ISSUE DATE: SEPTEMBER 2008  OPTIONS
Military Electronics

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September 2008 - In This Issue

[Cover Story]
Tiny SDLVAs Tackle 20-GHz Bandwidth
Military system designers are often faced with processing input signals over a wide dynamic range. Many systems, such as direct-finding (DF) receivers, electronicintelligence (ELINT) receivers, electroniccountermeasures (ECM) systems, radar warning receivers (RWRs), and even in commercial and military instrumentation, it is often necessary to capture and analyze narrow pulses with large variations in amplitude. Traditionally, the successive detection log ...  — Jon R. Firth

[News]
Technology Critical To Modern Warfare
Laser weapons are among the advanced technologies being incorporated into next-generation weapons systems. In addition, dynamically guided missile systems, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will take part in a not-so-distant future battlefield where opposing forces will ultimately try to save soldiers’ lives by squaring off against each other’s technologies. For example, Northrop Grumman (...  — Jack Browne

[News]
RF Transistors Add Power, Subtract Heat
High-power RF transistor developers face the constant challenge of dissipating massive amounts of heat from small devices in order to achieve higher output-power levels. Ideally, the energy put into an RF transistor would be converted directly to RF output power, but such 100-percent drain efficiency can only be achieved in an ideal world. In reality, more than one-half of the power supplied to an RF transistor must typically be dissipated as heat, ...  — Jack Browne

[Design Features]
Design A Scanning RSSI Receiver For WiMAX Measurements
WiMAX broadband wireless technology offers the promise of untethered, highspeed Internet access in supported service areas. Based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, WiMAX is specified for use in a wide range of frequencies through 66 GHz, with a variety of operational profiles differentiated by frequency band, channel bandwidth, and duplexing mode.1-3 WiMAX has been developed rapidly from inception to deployment. According to a recent (January 2008)...  — Zhengbo Jiang , et al.

[Design Features]
Achieving Amplitude Accuracy In Modern Spectrum Analyzers
Spectrum analyzers are among the most versatile of RF/microwave measurement tools, with signal power among the most common measurement made with the instruments. Traditionally, the combination of a power meter and power sensor has been the measurement tool of choice for its well-characterized traceability path back to reference standards at national standards laboratories. But modern spectrum analyzers have made dramatic improvements in amplitude...  — Joe Gorin

[Design Features]
Setting Strategies for Transmission Lines
Transmission lines are often taken for granted in the design of high-frequency circuits and integrated circuits (ICs), since the focus is often on getting signals into and from an active device. But by understanding the capabilities of different microwave/RF transmission lines and how to optimize them, design iterations, time, and unnecessary cost can be saved from a project. Part 1 of this two-part article will show how a careful design process should...  — Leo G. Maloratsky

[Design Features]
Uneven DGS Cells Construct Compact LPF
Defected-ground-structure (DGS) cells can serve as effective building blocks for high-performance, high-frequency filters. Microstrip filters are widely used in microwave and millimeterwave systems and, in particular, low-pass filters (LPFs) are essential components in modern communications systems.1 The increasingly challenging requirements of such systems calls for LPFs with increasingly improved performance for in-band and out-of-band ...  — Xiao Qun Chen , et al.

[Product Technology]
LDMOS FETS Serve 330 W For L-Band Radar Systems
Solid-state power for commercial wireless base-station transceivers has been dominated by the laterally diffused metal-oxide-semiconductor (LDMOS) field-effect transistor (FET) since the device first became available in the 1980s. In spite of its ruggedness and attractive characteristics such as high linearity, gain, and efficiency, the siliconbased device has not had the same impact on L-band radar and avionics applications. Still, the MRF6V14300H 50-V LDMOS...  — Pierre Piel

[Product Technology]
Multipurpose Impedance Tuner Is Portable Solution
Impedance tuners are unique but vital tools that can provide invaluable insight into the behavior of active component designs, such as amplifiers, as well as passive circuits, such as antennas. Precision impedance tuners are based on sliding mechanical probes, with the impedance shown to a component or device under test determined by the position of the sliding probes. While such impedance tuners can represent a major capital investment for many ...  — Jack Browne

[Product Technology]
Compact BAW Filters Help Separate WiMAX And WLAN
Wireless networks bring a great deal of convenience to the home, office, and factory, although available spectrum has always been a valuable commodity. In the case of wireless local area networks (WLANs) and high-speed WiMAX networks, for example, devices occupy the same general bandwidth centered at around 2.5 GHz. To keep things straight, Skyworks Solutions has developed a pair of high-performance filters based on bulk-acoustic-wave (BAW)...  — Jack Browne

[Editorial]
Transistors Depend On Thermal Flow
Thermal management is a key phrase tossed about by solid-state amplifier designers. With the increasing power levels possible from solid-state RF devices, heat dissipation becomes a main limiting factor in the size of an amplifier, since too much heat can dramatically shorten a transistor’s lifetime. Earlier this year, for example, Freescale Semiconductor (www.freescale.com) introduced its model ...  — Jack Browne

[Feedback]
Feedback
Metamaterials and the possibility of negative refraction are interesting, but before industries based on classical and quantum electrodynamics can take them seriously, questions of faster-than-light propagation must be addressed. A negative value of n is required so that the velocity reverses Snell’s Law of refraction, but this cannot be valid with modulus of n < 1 and dispersion curves which indicate that all the velocities are faster than the...  — Various Readers

[The Front End]
Report Projects GaAs Market To Hit $5 Billion By 2011
BOSTON, MA—A five-year report prepared by market-research specialist Strategy Analytics (www.strategyanalytics.com), “GaAs Industry Forecast 2007-2012,” predicts that the year-on-year growth of the gallium arsenide (GaAs) industry will slow to 9 percent in 2008, but that the industry is set to break the $5 billion mark in 2011. The report projects that overall the GaAs device market will grow at a...  — Jack Browne

[The Front End]
WiMAX Forum Applauds India’s Auction Of Frequencies For WiMAX Technology
PORTLAND, OR —The WiMAX Forum (www.wimaxforum.org) commended the Department of Telecommunications of India for the allocation and upcoming auction relating to the 2.3- and 2.5-GHz frequency bands. The availability of these key bands for WiMAX technology in India will provide its consumers with much needed broadband connectivity across the diverse economic and social needs of the population. The auction will ...  — Jack Browne

[The Front End]
CSR Awards BRTF Status By Bluetooth SIG
Cambridge, UK—CSR (www.csr.com) has achieved recognition by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) as a Bluetooth Recognized Test Facility (BRTF). CSR’s test facilities are now regarded as having developed to the point where it can entirely test its own firmware, rather than using an external testing house. BRTF status means that CSR can help customers get their products to market faster, thereby reinforcing CSR’s...  — Jack Browne

[The Front End]
Kudos
WOBURN, MAâ??Skyworks Solutions, Inc. (www.skyworksinc.com) has shipped more than two billion power amplifier (PA) modules since product inception near the turn of the decade. In addition to the PAs, the firm also incorporates PA circuitry in its complete front-end modules (FEMs) for cellular communications equipment and is a supplier to each of the worldâ??s top five cellular handset original-equipment...  — Jack Browne

[Financial News]
Financial News
PROXIM WIRELESS CORP., a provider of end-to-end broadband wireless systems, released its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008. GAAP revenues for the quarter ended June 30, 2008 were $15.1, an increase of approximately 47% in total GAAP revenue from $10.2 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, and a decrease of 11% from $16.9 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2007. According to Pankaj Manglik, president and CEO of Proxim...  — Dawn Hightower

[Company News]
Company News
CONTRACTS DataPath, Inc.— Has been awarded $1.9 million to continue providing field services for DataPath Deployable Ku Band Earth Terminals (DKETs) at a communications hub in Iraq. The DKET systems were built and installed by DataPath. The US military uses these systems as satellite-communications (satcom) hubs, as they deliver high-bandwidth capabilities on the battlefield. The contracting authority for the award, which...  — Dawn Hightower

[People]
People
Industry Veteran Shpock Becomes Vitec President STEPHEN W. SHPOCK, a twenty-four-year microwave industry veteran has joined The Vitec Group RF Systems (VGRFS) as president and managing director. VGRFS is a business unit of the Broadcast Systems Division of The Vitec Group, plc., comprised of Microwave Services Corp. (MSC), Nucomm, and RF Central. Shpock will oversee all three of these U.S.-based companies and be responsible for their...  — Dawn Hightower

[Educational Meetings]
Educational Meetings
Short Courses Besser Associates Short Courses RF Transceiver Architecture, Design and Evaluation Nov.17-21, 2008 (Dallas, TX) Applied RF Techniques for Modern Radio Design Nov. 17-21, 2008 (Dallas, TX ) Wireless System Design and Simulation Dec. 8-12, 2008 (San Jose, CA) Short Range Coexistence RF Transceiver Design Techniques ...  — Dawn Hightower

[R&D Roundup]
Filter Covers 87.9 Percent Bandwidth Over 430 To 1105 MHz
Mobile-coMMunications services require a filter’s tuning range to be extended by at least 2:1. Yet such a wide tuning range often yields increased insertion loss at the lowest resonant frequency. To compensate for this insertion loss, designers can leverage an active filter with negative resistance characteristics. Unfortunately, such a filter will require additional area and power consumption compared to passive designs. To solve this dilemma, a...  — Jack Browne

[R&D Roundup]
FETD Simulation Depicts In-Building Radar
By simulating the radar pulses directed at buildings, engineers can better understand complex scattering mechanisms. They also can provide benchmark data for evaluating imaging algorithms. Previous work on wall-imaging algorithms has been rooted in techniques like synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) imaging, time reversal, the boundary scattering transform, and beamforming with nonlinear inverse scattering algorithms. More recently, large-scale,...  — Jack Browne

[R&D Roundup]
Filter Enables Control Of Resonant Frequency
Mobile-communications systems have inspired the increasing development of high-dielectricconstant (K) microwave substrates. With a bandpass filter fabricated on a high-K piezoelectric substrate using an interdigital capacitor and bond-wire inductor, researchers hope to eliminate the inductive effect of wire bonds. The individuals behind this effort are: Min-Hang Weng from Taiwanâ??s National Nano Device Laboratories; Ru-Yuan Yang from National ...  — Jack Browne

[Application Notes]
Forming A Voltage-Tuned Microwave Phase Shifter
Phase shifters are critical components in scanned phased-array antenna systems for both commercial and military applications. Phase shifters can also be combined with transmitter power amplifiers to improve system linearity in cellular communications networks. By using different phase-shifting elements in an antenna array, a beam can be effectively steered electronically, rather than mechanically shifting an antenna. Phase shifters are traditionally based on...  — Jack Browne

[Editor's Choice]
Field-Replaceable SMAs Cut Loss From DC To 26.5 GHz
A LINE OF RUGGED, field-replaceable 50-ohm SMA connectors features low insertion loss through DC to 26.5 GHz, with usable performance through 31 GHz. The connectors feature passivated 303 stainless-steel bodies with gold-plated center contacts and PTFE insulators for superior voltage-handling capabilities. They exhibit VSWR of 1.07:1 or better from DC to 11 GHz, 1.25:1 or better through 20 GHz, and 1.38:1 or better through 26.5 GHz. The rugged coaxial...  — Jack Browne

[Editor's Choice]
Transceiver-On-Chip Serves ZigBee Systems
THE ZIC2410 SERIES of transceivers on a chip are designed for IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee applications. The 2.4-to-2.483- GHz RF transceiver, which includes an 8051-based 8-b microprocessor, combines robust +8-dBm transmit output power with receiver sensitivity of -98 dBm, to deliver link-budget performance of 106 dB. The transceiver consumes less than 33.2 mA in receive mode and about 30 mA when transmitting at 0 dBm; standby current consumption is a mere 0.3 microamps. The ZIC2410...  — Jack Browne

[Editor's Choice]
Oscillator Tunes From 1000 To 1500 MHz
MODEL CVCO55CW-1000-1500 is a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) that operates from 1000 to 1500 MHz with a control voltage range of 0.5 to 4.5 V. The low-noise VCO achieves typical phase noise of -95 dBc/Hz offset 10 kHz from the carrier, with typical second-harmonic suppression of -15 dBc. The compact VCO is supplied in an industry-standard 0.5 x 0.5-in. surface-mount-technology (SMT) housing. It is designed for a supply voltage of +3 VDC with maximum...  — Jack Browne

[Editor's Choice]
Double-Balanced Mixer Converts 11 To 20 GHz
MODEL HMC-C051 is a passive double-balanced mixer that is ideal for point-to-point & point-to-multipoint radio, test equipment, laboratory and military applications from 11 to 20 GHz. The HMC-C051, which can be used as an upconverter or a downconverter, is supplied in a miniature hermetic module. It features an intermediatefrequency (IF) bandwidth of DC to 6 GHz. The mixer suffers only 7-dB conversion loss, and achieves 43-dB isolation between the local-oscillator (LO) and RF...  — Jack Browne

[Defense Electronics Special Section]
Converters Carry VNA To 325 GHz
Millimeter-wave components are used in numerous radar systems and even in some guidance and tracking applications, although test equipment choices at frequencies above 30 GHz are somewhat limited. A few additional options in testing millimeter-wave components were added recently by long-time test-and-measurement-equipment supplier Rohde & Schwarz with the  rm’s introduction of a line of millimeter-wave frequency converters for its high-performance vector...  — Jack Browne

[Defense Electronics Special Section]
Blurring The Lines Between Video Games And Battle Simulators
The “affordable Army” of the future—in contrast to the invested expense of the US Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program—will depend upon a greater use of technologies developed for commercial pro t and adapted to military applications. Commonly known as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products, and by some companies as the more rugged-sounding military-off-the-shelf (MOTS) products, hardware and software sold as COTS (or MOTS) quality implies that it is “good...  — Jack Browne

[Defense Electronics Special Section]
Tracking The Technologies That Are Forging Future Systems
Electronic technologies can provide a tactical edge in critical military systems, such as communications, electronic countermeasures, electronic-warfare (EW), and radar systems. The fundamental techniques used in some platforms, such as communications systems, undergo gradual, evolutionary progress in terms of better receiver noise figures, more robust solid-state transmitters, and more efficient modulation formats. But the changes being made in other ...  — Jack Browne

[Defense Electronics Special Section]
Fitting Commercial Goods To Military Requirements
Almost a decade ago, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) came to the conclusion that investing in electronic technologies for military applications alone was an expensive proposition. At the same time, healthy investments by electronics manufacturers to complete in the commercial sector were having little impact on the performance of military electronic systems. The solution was to use more commercial hardware and software in military system ...  — Jack Browne

[Defense Electronics Special Section]
Understanding SAW Technology For Filters
Surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) filters are suitable for a wide range of commercial and military applications. Such  lters can be made extremely small and durable, and they provide high rejection of unwanted signals. To learn more about them, a short but concise primer on SAW technology can be found on the Phonon Corp. web site at ( www.phonon.com). The tutorial article explains that there are two different types of SAW  lters:...  — Jack Browne

[Defense Electronics Special Section]
Products
Gate-Drive MOSFETs Are Rad-Hardened The RAD-Hard line of Logic Level gate drive power MOSFETs has been expanded with the addition of 60-, 100-, and 250-V MOSFETs that are suitable for switch-mode power supplies (SMPS), satellite power distribution systems, and resonant power converters in highreliability applications. In contrast to bipolar devices, these MOSFETs can be driven directly from CMOS and TTL-level logic circuitry, simplifying many...  — Jack Browne