July 21, 2005 Newsletter

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Microwaves & RF UPDATE
PlanetEE - www.planetee.com
MWRF - www.mwrf.com
July 21, 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. Service Before The Sale 
2. Sonnet Software Teams With AWR On New Models 
3. HTC Enters Contract Engineering Field 
4. BAW Filters Screen 850 To 6000 MHz
5. Log Detector Measures Power To 10 GHz 
6. Wideband Seeks To Expand Sales Force 
7. Hittite Eyes Military and Space for New Phase Shifters 
8. SkyeTek Usurps Traditional RFID Models 
9. Happenings - Conferences 


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1.  Viewpoint 
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Service Before The Sale 

Few engineers would not think of a multimeter if a co-worker had 
called out for a "Fluke." The company that is synonymous with 
voltmeters has recently taken a step in the right direction by 
developing a new extension to its web site devoted to predictive 
maintenance. A portion of the new site extension ( which can be found 
at http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF80:FFCBF ) of particular interest to RF/microwave 
engineers will be the "Logging Multimeters With Software" section. 
It provides a brief overview of the basic concept of predictive 
maintenance, and provides focused application notes and helpful 
links.

The main predictive maintenance page includes a unique 
return-on-investment (ROI) calculator that can be applied to the 
company's multimeters and power-quality measurement tools to 
estimate the value of a new piece of test gear. Such tools are 
invaluable when considering the purchase of new equipment, and 
should be a part of any site that promotes capital expenditures, 
such as test equipment.

American businesses tend to get too caught up in making a sale, 
without first remembering the importance of the customer. But at 
Fluke, at least one company has remembered their customer, and 
invested strongly and wisely to keep that customer. 

JACK BROWNE
Technical Director


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2. News
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Sonnet Software Teams With AWR On New Models

Taking advantage of open access to the Xmodels from software 
supplier Applied Wave Research (AWR, El Segundo, CA), Sonnet 
Software (North Syracuse, NY) has announced its support for the 
models and intention to provide integrated solutions with its host 
of electromagnetic (EM) modeling tools. The Xmodels are 
discontinuity models that use the results of full-wave EM simulators 
to estimate the electrical performance of a discontinuity for 
tuning, optimization, and yield analysis. With AWR's EM Socket open 
standard interface and the first set of Xmodels available within 
AWR's Microwave Office suite of circuit-design tools, a design 
engineer can perform EM analysis with the models and SONNET Suites 
Professional collection of programs. 
Sonnet Software ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF7C:FFCBF
Applied Wave Research ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF82:FFCBF


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3. News
*********
HTC Enters Contract Engineering Field

HTC Engineering has entered the field of contract engineering 
services with extensive expertise in analog, mixed-signal, and 
digital IC design. Led by an experienced management team that 
includes President and CEO Guy Rabbat (formerly with Solectron), 
Vice-President of Sales Bruce Utter (formerly with Fujitsu and 
Filtronic Compound Semiconductor), and Vice-President of Technology 
and Marketing Alex Skuratov (formerly with Watkins-Johnson and 
Mini-Circuits), the new company boasts design and manufacturing 
capabilities in wide range of areas, including RF/microwave, 
wireless, networking, test and measurement, optoelectronics, 
electromechanical control and automation, robotics, and industrial 
design. Relying on over 50 affiliated design centers with more than 
1000 engineers, primarily in Eastern Europe and Russia, HTC 
Engineering offers world-class engineering and design capacity for 
firms needing to meet high-quality, low-cost, and stringent 
time-to-market objectives. Contracted engineers can be located in a 
customer's facility, in an offshore site, or in both locations for 
optimum efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In other contract 
engineering news, AntennEM Communications is seeking licensing and 
partnership for a patent-pending, fully agile phased-array antenna 
system that is ideal for mobile video applications. 
HTC Engineering ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF88:FFCBF
AntennEM Communications ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF7F:FFCBF


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4. News
*********
BAW Filters Screen 850 To 6000 MHz
 
Noteworthy at the recent Microwave Theory & Techniques Symposium 
(MTT-S) and exhibition in Long Beach, CA was the availability of 
bulk-acoustic-wave (BAW) filters from Infineon Technologies (Morgan 
Hill, CA). Once a technology targeted at more costly military 
applications, these BAW devices aim at cellular and Personal 
Communications Services (PCS) applications as well as general 
microwave systems from 850 to 6000 MHz. An example filter operates 
in the PCS transmit band from 1850 to 1910 MHz with 2.3-dB typical 
insertion loss and 1.5-dB typical ripple. The filter provides 
typical stopband attenuation of better than 24 dB below 1850 MHz and 
more than 30 dB from 1930 to 2500 MHz. 
Infineon Technologies ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF7E:FFCBF


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5. News
**********
Log Detector Measures Power To 10 GHz

Analog Devices (Norwood, MA) also made news at the recent MTT-S with 
information on their new AD8317 RF logarithmic detector/controller 
with power-measurement capability from 1 MHz to 10 GHz. Based on a 
high-frequency silicon-germanium (SiGe) process, the AD8317 provides 
a temperature-compensated proportional output voltage over a 50-dB 
dynamic range with better than 2-dB accuracy. The device has a rise 
time of 4 ns and fall time of 6 ns and draws just 20 mA current from 
a single voltage supply of +3 to +5 VDC. The wide-ranging 
power-measurement IC is supplied in a 2 mm by 3 mm eight-lead 
package.
Analog Devices ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF85:FFCBF


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6. News
*********
Wideband Seeks To Expand Sales Force

They are looking for a few good men. In this case, not the US 
Marines, but Wideband Systems of Rockaway, NJ. Well known for 
electronic-warfare (EW) subsystems such as receivers and 
instantaneous-frequency-measurement (IFM) systems, the firm recently 
entered the frequency synthesizer market with a 7-to-18-GHz modular 
unit and seeks to expand its support staff for the synthesizer line 
with the addition of an International Sales Manager. Interested 
candidates can contact Bob Fuller at the e-mail address below.
International Sales Manager ---> e-mail: mailto:[email protected]
Wideband Systems ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF7A:FFCBF


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7. News
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Hittite Eyes Military and Space for New Phase Shifters

Hittite Microwave Corp. (Chelmsford, MA) has introduced a line of 
microwave phase shifters based on GaAs 
monolithic-microwave-integrated-circuit (MMIC) technology. The tiny 
shifters include the model HMC237, a 5-to-18-GHz analog unit with 
variable phase shift of 0 to 450 deg. at 5 GHz and as much as 100 
deg. at 18 GHz, as well as the model HMC538LP4, a surface-mount 
6-to-15-GHz analog unit with phase-shift range of 0 to 750 deg. at 6 
GHz and 0 to 450 deg. at 15 GHz. Both shifters are controlled by a 
single positive voltage. 
Hittite Microwave Corp. ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF83:FFCBF


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8. News
***************
SkyeTek Usurps Traditional RFID Models

SkyeTek (Boulder, CO) hopes to vanquish the traditional "black-box" 
nature of RFID reader hardware with its ReaderWare open-architecture 
software suite. Developed for both HF and UHF reader designs, the 
software has been written to simplify RFID reader development 
through a comprehensive approach to tag protocols, baseband 
processing, host communications, security options, and reader 
configuration parameters. According to Sean Loving, the firm's 
founder and CTO, "As a data defined reader technology, ReaderWare 
disaggregates the hardware and software components of the reader, 
allowing OEMs to treat hardware as a commodity and focus on what 
they want the application to actually do." ReaderWare Version 1.0 is 
now available as a licensed development platform for new and 
existing OEM reader designs as well as with SkyeTek's Tagnostic 
reader reference designs. 
SkyeTek ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF81:FFCBF


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9.  Happenings - Conferences
*******************************
Bipolar Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)
October 10-11, 2005
Santa Barbara, CA
http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF7D: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=EF86:FFCBF

Wireless Congress 2005: Systems and Applications
November 9-10, 2005
Munich, Germany
http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF79:FFCBF

Automatic RF Techniques Group (ARFTG)
66th Microwave Measurements Conference
December 1-2, 2005
Marriot Hotel, Washington, DC
http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=EF87: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:
Paul Barkman at 1-908-704-2460 or
mailto:[email protected]
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