ISSUE DATE: OCTOBER 2009  OPTIONS
Communications

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October 2009 - In This Issue

[Cover Story]
Compact PLLs Integrate VCOs
Low-noise local oscillators (LOs) are critical to many RF/microwave systems in commercial, industrial, and military applications. Simply put, the higher the performance of the LO, the better the performance of the system in terms of receive signal sensitivity and bit error rate (BER) capability. One of the most common methods of generating a stable LO source is to combine a low-phase-noise voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with a stable reference oscillator to form a...  — Hittite Microwave

[News]
Ozmo Devices Funded For WPAN Growth
Wireless personal-area networks (WPANs) offer practical alternatives to the tangle of cables for such addon personal-computer (PC) components as mice, keyboards, headsets, and the computer itself. Low-power WPAN developer Ozmo Devices is in a better position to serve WPAN markets, thanks to an additional $7.5 million in Series C funding from its investors—Granite Ventures, Intel Capital, and...  — Jack Browne

[News]
Enhanced Connectivity Drives Wireless Standards
Five or more years ago, it seemed that a new wireless standard was being proposed almost monthly. Much debate has focused on which standards would outlast the others, proving themselves to be the optimal solutions for given applications. Yet the landscape has not changed very much since then. The IEEE 802.11x standards continue to evolve to meet the needs of the wireless-local-area-network (WLAN) market. Bluetooth has cornered the wireless-headset...  — Nancy Friedrich

[News]
Some Older ICs Don’t Fade Away
Product life cycles can be short, particularly with certain semiconductors. As any computer owner knows, for example, memory chips continue to grow in density and drop in cost, quickly rendering older memory devices obsolete. Short product life cycles pose daunting challenges for system designers, especially for commercial and military systems that rely on the availability of some devices for a decade or longer. Fortunately, ...  — Jack Browne

[Design Features]
Analyzing WiMAX Modulation Quality
Advanced wireless communications standards rely on complex modulation schemes to achieve high bandwidth efficiency. WiMAX, for example, employs the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique.1 Due to many challenges with such complex modulation formats, sophisticated simulation and verification tools and approaches are required to achieve optimum system-level performance. For example, the transmit modulation accuracy depends...  — Bill Wu

[Design Features]
Form GaAs/InGaAs Lasers On Virtual Ge
Reliable GaAs-based optoelectronic devices, such as GaAs/InGaAs quantum well lasers, can be realized on silicon substrates using several advanced techniques. Fabrication involves first forming germanium (Ge) stripes on a silicon dioxide (SiO2) trench-patterned silicon substrate via aspect ratio trapping (ART), where any defects originating from the Ge/Si interface are trapped by laterally confining sidewalls. Defects arising from above the...  — J. Bai , et al.

[Design Features]
Extract Petroleum With Microwaves
Petroleum can be extracted from tar sand and oil shale given an appropriate microwave applicator. These two materials are abundant on the North American continent and represent large reserves of low-viscosity crude petroleum. Microwave technology may provide a relatively cost-effective means of extracting the crude petroleum from these deposits of tar sand and oil shale. The most commercially accepted method of in situ extraction of...  — Dr. A. Kumar

[Design Features]
Digital RF Processor Serves Plethora Of Cellular Systems
Digital RF processors (DRFs) offer the potential of meeting the requirements for a wide range of cellular telephone wireless standards without significant changes in design and hardware. A DRP design is detailed here, with digital receive and transmit sections, although one of the key components within the DRF is the frequency synthesizer, which employs a novel approach to phaselock- loop (PLL) implementation. Newer cellular telephones are...  — Louis Fan Fei , et al.

[Product Technology]
Data Converters Process RF/MW Signals
Product life cycles can be short, particularly with certain semiconductors. As any computer owner knows, for example, memory chips continue to grow in density and drop in cost, quickly rendering older memory devices obsolete. Short product life cycles pose daunting challenges for system designers, especially for commercial and military systems that rely on the availability of some devices for a decade or longer. Fortunately, Lansdale Semiconductor...  — Jack Browne

[Product Technology]
New EDA Software Versions Boast Broad Enhancements
Electronic-design-automation (EDA) software tools have become the voltmeter and the slide rule to the modern high-frequency engineer. But unlike those two hardware tools, software can be updated for improved performance, as is the case in recent releases from Applied Wave Research [AWR] for Version 2009 of the firm’s widely used Microwave Office design environment and Version 2009 of the Visual System Simulator (VSS) software tools. Both new software versions ...  — Jack Browne

[Product Technology]
Analyzers Scrutinize Signals To 26.5 GHz
Microwave signal analysis once brought to mind a slow-sweeping spectrum analyzer with unsteady cathode- ray-tube (CRT) screen to display signal traces barely above the noise floor. By leveraging performance advancements in semiconductors, digital signal processing, and analog components, however, Agilent Technologies has given rise to its PXA series of high-performance signal analyzers that keep the noise floor low and signal levels high enough...  — Jack Browne

[Product Technology]
Multimode Transceiver Eliminates SAW Filters
Wireless device designers seek increased functionality but without added size, especially when supporting handset designs with multimode, multiple-band capabilities. Fujitsu Microelectronics America has responded to the needs of these designers with the functionpacked model MB86L01A multimode third-generation (3G) cellular radio transceiver, which is fabricated without 3G transmit and receive interstage surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) filters and ...  — Jack Browne

[Editorial]
Firms Prepare For The Unthinkable
For those who commute into New York City on a regular basis, thoughts of September 11, 2001 are never far away. The increased ever-present police presence at mass-transit facilities together with signs and announcements about “staying alert” serve as a constant reminder. Lest we forget, new plots are sometimes unearthed and made public. On September 11 of this year, for example, one group was allegedly planning to blow up a variety of NYC buildings. Because of the...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Feedback]
Feedback
I  read the September issue of Microwaves & RF, especially the editorial on the importance of military applications to the high-frequency electronics industry (“Military Vital To RF Industry”) and the News Report on how improvements in component performance are impacting the effectiveness of military electronic systems (“...  — Various Readers

[The Front End]
Standards Are Set For Wireless Sensor Networks And Energy Harvesting
THE POTENTIALLY HUGE MARKET for wireless sensor networks (WSN) is being enabled by energy harvesters, new energy storage solutions, and ultra-low-power electronics. For many applications, the market for WSN may involve billions of sensors that could realize 20-yr. life spans with no maintenance. However, according to the report, â??Wireless Sensor Networks and Energy Harvesting Standardsâ?? by Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx, these systems need to be appropriately...  — Dawn Hightower

[The Front End]
GSMA Endorses Integrated Mobile Broadcast
LONDON, UK—The GSMA has endorsed a new Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard dubbed Integrated Mobile Broadcast (IMB). This standard will allow the group’s members to accelerate the adoption of mobile data and broadcast services worldwide. The IMB technology enables the spectrally efficient delivery of broadcast services based on techniques that are aligned with existing frequency-division-duplexing (FDD) wideband code division multiple access...  — Dawn Hightower

[The Front End]
Raytheon Uses Millimeter Waves To Pasteurize Food
TEWKSBURY, MA—A pasteurization technology developed by Raytheon Co. can be integrated into the food supply chain, resulting in energy reduction for the food production market and healthier and safer products for consumers. Essentially, this technology delivers concentrated energy to the surface of the food, which significantly reduces the amount of energy that is wasted in current pasteurization methods. Unlike current solutions, this technology does not...  — Dawn Hightower

[Financial News]
TIA Maps Out Market Competition Plan
The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to increase the amount of available commercial spectrum. In doing so, it will support research and development that will produce innovative wireless technologies. The TIA also wants the FCC to embrace pro-competitive regulations that will drive wireless market competition, increase investment and innovation, and speed new wireless products to market. ...  — Dawn Hightower

[Company News]
Company News
CONTRACTS Aeroflex—Has won a five-year, $40.5-million contract with the US Marine Corps to supply Ground Radio Maintenance Automatic Test Systems (GRMATS). Aeroflex will supply its newly developed test platform, the 7200 Configurable Automated Test Set (CATS). This commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) platform tests software-defined radios including military tactical radios. The test platform will be adopted for testing new digital and...  — Dawn Hightower

[People]
People
Northrop Grumman Elects Wesley Bush CEO/President WESLEY G. BUSH has been elected President and Chief Executive Officer by the Northrop Grumman Board of Directors. Bush joined the company in 1987 and most recently served as President and Chief Operating Officer. Ronald D. Sugar, Chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman Corp. since 2003, plans to retire after 29 years of service to Northrop Grumman and its...  — Dawn Hightower

[Educational Meetings]
Educational Meetings
MEETINGS Aero & Defense Test 09/ITEA Annual Symposium For aerospace and defense research& development and operational test and evaluation professionals Sept. 1- October 2009 (Baltimore, MD) For more information, visit www.aerodefensetest.com Contact: Ian Stone, Event Director Editorial enquiries: ...  — Dawn Hightower

[R&D Roundup]
Cardiograph Extracts Time-Domain Heart Signals
PREVIOUS RESEARCH TACKLED the extraction of electro-cardiograph (ECG) –like waveform signals from a microwave-cardiograph (MCG). Those signals were analyzed in both the frequency and time domains to obtain heart-motion features. Recently, this research evolved to focus on the extraction mechanism and the analysis of the captured MCG graphs, thanks to the efforts of Jun Zheng and Yong Huang from East China Normal University together with Jian Qian from Nanjing...  — Nancy Friedrich

[R&D Roundup]
On-Body Radio Channel Is Modeled At 900 MHz
A GROWING VARIETY OF BODY PARAMETERS are monitored by mobile, compact, intercommunicating sensors that make up wireless bodyarea networks (WBANs). To design efficient WBANs, engineers must know the radiation and propagation in close proximity of human bodies. Recently, the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) technique was used to perform on-body radio channel modeling at 900 MHz by Hanae Terchoune, Azeddine Gati, Albert Cortel Carrasco, Man Faï Wong, and Joe...  — Nancy Friedrich

[R&D Roundup]
VCO Cuts Phase Noise While Maintaining Tuning Range
GROWTH IN THE WIRELESS-COMMUNICATIONS industry has fed the demand for more available channels in mobile-communications applications. This trend, in turn, has placed stricter requirements on the phase noise of voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs). At Korea’s Soongsil University, Jaewon Choi and Chulhun Seo have developed a VCO that reduces phase noise without lowering the frequency tuning range. This VCO offers phase noise of –127.5 to –126.33 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz ...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Application Notes]
Apply Proper Bias Sequencing With GaN HEMTs
SPECIAL ATTENTIOIN IS NEEDED for the biasing of high-power RF devices—especially if they are based on gallium nitride (GaN). Specifically, instabilities and oscillations can be minimized in GaN devices by enabling large current drains with small voltage drops. GaN decoupling circuits also must be properly biased so that interference with RF matching circuitry is reduced while limiting the influence of linearity on the device. The issues associated with biasing,...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Application Notes]
Measurement Equipment Readies For LTE Rollout
THIS PAST JUNE, the latest version of Release 8 of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) was unveiled. Many expect Long-Term Evolution (LTE) to be the long-term, high-speed data solution for all 3GPP-based wireless networks, such as GSM and WCDMA. Although LTE can be built on major carriers’ existing infrastructure, it differs from current technologies. To help engineers grasp the basic aspects of LTE and how system performance will be measured, Rohde...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editor's Choice]
GPS Chip Offers –160-dBm Tracking Sensitivity
TO SATISFY GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM (GPS) solutions’ demand for higher sensitivity, long battery life, and instant location capture, the u-blox 6 CMOS chip vows to enable significantly extended battery life. By extending the last chip generation’s acquisition engine to over 2 million correlators with acquisition under 1 s, this chip exhibits stronger acquisition capability of weak signals and a shorter time to first fix. It boasts –147 dBm acquisition sensitivity...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editor's Choice]
50-V LDMOS Transistors Target TV Broadcast Transmitters
TO SERVE TV TRANSMITTERS employing both analog and digital modulation formats, the MRF6V3090N RF power LDMOS transistor delivers 90 W peak output power at 1-dB compression with greater than 40 percent efficiency through the ultra-high-frequency (UHF) band. As a linear driver, the MRF6V3090N achieves 21 dB power gain and 12 percent drain efficiency with an average output power of 4.5 W based on a DVB-T OFDM signal. The transistor offers an adjacentchannel power...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editor's Choice]
RF Interface Front End Operates To 100 MHz 800 To 2400 MHz
TO MEET THE NEEDS OF APPLICATIONS like remote medical reading and pet identification, a new integrated circuit (IC) spans 50 Hz to 100 MHz. The RF interface front end offers a maximum receive data rate of 120 kb/s and a maximum transmit data rate of 5 kb/s. The IC operates from 2.4 to 4 V with a maximum 1.0 µA supply current. Its output current is typically 50 µA. The front end requires 36 µW minimum input power with a maximum of 300 µW. For low-power processors under 50...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editor's Choice]
Software Uses High-Performance Computing To Tackle EM Problems
IN ITS NEWEST iteration, an engineering simulation software vows to help engineers solve complex electromagnetic (EM) field problems quickly, accurately, and efficiently. HFSS 12.0 includes domain decomposition, a highperformance- computing (HPC) enhancement that allows engineers to address problems containing hundreds of millions of unknowns. This new technology allows efficient and highly scalable parallelized simulations across multiple...  — Nancy Friedrich

[RF Primer]
Microwave Antennas Come In Many Forms
Antennas for RF and microwave applications form a group of products and technologies that is as diverse as any in the industry. After all, any system that operates by means of the transmission and reception of electromagnetic (EM) energy relies on transmit and receive antennas, and this means designing antennas that meet the frequency, power-handling, and size requirements of that system. Antenna configurations range from a wire to a complex...  — Jack Browne