by specification: RFID antennas, RFID reader ICs, RFID reader modules, RFID readers, RFID tag ICs, and RFID tags. everythingRF has also created parametric search tools in each category and are now adding more products and companies to the system ...

Making Radio Chips for Heck

Making Radio Chips for Hell - RF Cafe"There are still some places the Internet of Things fears to tread. Researchers at the University of Arkansas and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Sweden, are building a radio for those places. This month, in IEEE Electron Device Letters, they describe a mixer, a key component of any wireless system, that works just fine from room temperature all the way up to 500 ºC. It's the first mixer IC capable of handling such extremes. Of several projects 'one of the more sexy is trying to put a rover or some sort of instrument on Venus that will last for more than two hours ..."

Tuesday 22

Reverse Current Keeps Ferry Afloat

Reverse Current Keeps Ferry Afloat, December 1965 Popular Electronics - RF CafeA news story with a title about a boat and reverse current is more likely to be referring to water flow in a river or stream than about electrical current in a conductor. Having grown up in a neighborhood next to a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, I spent quite a bit of time around boats, both large and small. Salt water is particularly destructive to metal hulls due to cathodic corrosion, exacerbated by the salt water's conductivity. While working as an electrician in the 1970s, I installed electrical supplies for a few dockside cathodic protection system that probably functioned like the one described in this 1965 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. The principle is fairly simple whereby anodes are placed in the water around the hull and a counter-current is induced ...

Tiny Packages Help Designers Do More with Less

Tiny Packages Help Designers Do More with Less - RF CafeIt'll come as no surprise to any savvy buyer, and certainly not to any design engineer, that each new generation of electronic products packs more performance into a smaller package than the product it replaced. No matter whether it's a remote industrial sensor node or the next smart wearable device, space is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. Aimed at IoT and personal electronics applications, the TLV9061 consumes only 0.64 mm2 and is the world's smallest op amp. Something's gotta give. In this case, many things. Fitting the increased capability into a smaller volume requires the designer to make improvements in multiple areas. The three biggest keys to succeeding, however, are to reduce the overall power consumption ...

Nuclear Radiation ... Insidious Polluter

Nuclear Radiation ... Insidious Polluter, February 1972 Popular Electronics - RF CafeCesium-137, iodine-131, carbon-14, plutonium-239, strontium-90, uranium-235, and the list goes on. These and other radioisotopes associated with nuclear material are the result of explosions, medical treatments, laboratory experiments, or in some cases naturally occurring deposits. Regardless of the source, most people, including me, cringe at the thought of being exposed to the insidious effects of the cell-altering energy they possess. Ionizing radiation is the dangerous type of radiation due to its ability to dislodge electrons from atoms, and in the process forming cancerous cell mutations or killing the cells altogether. Researchers in the early days of radiation discovery experienced sometimes gruesome maladies as a result of the handling isotopes. Some knowingly subjected themselves to harmful doses ...

Saelig Introduces UHF Narrow Band Multi-Channel Transceiver

Saelig Introduces UHF Narrow Band Multi-Channel Transceiver - RF CafeSaelig has introduced the STD-302Z 434 MHz Narrow Band Multi-Channel Transceiver - a half-duplex UHF radio module that is suitable for industrial remote control and telemetry applications operating in the 434 MHz ISM band. The STD-302Z is designed with SAW filter and narrow-band filtering techniques to provide reliable data communication in industrial situations where interference rejection and practical distance range operation are required. Offering 10 mW of RF power from its PLL-synthesized transmitter with programmable RF channels, the STD-302Z's double superheterodyne receiver sensitivity is specified down to -119 dBm ...

Please Thank QuinStar for Helping to Deliver RF Cafe

QuinStar Technology mm-Wave Products - RF CafeQuinStar Technology designs and manufactures mm-wave products for communication, scientific, and test applications along with providing microelectronic assembly, rapid prototyping, and mass customization. Amplifiers, Oscillators, Switches, Attenuators, Circulators, Isolators, Filters, Waveguide, Antennas, Phase Shifters, Transceivers, Mixers, Detectors. QuinStar specializes in cryogenic amplifiers, circulators, and isolators. Please visit QuinStar today to see how they can help your project ...

Smaller, More Efficient Radio Frequency Transformers

Smaller, More Efficient Radio Frequency Transformers - RF Cafe"The future of electronic devices lies partly within the 'internet of things' - the network of devices, vehicles and appliances embedded within electronics to enable connectivity and data exchange. University of Illinois engineers are helping realize this future by minimizing the size of one notoriously large element of integrated circuits used for wireless communication - the transformer. Three-dimensional rolled-up radio frequency transformers take 10 to 100 times less space, perform better when the power transfer ratio increases and have a simpler fabrication process than their 2-D progenitors, according to a paper detailing their design ..."

Monday 21

Electronics Still Thrives as a Hobby

Lou Frenzel Electronics Hobby - RF CafeLou Frenzel has posted a good article titled, "Electronics Still Thrives as a Hobby" on the Electronic Design website. While attending his local Maker Faire in Austin, Texas, he discovered some statistics on the cross-section of electronic hobbyists as gathered by the Jameco Electronics supply company, who sponsored the event. He expressed surprise at the average age of participants, but it actually comports well with that of many - if not most - hands-on (not including game controller and smartphone button pushing) types of hobbies these days ...

RF Cafe Morse Code Player Working Again

Morse Code page - RF CafeIf you look just beneath the RF Cafe page title, you will see the Morse code dits and dahs that represent this website's name. Click on it and you will be taken to the Morse Code information page, and therein is an audio player that will sound out the code for you. The music file was originally created in MIDI format in order to keep it as small as possible. At the time, all the web browsers supported MIDI files. Times have changed and now most browsers will not support them. I finally got around to converting the file to MP3 format, so now the embedded player will provide the intended code transmission ...

DARPA Project to Examine THz for Wireless Communications

DARPA Project to Examine THz for Wireless Communications - RF Cafe"It may be too early for the wireless industry to make major investments in spectrum above 95 GHz, but it is the right time for researchers to take a closer look at the spectrum and see where it might lead. ComSenTer is a newly formed hub for advanced wireless and sensing research founded by a consortium of industrial partners and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). ComSenTer researchers are developing technologies for the high gigahertz and terahertz spectrum that present opportunities for imaging and sensing capabilities at transmission speeds that are largely unheard ..."

Electronic Countermeasures - The Art of Jamming

Electronic Countermeasures - the Art of Jamming, December 1959 Electronics World - RF CafeDo you own one of those RFID-blocking wallets to keep your credit cards from being read unawares? If so, you are engaging in electronic countermeasures. Anyone interested in the history of electronic countermeasures (ECM) and electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) will benefit from this 1959 Electronics World article. ECM has been practiced as early as World War I when wireless communications was first used for military purposes. ECCM, of course, followed immediately on its heels. Electronic countermeasures range from simple jamming of receivers to emitting spoofing signals that fool receiver. In extreme cases ECM can destroy receiver front-ends by overdriving and burning out circuitry. ECM and ECCM ...

Thanks to Rigol for Their Continued Support

Thanks to Rigol for Their Continued Support - RF CafePlease express your appreciation to Rigol Technologies for their support of RF Cafe. Rigol's extensive line of products includes digital and mixed signal o-scopes, spectrum analyzers and RF signal generators, arbitrary waveform generators, power supplies, sensitive measurement products, and data acquisition systems. Applications include applications such as technical education, embedded design, WiFi integration, EMC, and manufacturing. Backed with a 3 year warranty and a 30 day no questions asked return policy ...

Normally-Off GaN Nanowire Transistors w/Inverted P-Channel

Normally-Off GaN Nanowire Transistors w/Inverted P-Channel - RF Cafe"Researchers based in Germany claim the first vertical GaN nanowire MOSFETs with an inverted channel, allowing a positive 2.5 V threshold voltage and giving enhancement-mode normally-off behavior. The high threshold was achieved by using p-GaN as the channel material. With 0 V on the gate, the channel blocks current flow. Increasing the gate potential inverts the channel, increasing the electron density and allowing transport. The team from Technische Universität Braunschweig, Universität Kassel and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt sees advantages from GaN ..."