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May 2008 LTCC Arms Mixer For 7.3-To-20.0-GHz Systems Frequency conversion is one of the more critical functions within the RF/microwave portion of a highfrequency system. In spite of continuing advances in the speed and bit resolution of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), they rely on a frequency mixer to translate high-frequency signals within their bandwidth range. The model SIM-24MH+ frequency mixer from Mini-Circuits (Brooklyn,... — Mini-Circuits' Engineering Dept. May 2008 Novel Approaches Vow To Upset The Status Quo Despite the constant innovation in the microwave industry, many products are rooted in the same technologies. Gallium arsenide (GaAs), for example, is at the heart of many of today’s advanced amplifiers and other active components. Amidst this seeming status quo, however, lurk new innovations that could change the way that many products are made. These “disruptive technologies” can take the form of brand-new, completely novel approaches that have never... — Nancy Friedrich May 2008 Large-Signal Approach Yields Low-Noise VHF/UHF Oscillators Last month, the first half of this article introduced the large-signal approach to oscillator design. This concluding section will offer some VHF/ UHF design examples, including the 144-MHz oscillator first presented last month in Part 1. The component values for the 144-MHz oscillator (C1, C2, C3, C4, and L) can be calculated in the following way. First, the values of capacitors C1 and... — Ajay Kumar Poddar , et al. May 2008 LDMOS FET Drives UHF TV Transmitters Television broadcast systems in the ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) region from 470 to 860 MHz will make the transition from analog to digital technology next year, and broadcasters are taking advantage of digital performance while attempting to keep equipment costs low. Since one of the highest cost components is the transmitter, it is no surprise that the MRF6VP3450H 50 V LDMOS FET from Freescale Semiconductor (... — Jeannette Wilson May 2008 High-Dynamic-Range Mixer Upconverts 1.5 To 3.8 GHz Active frequency mixers provide the frequency-translation function required in modern communications systems, with the added benefit of conversion gain in contrast to the conversion loss of passive mixers. Model LT5579 from Linear Technology (www.linear.com) is such an active mixer, designed for upconversion applications from 1.5 to 3.8 GHz. It offers enough bandwidth to cover the 1.9-GHz cellular... — Jack Browne May 2008 Custom Synthesizers Range 144 To 4500 MHz Frequency synthesizers provide the fixed and tunable signals for local oscillators (LOs) in a wide range of commercial and military communications systems, including in wireless base stations. Technologies for creating frequency synthesizers are diverse, from traditional analog methods using phase-locked loops (PLLs) to direct digital synthesizers (DDSs) that rely on high-speed digital-to-analog converters (DACs) to transform digital input words into... — Jack Browne May 2008 Synthesized LO Spans 0.05 To 20.48 GHz Direct-digital synthesis (DDS) is capable of impressive frequency and amplitude switching speeds and, depending upon the bit resolution of the DDS architecture, extremely fine frequency and phase control. DDS technology is the basis for the WaveCor line of high-performance microwave signal sources from ITT Microwave Systems (Lowell, MA), notably the firm’s latest addition, the WaveCor synthesized local oscillator (SLO) model 20.0 frequency ... — Jack Browne May 2008 IDS Microchip Revolutionizes RFID Labeling/Tracking WOLLERAU, SWITZERLAND—A radio-frequencyidentification (RFID) chip is promising to make it practical for companies to automatically track, monitor, time-stamp, and record information about goods in any supply-chain or cold-chain transport on land, sea, or sky. Such goods may range from expensive fragile components, medical goods, and pharmaceuticals to bags of bananas . This innovation in affordable, automatic data-logging RFID applications hails from IDS Microchip... — Dawn Hightower April 2008 Eight-Channel ADCs Cut Wireless Power Needs Multichannel wireless applications require a generous complement of signal-processing components. To save space and power in such systems, Texas Instruments has packed a line of eight-channel analogto- digital converters (ADCs) in tiny 9 x 9 mm 64-lead QFN-64 housings. The ADS528x line of data converters offers as much as 12-b resolution at sampling rates to 65 MSamples/s with industry-low power consumption. The ADS528x family includes ... — Jack Browne March 90-nm CMOS Module Advances Mobile WiMAX By leveraging 90-nm CMOS technology, a 15-x-15-mm RF module is able to integrate an RF integrated circuit (RF IC), antenna switches, power amplifier, filters, and oscillator circuit. In doing so, it promises to reduce the form factor of mobile WiMAX devices. The 94-pin MB86K71 operates from three voltages: 1.2, 2.925, and 3.3 V. It covers the 2.496-to-2.69-GHz band. Bandwidth is 5 and 10 MHz. For wireless access, the module relies on 512/1024 Fast Fourier Transform... — Nancy Friedrich February Probe Station Reliably Handles 300-mm Wafers At 45 nm and below, testing geometries must confront many problems related to wafer-level measurements. Front-end processes and equipment must be upgraded to handle new process materials, lower operating voltages, and increasingly complex integrated-circuit (IC) designs. A major investment also must be made at the back end in order for more advanced probing stations to handle low-noise environments, small pad probing, wide-range temperature testing, internal node probing, and multi-site... — Nancy Friedrich February GaN Devices Arm Distributed Amplifier Broadband, high-efficiency power amplifiers serve a wide range of military applications in present and future communications and navigation systems. But amplifier designers are limited in performance by the active devices available to them. Fortunately, the growing availability of wide-bandgap semiconductor devices, such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) transistors, is clearing the way for broadband, high-efficiency power amplifiers... — Anthony Pavio , et al. February RF Semiconductors Take A Variety Of Forms At the roots of almost all of today’s electronic devices lie semiconductors. These integrated circuits (ICs) stem from a variety of semiconductor technologies, which have evolved to satisfy requirements like lower power, less noise, more broadband coverage, or simply the need to squeeze higher integration into smaller, cheaper packages. In reaction to these trends, high-frequency engineers have found new ways to leverage gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride ... — Nancy Friedrich January 2008 Tracking Advances In Probing Mixed-Mode RF Circuitry Refinements in both the measurement probes and the calibration standard structures used with them makes it possible to perform more accurate microwave VNA S-parameter measurements on differential devices. Larry Dangremond Senior Product Manager For Probes and Signals Cascade Microtech, Inc., 2430 NW 206th Ave., Beaverton, OR 97006; (503) 601-1000, FAX: (503) 601-1002, Internet: ... — Larry Dangremond January 2008 GPS And Galileo RF IC Offers 1.4 dB Cascaded Noise BECAUSE THE BASEBAND FUNCTIONALITY is already available, all that is needed for a complete Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver is often an additional GPS radio-frequency integrated circuit (RF IC). The MAX2769E/W, for example, is a global-navigation-satellite-system (GNSS) receiver for GPS (L1 C/A code and P-code), WAAS, EGNOS, Galileo, and GLONASS navigation satellite systems. This RFIC provides a total cascaded noise figure of 1.4 dB and is designed for... — Nancy Friedrich January 2008 High-Power RF Semiconductor Market To Approach $1 Billion By 2012 NEW YORK, NY — The high-power RF semiconductor market is expected to approach $1 billion USD by 2012 according to a new research study from ABI Research. At present, the market is driven by a number of well-established transistor devices, such as silicon laterally diffused metal-oxide-semiconductor (LDMOS) devices, and several emerging RF power technologies, such as silicon-carbide (SiC) and gallium-nitride (GaN) devices. In order to understand the needs of RF... — Jack Browne December 2007 LDMOS Devices Push 1 kW Pulsed Power Jack Browne Technical Director Power amplification is criticalX to a wide range of applicationsX in industrial, medical,X military, and scientificX applications at frequenciesX through 450 MHz. For peakX power levels to 1 kW, usually multipleX transistors and a power combiner areX required. But with recent additions to aX line of N-channel enhancement-mode laterallyX diffused metal-oxide-semiconductorX (LDMOS) transistors, FreescaleX ... — Jack Browne December 2007 Optimizing MMICs For Encapsulated Packages Traditionally, monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) have been designed for function and performance, but without much forethought for package options. Packages were often developed after the circuit, and this "second-thought" approach would result in loss of circuit performance. A more practical approach is to perform accurate design of high-frequency MMICs for the package itself, in particular, for fully encapsulated packages. By... — Matthew R. Coutant , et al. November 2007 Designing MMIC Distributed Amplifiers Distributed amplifiers offer moderate to high gain over broad frequency ranges. They have been designed with transmission lines as input and output feeds for some time. An early paper (1948) by Bill Packard (co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co.) even showed how to use vacuum tubes for amplification in a distributed design.1 As GaAs monolithic-microwave-integrated-circuit (MMIC) technology developed and different types of amplifiers were fabricated ... — John E. Penn November 2007 Developing Designs For CMOS Power Amplifiers Widespread adoption of wireless technology has created market demands for highly integrated circuits, such as a transmitter, receiver, and frequency synthesizer on a single chip. Silicon CMOS technology has made such integration possible with the exception of the power amplifier (PA), which is still typically implemented in non-CMOS technologies. Ideally, silicon CMOS PAs can be developed for tight integration with other wireless building blocks.... — Louis Fan Fei  prev. page
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