This article is part of our IMS2022 coverage.
I was excited about last month’s International Microwave Symposium (IMS) in Denver for several reasons. For one, what with COVID-19 still lurking about and the general damper it’s put on travel, I haven’t been out and about as much as I’d like. For another, with last year’s IMS in Atlanta having been a bit of a drag, I wanted to see whether the industry would rally this time around. And I was anxious to see familiar faces, make new acquaintances, and get a first-hand look at some new and innovative products and technologies.
Happily, the show was successful on all counts. It was a very well attended and busy show, complete with congested aisles and booths and packed technical sessions. I make a habit of asking folks I meet with if they feel the show is going well, and no one had any complaints about booth traffic. We were blessed with beautiful weather all week, making any outdoor excursions refreshing.
Most importantly, my desire to see hot new stuff was fulfilled in spades. The industry backed up its enthusiasm for coming together with a boatload of interesting and creative offerings. Here are a few encapsulations of the highlights:
- Anritsu’s Rubidium MG362x1A RF/microwave signal generator spans a frequency range of 9 kHz to 43.5 GHz with very high phase-noise performance. That’s largely due to the instrument’s internal rubidium frequency-reference option.
- Guerrilla RF showed off its GRF5526/36 ¼-W linear power amplifiers, which deliver 23 dBm even as they support ACLR performance of more than −45 dBc, IMD3 levels within −20 dBm, EVM levels within 1.5%, and power-added efficiencies of around 14%, all without digital predistortion.
- Wireless Telecom Group performed demos of test and measurement solutions from several of its operating groups. For example, Holzworth Instrumentation featured broadband, low phase-noise signal generation and real-time phase-noise analysis with a multichannel platform. Noisecom demoed how important additive white Gaussian noise can be in testing system performance under real-world conditions while using Boonton’s RF power sensors to gather accurate data.
- Texas Instruments provided demos of numerous new devices, including the TRF1208, a single-ended-to-differential amplifier that spans 10 MHz to 11 GHz with 3-dB bandwidth; the AFE7950, a 4T6R RF-sampling multichannel transceiver IC with operation to 12 GHz; and the LMX2820, a 22.6-GHz wideband RF synthesizer with a high-performance PLL that offers very low in-band noise and jitter.
Overall, there was lots to do and see at this year’s IMS. Many vendors mentioned some market trends that will influence the industry in coming months and years, with particular emphasis on applications in quantum computing and cryogenics. I’m already looking forward to next year’s IMS in San Diego, but in the meantime, have a look at our full IMS 2022 coverage.
*The image above is from the Women in Microwaves event at IMS 2022.
