============================== Microwaves & RF UPDATE PlanetEE - www.planetee.com MWRF - www.mwrf.com June 9, 2005 ============================== Greetings and welcome to your personal copy of PlanetEE's Microwaves and RF UPDATE e-newsletter. Please see below for address-change or subscribe/unsubscribe instructions. Today's Table of Contents: 1. UWB Communications Is Coming 2. FOCUS Enhancements Tapes Out 880-Mb/s UWB Chip 3. Smallest Transistor Package Debuts 4. NI Teams With SeaSolve Software For Wireless Solutions 5. Software Test Bench Targets cdma2000 6. Modelithics To Develop AVX 0201 Cap Models 7. Alcatel and Freescale Join Forces on Gigabit PON 8. Book Review 9. Happenings - Conferences ************************ ADVERTISEMENT **************************** OMG's Software Based Communications Workshop Focused on software application portability and interoperability for software-defined radios and areas of application including government, defense, automotive, public safety, global tracking, consumer electronics and cellular network infrastructure. Program will include tutorials on relevant technologies, presentations, panels and discussions. August 16-19, 2005, San Diego, CA http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC69:FFCBF ******************************************************************* *************** 1. Viewpoint *************** UWB Communications Is Coming Ultrawideband (UWB) technology has long held great promise for wideband communications at short distances, but available hardware has been limited. With the announcement by video-specialist FOCUS Enhancements (see below), however, it appears that a two-chip hardware solution is on its way. Following the partitioning of other wireless standards, of RF/analog circuitry on one chip and baseband and medium-access-control (MAC) circuitry on the other, the chip set should at least simplify the ability of engineers to evaluate UWB technology for short-range applications (to about 10 m or more). It is expected that this announcement should uncover work being performed at other leading semiconductor houses (FOCUS Enhancements is a "fabless" semiconductor house that relies on outside foundries for its device fabrication) during next week's Microwave Theory & Techniques Symposium (MTT-S) in Long Beach, CA. And when the devices are available, the advantages and disadvantages (interference?) of UWB technology will become more clear. As for what is unveiled at the MTT-S, don't miss the next edition of this newsletter. JACK BROWNE Technical Director ************* 2. News ************* FOCUS Enhancements Tapes Out 880-Mb/s UWB Chip FOCUS Enhancements has announced the taping-out of the first ultrawideband (UWB) radio chip capable of 880-Mb/s performance at 8 m. The analog/RF chip is designed to be one member of a two-chip set, with the second device, a baseband/medium-access controller (MAC), expected to tape out in September. According to Brett Moyer, FOCUS Enhancements' president and CEO, "Taping out the first of our two UWB chips is an important milestone in our strategy to bring wireless video to the home." The FOCUS Enhancements' UWB chipset will contain a fully compliant and interoperable WiMedia-MBOA UWB radio, plus an extended mode that will produce much higher data rates. Cadence Design Systems is performing design services for the FOCUS Enhancements' UWB chipset, while Jazz Semiconductor is supplying RF device fabrication. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) will supply the baseband/MAC chips. FOCUS Enhancements ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6A:FFCBF ********* 3. News ********* Smallest Transistor Package Debuts Engineers seeking to shrink their voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO) designs can now benefit from the industry's smallest transistor package. Developed by NEC and measuring just 0.64 by 0.84 by 0.40 mm including the leads, the low-profile M33 package is available with a line of silicon and silicon germanium (SiGe) transistors aimed at VCO applications. The models NE685M33 and NE851M33 silicon bipolar transistors and the model NESG2107M33 SiGe device are suitable for wireless handsets and wireless infrastructure equipment operating from 0.8 to 6.0 GHz. In addition, two VCO buffer devices, silicon-bipolar model NE687M33 and SiGe model NESG2046M33, are also available in the new package. Visit the California Eastern Laboratories web site for more information on the NEC devices. California Eastern Laboratories ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC74:FFCBF ********* 4. News ********* NI Teams With SeaSolve Software For Wireless Solutions By working with SeaSolve Software, test and software developer National Instruments has created RF/communications test and analysis solutions based on modular hardware and software. SeaSolve's software, integrated with NI's PXI-based RF hardware results in compliance test systems for various wireless standards, including IEEE 802.15.4 WPAN (ZigBee) and IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi). According to Joe Kovacs, NI RF product marketing manager, "With the addition of SeaSolve's software solutions based on NI LabVIEW, engineers can perform RF physical layer compliance tests while taking advantage of the flexibility and speed that the NI PXI-based RF hardware offers." SeaSolve recently developed a compliance test software solution for the ZigBee and Wi-Fi standards that integrates with the NI PXI-5660 vector signal analyzer, the NI PXI-5670 and PXI-5671 vector signal generators as well as the NI Modulation Toolkit for LabVIEW. "SeaSolve chose to develop this solution on the proven National Instruments LabVIEW and PXI-based RF platform because of the PXI platform's inherent speed advantage as well as the short time to market that the solution offers as a whole," said Nadeem Sayed, SeaSolve business development manager. National Instruments ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC65:FFCBF SeaSolve Software ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6D:FFCBF ********** 5. News ********** Software Test Bench Targets cdma2000 Applied Wave Research (AWR) announced the release of its cdma2000 test bench for the company's Visual System Simulator (VSS) design suite. The new test bench helps users evaluate the impact of RF link impairments on frame error rate (FER), bit error rate (BER), symbol error rate (SER), and other metrics. The VSS test bench consists of transmit and receive blocks and supports variable frame sizes, data rates, and multiple channels including fundamental and supplemental traffic, pilot, and an orthogonal channel noise simulator (OCNS). The code includes all of the bit-level functions, framing, cyclical redundancy code (CRC), forward-error correction (FEC), interleaving, Walsh and quadrature spreading, and modulation for forward and reverse link operation. Applied Wave Research ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6F:FFCBF ********* 6. News ********* Modelithics To Develop AVX 0201 Cap Models Capacitor supplier AVX Corp. has contracted Modelithics to create new equivalent-circuit models for three of its 0201 families of capacitors. Modelithics will apply its Global Model technology to fashion models for use with leading RF/microwave simulation tools, such as the Advanced Design System (ADS) from Agilent EEsof. According to AVX Marketing Manager Tim Hollander, "We're confident that, by making Modelithics models for AVX parts available to RF/microwave design engineers, our components will see their way into more designs, and that those designs will reach the production stage much sooner. It's a clear win for everyone." AVX Corp. ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6E:FFCBF Modelithics ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC68:FFCBF ********* 7. News ********* Alcatel and Freescale Join Forces on Gigabit PON Passive optical networking (PON) technology offers the wide bandwidth needed for the "big three" services: voice, video, and data. In pursuit of achieving higher performance with the technology, Alcatel and Freescale Semiconductor have collaborated on an advanced Gigabit PON (GPON) standards-compliant silicon solution for broadband access services. The cost-effective, low-power GPON System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution leverages Freescale's industry-leading PowerQUICC communications processor architecture based on PowerPC cores and digital signal processors (DSPs) based on StarCore technology, along with Alcatel's implementation of the standard GPON medium access control (MAC). Alcatel's implementation of the GPON MAC offers full compliance to ITU-T G.984 with data rates of 2.5 Gb/s downstream and 1.25 Gb/s upstream at a 1:128 split ratio. The MAC also integrates advanced encryption standard, forward error correction in both upstream and downstream directions, and dynamic bandwidth assignment. Alcatel ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC70:FFCBF Freescale Semiconductor ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6C:FFCBF *************** 8. Book Review *************** The Design of Modern Microwave Oscillators for Wireless Applications Written by Ulrich Rohde and Ajay Kumar Poddar of Synergy Microwave (Paterson, NJ) along with Professor Georg Boch of the German Technische Universitat Berlin, The Design of Modern Microwave Oscillators for Wireless Applications serves as an excellent text on microwave oscillator design. It provides several basic design approaches, methods for analyzing phase noise, a variety of noise and oscillator nonlinear models, and several fine examples of oscillator circuits, including coupled-mode oscillators, push-pull oscillators, and a parallel resonator oscillator. Just for the examples , this is a text worth having. John Wiley & Sons (201-748-6395) ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC72:FFCBF ******************************* 9. Happenings - Conferences ******************************* Microwave Theory & Techniques Symposium (MTT-S) June 12-17, 2005 Long Beach Convention Center Long Beach, CA http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC73:FFCBF Bipolar Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM) October 10-11, 2005 Santa Barbara, CA http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6B:FFCBF IEEE Compound Semiconductor IC Symposium (formerly the GaAs IC Symposium) October 30 - November 2, 2005 Palm Springs, CA http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC71:FFCBF Wireless Congress 2005: Systems and Applications November 9-10, 2005 Munich, Germany http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC66:FFCBF Read past issues of Microwaves and RF (MWRF) UPDATE e-Newsletter: http://www.mwrf.com/ MICROWAVES AND RF (MWRF) UPDATE e-NEWSLETTER CONTACTS ==================================================== Technical Director: Jack Browne mailto:[email protected] Associate Editor: Laurie Collins mailto:[email protected] Advertising/Sponsorship Opportunities: Mike McCaffery at 1-201-845-2414 or mailto:[email protected] ==================================================== To subscribe click here: http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC67:FFCBF To unsubscribe click here: http://nls.planetee.com/u?id=92976FF2A879FA46728D7910753CBEEE Penton's e-Newsletter homepage: http://www.planetee.com/ ==================================== Copyright 2005 Penton Media Inc. 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