5G Work Starts in Earnest
"In meetings around the globe this week, engineers started in earnest reviewing proposals
for a broad suite of standards for 5G. Their work is expected to take at least two years, touching every aspect of wireless
networks in ways more sweeping than any prior cellular generation. The 3GPP,
which acts as a central organizer for 5G standards, has broken the job initially into nearly a dozen separate study groups
covering topics ranging from radio access technologies to network architectures. 'You eat an elephant in small pieces…it
takes lots of people to develop these new technologies,' said Karri
..."
Antenna Matching with Line Segments
How RF circuits
work have long been referred to as 'black magic,' even sometimes by
people who fully understand the theory behind the craft. To me the ways in which a transmission line - be it coaxial cable,
microstrip, or waveguide - can be manipulated and controlled with various combinations of lengths and terminations is what
most qualifies as 'magic.' Sure, I know the equations and understand (mostly) what's happening
with incident and reflected waves, etc., and how the impedance and admittance circles of a Smith chart graphicaly trace
out what's happening, but you have to admit there's something wonderfully mystical about it all
...
Nanoscrolls Created from
Graphene's Imperfect Cousin
"Seeking an alternative, a team of researchers is
looking to graphene oxide -
graphene's much cheaper, imperfect form. Graphene oxide is graphene that is also covered with oxygen and hydrogen groups.
The material is essentially what graphene becomes if it's left to sit out in open air. The team fabricated nanoscrolls made
from graphene oxide flakes and was able to control the dimensions of each nanoscroll, using both low- and high-frequency
ultrasonic techniques. But there's a catch: Graphene does not come cheap. The material's exceptional mechanical and chemical
..."
YL News and Views
I wonder why today's editions of the
ARRL's QST magazine does not have a column dedicated to the 'YL' (Young Lady, or female in general) contingent
of the amateur radio realm? Ham radio, as most -if not all - historically male-dominated hobbies has fairly significant
outreach efforts to try attracting women into activities. My
Model Aviation magazine has a monthly
column written by a lady whose enthusiasm for model airplanes equals that of most males - and she's funny to boot! - but
it is not dedicated to female modelers. If there is a girl or woman present at a competition, she is almost guaranteed to
receive coverage ...
Flexible Sheet Camera Captures
Images with Unusual Fields of View
"The Columbia team
led by professor Shree K. Nayar, T.C. Chang, which includes research engineer Daniel Sims and postdoctoral researcher Yonghao
Yue, designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. This
optical adaptation enables the sheet camera to produce high quality images over a wide range of sheet deformations. Sims
will present the work at the International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) at Northwestern University in
Evanston, IL, in May. 'Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in
..."
First-Ever D-STAR Satellite
to Launch in April
"The first-ever satellite to carry a D-STAR (Digital
Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) Amateur Radio payload into space is expected to launch on April 22 from Guiana. The
OUFTI-1 (Orbital Utility For
Telecommunication Innovations) CubeSat is one of three CubeSats developed by student teams under the European Space Agency
(ESA)
Education Office
'Fly Your Satellite!' program, which is aimed at training the next generation of aerospace professionals.
The satellites arrived in South America on March 25, followed by the student teams a few days later
..."
NI Presents
Introduction to Radar Webinar
NI will sponsor an "Introduction to Radar" webinar on April 27, 2016
through Microwave Journal's Technical Education Webinar Series. This free, one-hour event will be presented by Scott Bullock,
instructor for Besser Associates. The webinar provides an introduction to the theory and operation of radar, which has its
roots in military and government systems but is now being adopted commercially—with radar in every automobile not far off.
Topics include: Radar Detection and Ranging, Pulse vs. Continuous Wave With Applications, Radar Modulation, Radar Path Budget
- Basic Radar Equation ...
Twiss Interferometry Offers New
Approach for Remote Sensing
"A team from the University
of Rochester has shown that fluctuations in 'twisted light' could be exploited for a range of applications, from detecting rotating black holes to
object detection by lidar, the light-equivalent of radar. In a paper, published in Science Advances today, the researchers
demonstrate that for light from a source such as the Sun, random fluctuations of intensity give rise to correlations of
twisted light beams. They showed the presence of these correlations by modifying a now classical experiment called Hanbury
Brown - Twiss (HBT) interferometry to focus on the angular
..."
Power Supply Filters
Here's a topic that never
goes out of style. Without bothering to worry about source and load impedances, this brief tutorial on the fundamentals
of power supply filter design using series
inductors adn parallel capacitor combinations. The author offers a rule-of-thumb type formula for guessing at a good inductor
value based on peak-to-average expected current. This is by no means a comprehensive primer on power supply filter design
and is directed more toward someone new to the concept
...
Diamond Quantum Bit is Controlled
Using Light and Sound
"Physicists in the US
are the first to use a combination of light and sound to control the state of a diamond-based
quantum bit (qubit) of information. The team used a laser pulse and a sound wave to modify the energy
state of an electron in a nitrogen vacancy (NV) centre in diamond. According to the researchers, the technique could be
further developed for controlling qubits in a chip-based network of NV centers. A nitrogen vacancy (NV) center occurs when
two neighboring carbon atoms in diamond are replaced by a nitrogen atom and an empty lattice site. For anyone trying to
build a quantum computer
..."
RFMW Offers Skyworks'
Dual Band SP4T for WiFi
RFMW, Ltd. announces
design and sales support for Skyworks dual-band, internally matched, SP4T switch developed for WiFi applications in the
2.4 and 5 GHz ISM bands. The Skyworks
SKY13575-639LF supports
access points and CPEs along with WLAN test and measurement equipment. Frequency coverage is from 100 MHz to 6 GHz
with a maximum insertion loss of 1.4 dB. Isolation ranges from 26 to 40 dB and the SKY13575-639LF can handle up
to 32 dBm of input power for demanding applications
...
Can Silly Patents Help Fight
Frivolous Lawsuits?
"Inventors and entrepreneurs
have logged years of complaining about the patent system, and there are some good reasons. In 2015, patent litigation rose
13% from the previous year according to a study by Unified Patents, and two-thirds of those suits were brought by non-practicing
entities, or so-called 'patent trolls.' Trolls don't make products — trolls buy up patents so they can sue companies that do
actually make products. Given that patents on an invention last for 20 years, that's plenty of time to bring a lot of lawsuits.
Critics of the system say there are too many frivolous patents. Patents such
..."
Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions
Seeks RF / Microwave Technician
Cobham is seeking an
RF /
Microwave Technician to work at our San Jose, CA facility. The RF Technician's responsibilities are focused in the area
of microwave circuit test, subsystems test to meet shipping schedules. The RF Technician will support production activities
within a group concentrating on advanced microwave subsystems for applications including missile front ends, radar receivers,
wideband tuners and synthesized sources. Duties include CCAs, and subsystem products, collecting and documenting test data
and providing feedback to manufacturing engineers on production products.
...
Sayonara, Japan Semiconductor Inc.
"The Japanese semiconductor industry's
downfall – by way of a slow death over the past quarter century — is undeniable and well documented. Theories about why
Japan's semi industry fell apart are
many. But the single reality facing Japanese semiconductor firms is this: They no longer matter in the global market. Tracing
the top 10 semiconductor sales leaders all the way back to 1990, Brian Matas, vice president of market research at IC Insights,
observed that compared to '1990 when Japanese semi suppliers wielded their greatest influence on the global stage and held
six of the top 10 positions ..."
Radar on the Highway
In the opening scene of "Gladiators,"
Quintus remarks to Maximus (Russell Crowe), "A people should know when they've been conquered."
Such truth is applicable to society today regarding
ubiquitous surveillance.
Less than two decades ago the media was filled with stories of outrage over the discovery of some new form of monitoring
and reporting system having been installed on highways, in shopping malls, along sidewalks, even bathrooms. Since the 9/11
terrorist attacks, anything goes with government snooping. Count the numbers of freedoms you have lost and the inconveniences
suffered because of those 19 men with no identifiable common cause (wouldn't want to profile).
This story from 1956 shows how long stealth installation
...
Anatech Electronics April Newsletter:
5G and Interference Coming in 2020
Anatech Electronics, a manufacturer of RF and microwave filters,
has published its April 2016 newsletter.
As always, it includes both company news and some tidbits about relevant industry happenings. This month, Sam Benzacar discusses
the significantly higher level of RF interference that is inevitable with the coming 5G networks and the expected increase
in noise levels. Sam refers to 5G as "the most significant change to the wireless industry since Dr. Martin Cooper made
the first cellular phone call," because of opening of spectrum beyond the current 3 GHz region - up to as high as 60 GHz
...
Radio and Atom Busting
Connecting a diode backwards across a
solenoid coil to shunt potentially damaging current and/or voltages when the supply is turned off is a common trick for
saving connected circuitry. Depending on the magnitude of the magnetic field and how quickly the field collapses, some really
high voltages can be produced. In fact, the ignition coil and point (now solid state) system
in exploits exactly that principle to turn the 12 volts from your car battery into 20-40 kV for firing the spark plugs.
Engineers that designed this early cyclotron
had limited options for what to use given the state of the art in the early 1940s, and chose to keep the generator permanently
connected to the coil (no switch) so that if the controller failed, the coil's energy 15 kgauss magnetic field) would
flow back ...
Tiny Nanotubes Move into Fast Lane
"For the first time, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory researchers have shown that
carbon nanotubes
as small as eight-tenths of a nanometer in diameter can transport protons faster than bulk water, by an order of magnitude.
The research validates a 200-year old mechanism of proton transport. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. By comparison,
the diameter of a human hair is 20,000 nanometers. The transport rates in these nanotube pores, which form one-dimensional
water wires ..."
NI AWR Adds AntSyn, Antenna
Synthesis & Optimization Technology
AntSyn™ antenna
synthesis and optimization technology has been added to the NI AWR software product portfolio. AntSyn is a new cloud-based
Software as a Service (SaaS) antenna design, synthesis, and optimization solution that enables designers to input their
antenna engineering requirements and produce antenna designs as outputs. Designed to be used by both experts and those who
are relatively new to antenna design, AntSyn addresses the growing need for rapid
...
U.S. Wants Its Satellites to Adapt
to Threats on the Fly in 15 Years
"As Chinese anti-satellite
weapons reach ever higher, the U.S. military is getting serious about
satellite constellations that can absorb combat damage and keep transmitting data. It's been almost
a decade since China startled the world by destroying a weather satellite in low-Earth orbit about 500 miles up; two years
ago, a Chinese test rocket reached an altitude of 6,250 miles. Increasingly, the barriers to attacking the most valuable
satellites — the ones 22,300 miles up in geosynchronous orbits that keep them over
..."
NASA Reveals Plans for 2D Printed
Spacecraft Wrap Around Asteroids
"From two-dimensional
spacecraft that can wrap around an asteroid to
printable electronics made from the Martian environment, NASA has revealed the 'pioneering technologies'
it has funded in a bid to explore the Universe. While these concepts are still in the early stages, NASA says they have
potential to revolutionize future aerospace missions, and those which prove to be feasible may move on to further development.
Last week, the space agency revealed the 13 proposals
..."
Vertical GaN Schottky Diode
Combining High Current/Breakdown
"HRL
Laboratories LLC in the USA has developed a GaN vertical tunneling
Schottky barrier diode
that gives good combined on and off performance, compared with vertical Schottky barrier diodes. Gallium vertical SBDs suffer
from trade-offs between on-current and reverse bias breakdown. By applying a thin layer of aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN)
as a tunneling barrier, the HRL team allowed a more highly doped drift layer to be used, increasing on-current, without
compromising the breakdown voltage. Vertical Schottky diodes and other power devices built using GaN technology could lead
to higher current ..."
Meteor Scatter
Meteor scatter communications is an
excellent example of where hobbyists - in this case amateur radio operators - have contributed mightily to technology. It
could be argued that a big part of the reason for such occasions is that many people involved in science type hobbies are
employed professionally in a similar capacity, and their extracurricular activities are a natural extension of what pays
for the pastimes. It seems amazing to me that meteor
scatter as a means of achieving upper atmosphere reflections of radio signals went undiscovered until 1953, but evidently
that is the case. Meteor scatter is a very popular form of amateur radio challenge
...
Please Welcome IDT
as RF Cafe's Newest Advertiser!
Founded
in 1980, Integrated Device Technology (IDT) develops system-level solutions
that optimize its customers' applications. IDT's market-leading products in RF, timing, wireless power transfer, serial
switching, interfaces and sensing solutions are among the company's broad array of complete mixed-signal solutions for the
communications, computing, 
consumer,
automotive and industrial segments. These products are used for development in areas such as 4G infrastructure, network
communications, cloud datacenters and power management for computing and mobile devices.
Physicists Discover Flaws
in Superconductor Theory
"University of Houston physicists report finding
major theoretical flaws in the generally accepted understanding of how a
superconductor traps
and holds a magnetic field. More than 50 years ago, C.P. Bean, a scientist at General Electric, developed a theoretical
explanation known as the 'Bean Model' or 'Critical State Model.' The basic property of superconductors is that they represent
zero 'resistance' to electrical circuits. In a way, they are the opposite of toasters, which resist electrical currents
and thereby convert energy into heat. Superconductors consume zero
..."
Carl & Jerry: Anchors Aweigh
Just the
other day I saw a greeting card with a sailboat on the front with the words "Anchors Away," on it. It was not meant to be
a pun on "anchors
aweigh;" the card writer didn't know any better. This episode of "Carl & Jerry" has our teenage Ham radio operators
and electronics hobbyists running a newly built model tugboat powered by a steam engine and navigated via a radio control
system. As is always the case, no activity of the pair goes without drama of some sort. Author John T. Frye used his
writings to present technical topics within the storyline, both in the "Carl & Jerry" series here in Popular Electronics
and his earlier "Mac's Radio Service Shop" series that appeared
...
Magnetism Research Brings
High-Temp Superconductivity Closer
"A research
team led by the U.S. DOE's Argonne National Laboratory has discovered that only half the atoms in some iron-based superconductors
are magnetic, providing a conclusive demonstration of the wave-like properties of
metallic
magnetism in these materials. The discovery allows for a clearer understanding of the magnetism in some compounds of
iron, the iron arsenides, and how it helps induce superconductivity, the resistance-free flow of electrical current
..."
Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions
Needs an RF Calibration Technician
Cobham is seeking a
RF Calibration
Technician to join our Quality Assurance team. The successful candidate will test, calibrate, and repair of test and
measuring equipment, electrical and mechanical, to conform to established standards. Plans sequence of testing and calibration
procedures for instruments and equipment according to drawings, schematics, technical manuals, and other specifications.
Minimum three year of calibration experience which can be offset by formal metrology training or three years of RF / Microwave
technician experience
...
RF & Microwave Engineering
Crossword Puzzle for April 10, 2016
For the sake of avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, each week I create a new crossword puzzle
that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical words. You will never be asked
the name of a movie star unless he/she was involved in a technical endeavor (e.g., Hedy Lamar).
Enjoy!
Low Temperature Inkjet Printable
Transistors Can Be Stacked
"In a paper
titled 'Exploiting the colloidal nanocrystal library to construct electronic devices,' co-authors Cherie Kagan, Professor
in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Ji-Hyuk Choi, then a member of her lab, describe how they exploited
the diversity of colloidal nanocrystals to design materials, interfaces, and processes to construct all-nanocrystal electronic
devices using solution-based processes. The inks formulated with the tunable colloidal nanocrystals included metallic silver
and semiconducting cadmium
..."
Listening Post in the Philippines
Here is a fascinating story
of the ordeal one Catholic priest experienced while serving in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation in World War II.
Father Visintainer exploited his personal interest in radio communications to help keep local residents apprised of the
war's progress and talk to the outside world. Japanese troops confiscated all the existing
shortwave radios and converted them
to their own frequencies. Some were re-converted by daring servicemen and then hidden. Batteries were recharged using covert
water wheel powered generators located in the woods. Drama hit a peak one day when an attempt to formulate a make-shift
battery electrolyte resulted ...
2nd Quantum Revolution a Reality
with Chip-Based Atomic Physics
"A University
of Oklahoma-led team of physicists believes
chip-based atomic physics holds promise to make the second quantum revolution--the engineering of quantum
matter with arbitrary precision - a reality. With recent technological advances in fabrication and trapping, hybrid quantum
systems are emerging as ideal platforms for a diverse range of studies in quantum control, quantum simulation and computing.
James P. Shaffer, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy
..."
NFC & Holographic Business Cards
For not an awful lot
of money (about $1.50 each) you can buy business cards that have an NFC antenna and chip built
in that will transfer your selected information to an associate's cellphone or tablet computer. Bump your card on someone's
phone and have it connect to your LinkedIn or Facebook page, go to your website and/or have a bookmark added, open an e-mail
with your address already typed in, have a digital version of your business card appear, download an app, or open a video
chat. Each company has its own variety of functions available. A nice feature of the
NFC business card is that you can update it online
with new information and functionality to reflect contact changes or just about anything that comes as part of the original
design package. Many manufacturers provide the capability to monitor
..
Record-Breaking Steel Could Be
Used for Satellite Shielding
"A team of engineers
has developed and tested a
new type of steel with a record-breaking ability to withstand an impact without deforming permanently.
The new steel alloy could be used in a wide range of applications, from drill bits, to body armor for soldiers, to meteor-resistant
casings for satellites. The material is an amorphous steel alloy, a promising subclass of steel alloys made of arrangements
of atoms that deviate from steel's classical crystal-like structure, where iron atoms occupy specific locations. Researchers
are increasingly looking to amorphous
..."
All Elements Heavier
Than Helium Are Metals?
Factoid: Astronomers consider all elements heavier than helium to be metals. That
definition obviously does not jive with the standard chemical definition of a metal, but a concept called 'metallicity' argues that from
a star (and therefore the universe) formation perspective, extremely high temperatures and
pressures in first generation stars (like our sun) preclude the identification of distinct
elements other than hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements, such as lithium - #3 on the periodic chart and actually considered
a metal in ...
New State of Matter Detected
"According to the University of Cambridge website, an entirely new state of matter
has been detected in a two-dimensional material. The state is known as
quantum spin liquid and it causes
electrons to break into pieces. This new state of matter is mysterious because it was previously thought that electrons
were indivisible building blocks of nature. This new state was predicted forty years ago but had not been observed until
now. Quantum spin liquids were thought to be hiding in certain magnetic materials but they had never before been seen in
nature ..."
Wired Wireless
As you might know, particularly if
you are a frequent RF Cafe visitor, amateur radio operators (Hams) were prohibited from broadcasting
during the entirety of World War II, (see
War Comes) ostensibly as a security measure.
The concern was that people might unintentionally (or intentionally) convey information on troop positions and family names,
domestic factory locations and activities, and the general state of the nation in regards to attitude and finance. Unlike
today, that type of data was not easily gathered even by a dedicated deployment of internal spies. In the early 1940s, the
majority of amateur radio activity was carried out in the form of Morse code, and operators were understandably concerned
...
Graphene Microchip
for Terahertz Communication
"Scientists in Switzerland
have discovered yet another unique property of graphene, the 2D version of carbon. Not only is graphene fast, strong, thin,
and lightweight, but now we know that it is also both transparent and opaque to radiation. The Swiss team took advantage
of this property to develop a microchip that filters out unwanted radiation. Their device, called an optical isolator, works
in the previously untapped frequency band called the
terahertz gap.
With further development, wireless devices that use the chip to communicate via the terahertz
...
Fellow USAF Radar Tech
Merton Horne Checks In
The unofficial USAF
MPN-13 & MPN-14 Radar Maintenance Shop member list has just been expanded to include
Merton Horne! From 1971 to 1973, Merton worked on an MPN-14 at Grand Forks
AFB, in North Dakota. He wrote asking whether I recall the weight of the ASR transmitter chassis, which I do not. He estimates
180 lbs. If anyone knows for sure, please apprise me and I'll pass it on. If you were or are currently a radar maintenance
technician and send me your service info, I will be glad to add you to our list ...
Cooling Chips With the Flip of a Switch
"Turn on an electric field, and a standard
electrocaloric material
will eject heat to its surroundings as its internal dipoles reorder themselves. Do the same thing, and a negative electrocaloric
material will absorb heat, cooling the environment, thanks to the blend of ferroelectric polymers that make up each. While
these materials have been investigated as a method of on-demand microclimate control for quite some time, there's a catch
- the external field needs to remain active, which is energy-consuming and ends up heating the material. Recently, however,
researchers at Pennsylvania State University
..."
Vintage Radio Service Data Sheets
These might be the last two Radio Service Data Sheets that I have to post for a while
since I believe they are the last from my current collection of vintage magazines. One is for the
RCA Victor Model 5M 5-Tube Auto
Superheterodyne Receiver and the other is for the
International Kadette
Model 400 4-Tube Battery-Operated Superheterodyne Receiver. This makes a total of 104 scanned and made available for
collectors, restorers, and researchers.
3D-Printed Satellite Antenna
Is Just One Piece
"With an eye toward building space-qualified
RF components for Earth observation and science instruments, the European Space Agency (ESA) has
3D printed a satellite antenna designed as a single part. The antenna is now being tested in the agency's
Compact Antenna Test Facility, located at ESA's ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands. The prototype antenna is the
agency's first dual-reflector type to be 3D printed, according to its designer, Maarten van der Vorst. It incorporates the
two reflectors and a corrugated feedhorn
..."
Explosive Charges Bring down
48 VOA Towers in North Carolina
This item appeared on the ARRL
news website. It links to a video showing an engineered demolition of a shortwave antenna farm in North Carolina commissioned
by the Voice of America (VOA) in 1963, during the Cold War. The video provides an aerial view of the entire line of towers
collapsing as the precisely timed charges go off. The most impressive aspect is that explosives are detonated only on every
other tower in such a way that the falling tower takes out the one next to it almost in a dominoes manner
(see yellow circle). 25 pounds of explosives were used rather than possibly 50 if every tower's
guy lines had been ...
Pasternack Coaxial Packaged
Noise Sources up to 60 GHz
Pasternack,
a leading provider of RF, microwave and millimeter wave products, has greatly expanded their lines of
coaxial packaged noise sources covering frequency bands up to 60 GHz. Various types of noise source
design configurations are available including octave band and broadband noise sources, amplified noise sources, noise sources
with integral isolators, and precision calibrated instrumentation grade noise sources. Pasternack's new noise sources might
generally be used as a reference source to measure system level noise figure for test and measurement applications. But
more specific ...
The Square-Corner Reflector Beam
Antenna for Ultra High Frequencies
A new word has been added
to my personal lexicon: 'sphenoidal.'
Author John Kraus used it to describe the wedge shape of a corner reflector. The Oxford Dictionary defines 'sphenoid' thusly:
"A compound bone that forms the base of the cranium, behind the eye and below the front part of the brain. It has two pairs
of broad lateral 'wings' and a number of other projections, and contains two air-filled sinuses." This 'square corner' configuration
- essentially a "V" shape, is shown to exhibit up to 10 dB of gain while being relatively (compared to a parabolic reflector)
insensitive to physical size and driven radiator placement across a wide band when made sufficiently large. No radiation
pattern was ...
Army Eyes Open-Systems
Digital Radio and EW
"U.S. Army researchers are reaching
out to industry for new ways to build combination
digital radio, surveillance,
and electronic warfare (EW) systems that are compact enough for Army aircraft and ground vehicles. These systems must be
small size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP), and make maximum use of open-systems standards like OpenVPX for embedded
computing, VICTORY for on-board networking, the Modular Open RF Architecture (MORA) for RF and microwave systems, and REDHAWK
interfaces for software interoperability. Officials of the Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., issued
a sources-sought ..."
The Official Arduino Starter Kit
Don't let not knowing how to pronounce
"Arduino" (click for audio)
keep you from joining in on an immensely popular hobby / professional opportunity (Tip: the word
is Italian, so you need to make that circle with thumb and forefinger when saying "Arduino," like a chef does when talking
about a delicacy). Many books and videos have been produced to help you get started - for less than $80. The
Official Arduino Starter Kit walks you through the basics of using the Arduino in a hands-on way. You'll
learn through building several creative projects. The kit includes a selection of the most common and useful electronic
components with a 170-page book of 15 projects. Starting the basics of electronics, to more complex projects, the kit will
help you control the physical world with sensor and actuators
...
Photonic Circuit Design Coming
of Age in Fabless Ecosystem
"While it is still
lagging about 30 years behind electronic integration in terms of maturity, it is a quickly evolving technology. It experienced
its greatest development at the telecom bubble around 2000, where millions of passive optical components for fiber networks
started to be integrated into
planar
lightwave circuits (PLC) made out of silica. Nowadays, there are several mature material platforms available for fabless
chip development, each of them excelling at different features: PLC because of its low loss and low cost passive circuits,
silicon (Si) because of its compactness and CMOS compatibility, indium phosphide (InP) because of its capability of generating
and amplifying light on a chip, and silicon nitride (Si3N4)
..."
How's Your Math?
If you are just starting out in the realm
of electronics or maybe just need a little freshening up of your
basic math skills, this rather extensive article
from a 1942 issue of QST magazine is just what you need. Author Dawkins Espy does a really nice job of laying out
the basics of algebraic operations, Ohm's law, trigonometry, and logarithms. Examples are provided for each category. In
this day of calculators doing all the hard work of calculating logs, antilogs, and trig functions, it does even seasoned
veterans at electronics calculations a bit of good to do a quick read-through to knock off cobwebs in the gray matter. How
long has it been since you have seen tables of sine, cosine, and tangent values and/or tables of logarithms? Not long enough,
you say? ...
Notable Tech Quote:
Anon Profundities
"Dear algebra: Stop asking
us to find your 'x': He's not coming back."
"Möbius strippers never show you their backsides."
"All generalizations are false, including this one."
"A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform."
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."
"I don't care what it is, when it has an LCD screen, it makes it better."
"We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts."
"Polaroids /n./: what polar bears get from sitting on ice caps."
...
Pentagon Names 8 Companies
to Support $7.2B Electronics Program
"The Pentagon plans to
spend up to $7.2B over the next dozen years to upgrade old and/or unreliable electronics through the Defense Department.
The Defense Microelectronics Activity has awarded contracts to eight companies for the work under the Advanced Technology
Support Program IV (ATSP4) program. Under the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, multiple award contract, the companies
will compete for work in solving problems with 'obsolete, unreliable, unmaintainable, underperforming, or incapable electronics
hardware and software,' according to a DOD announcement. The goal is to apply advanced technology insertions and applications
to raise the performance
..."
Powell Crosley's Flying Flea
Somehow, I missed
this. After attending the funeral for my uncle Rick Blattenberger at Arlington National Cemetery, Melanie and I spent a
few hours at the nearby Udvar-Hazy Center annex of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. I photographed a lot of
cool stuff, including electronics packages used on airplanes, rockets, balloons, and satellites, but in some inexplicable
way I managed to not see this bright red "Flying Flea" that was owned by Powell Crosley, Jr., owner of the
Crosley Radio Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. It wasn't
until a couple nights ago when I saw it featured in the April/May issue of Air & Space magazine that I even knew it
existed. Mr. Crosley's company dabbled in many types of domestic products other than just radios
...
Microagents with
Revolutionary Potential
"Salvador Pane was on a trolleybus
in Zurich one day after work. He was deep in thought when the bus came to a sudden stop because the cable was disrupted.
He was struck by an idea: 'Why can't we create a icrorobot that
generates
an electric field wirelessly?' The idea stayed with him and, as a result, the ETH researcher and his colleagues have
since succeeded in creating tiny particles that can be precisely controlled by magnetic fields and also generate electric
fields. This may sound relatively unspectacular to the uninitiated, but it is a breakthrough. What makes it unique is that
a microstructure with a single source of energy is not only moved, but also can be
..."
Flexible Coaxial Cable
If anything qualifies for
meeting the criteria of the old adage that says "Necessity is the mother of invention," it is
coaxial transmission cable. Wireless communications
during World War II was the necessity that drove the rapid development and continuous improvement of coax. Other than
materials technology for wire, dielectric, protective jacket, etc., the basics of coax cable have not changed. It was during
the war that polyethylene was developed and adopted as a dielectric material much superior to previously used copolene.
Understanding of how electromagnetic fields propagate within and, under non-ideal conditions - on the outside of the cable
has increased significantly ...
Flat Boron is a Superconductor
"Rice University scientists have determined that
two-dimensional boron is a natural
low-temperature superconductor. In fact, it may be the only 2-D material with such potential. Rice theoretical physicist
Boris Yakobson and his co-workers published their calculations that show atomically flat boron is metallic and will transmit
electrons with no resistance. The work appears this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. The hitch,
as with most superconducting materials, is that it loses its resistivity only when very cold, in this case between 10 and
20 kelvins. But for making very small superconducting circuits, it might be the only game in town
..."
RF | Microwave Engineering &
Technician Jobs for April 4, 2016
As
a service to RF Cafe visitors, I offer to list
open job listings for engineers, technicians, engineering managers, engineering sales, etc., at no charge. Only positions
relevant to my readers are included. Your company is welcome to submit job descriptions, so please let your HR department
know bout this invitation. Beginning today, I am also going to peruse the websites of RF engineering companies in search
of qualifying job postings and will link directly to them. Don't let the news about layoffs and hiring freezes scare you
...
•
Project Engineering Manager
- General Dynamics
•
Electronic Technician - Aeroflex
•
Radar Test Engineer
- General Dynamics <many more>
10 of the Greatest Hoaxes
in Engineering History
"What better time to read about some of history's
greatest hoaxes than
April Fools Day? This year we've compiled another list of some more of our favorite hoax inventions,
scams, conspiracies, and urban legends. Did you ever get an email about a secret super car? Maybe you have a friend who
has warned you about chemtrails, or maybe you'd like to use a nanotech spray to make yourself invisible? Come take a look
at our latest crop of great hoaxes
..."
Voices in the Mail
This article reports
on the very earliest form of
voice mail - recording
a message on a reel-to-reel tape deck, placing it in an envelope, and snail mailing it to its recipient. Sure, it was slow,
but unless you were under surveillance for some suspected crime, there was just about zero chance that some government agency
was going to hear your private message. I had forgotten about it until reading this, but I remember that back in the 1960s,
my father bought an el cheapo tape deck for our family and one for his parents, who lived in Buffalo, New York. My parents
and four sisters and I had a pretty good time hamming it up on the tape, and looked forward to receiving a reply tape a
month or two later. "Grandpa B," as we kids called him, was a real funny guy
....
Silicon and Graphene Combo Achieve
Lithium-Ion Battery Greatness
"Silicon
electrodes crack and break after just a short number of charge/discharge cycles. Meanwhile, the use of graphene on electrodes
is limited because graphene's attractive surface area is only possible in single stand-alone sheets, which don't provide
enough volumetric capacitance. Layer the graphene sheets on top of each other to gain that volumetric capacity, and you
begin to lose that attractive surface area. Now researchers at Kansas State University claim to have developed a technique
that uses
silicon oxycarbide that makes the combination of silicon and graphene achieve its expected greatness
as an electrode material
..."
Congrats to March Book Drawing
Winner Marek K. of Ottawa, Canada !
Marek K., of Ottawa,
Canada, is one of the the March 2016 RF Cafe Book Drawing
winners! Marek wisely selected
Space-Time Adaptive Processing for Radar, by J. R. Guerci. (graciously
provided by Artech House). Each month I randomly
choose one or more names from a list of people who either buy my
software products or send me an e-mail asking to be entered
(empty e-mails go to the trash bin). The name list starts fresh each month, so your entry
only counts for the month it is received. Note: I have never sold, lent, traded, or given e-mail addresses to anyone
for any reason.
3D Printing Key to
Hypersonic Weapons
"The race is on to
build hypersonic weapons,
missiles that blow through a target's defenses at more than five times the speed of sound. Or should that be 'the race to
grow hypersonic weapons?' It turns out an unrelated cutting-edge technology, 3D printing, may be the key to making hypersonics
work. The whole aerospace world is intrigued by so-called additive manufacturing - especially for government and/or unmanned
applications not subject to laborious FAA safety testing on new technology. NASA has a 3D printer on the International Space
Station; the Navy has tested one on a ship. Several rocket engine companies have built key components
..."
Free Engineering White Papers
The free whitepapers,
pamphlets, books, magazines, and chapter examples listed here are a small sample of a lot of new items that are offered
for FREE through TradePub. The publishers make them
available to qualifying people as a promotional campaign for their full line of offerings. Note: I earn a few pennies
(literally) when you download one of these or the many other pubs available, so please help
yourself.
New Radio Antenna Avoids
Unwanted Signals
"A new simpler, cheaper and
potentially more effective way to prevent
radio antennas from picking up unwanted signals has been created by researchers in the US. With further
development, the technique could also be used to help prevent thermophotovoltaic cells from re-emitting radiation they absorb
– according to the team. The laws of electromagnetism work exactly the same way if you run time in the opposite direction.
One logical consequence of this is that an antenna designed to broadcast at a certain radio frequency will also be very
good at absorbing radiation at that frequency. This is problematic for broadcast radio antennas, which
..."
Google Interview Questions
Questions asked
by interviewers at Google are objects of much ballyhoo. Depending on the job being sought, questions range from relatively
simple and objective to massively esoteric and subjective. Perform a search on "Google Interview Questions" and you will find a host of websites
that collect experiences from recent interviewees. Some people curse Google for their insanely difficult questions, but
what is fundamentally a form of profiling and discrimination is what provides Google with exactly the
employees they need to be at the leading edge of all sorts of technology - networking, software, hardware, publishing, website
design, social media, global politics, search optimization, etc. As you can see, many questions require the interviewee
to state assumptions and conditions prior to asserting a solution. For instance, "Estimate the number of tennis balls that
can fit into a plane" has no single answer because while the size of a tennis ball
...
New Gravimeter-on-a-Chip is Tiny
Yet Extremely Sensitive
"A tiny device that can make very precise measurements
of the
Earth's gravity has been unveiled by physicists at the University of Glasgow in the UK. While their
gravimeter is not quite as sensitive as the best available sensors, the team says that it could be produced for a 1000th
of the cost. It is also significantly smaller and lighter than current devices, and could be deployed in drone aircraft
or in multi-sensor arrays to perform a range of tasks, including mineral exploration, civil engineering and monitoring volcanoes.
Gravimeters are sensors that measure the local force
..."
Lawsuit Against Manufacturers Using
Leaded Solder Heads to Supreme Court
Lyon Legal Justice Partners, a not for non-profit legal foundation based in Hill Valley,
California, has announced in the wake of a crushing and unexpected loss before the United States 9th Circuit Court of appeals
against manufacturers using leaded solder in their products, that his legal team will appeal the unprecedented 12.4 billion
dollars awarded to class action members from its client companies that comprise the International Brotherhood of Electronics
Assemblers. Plaintiffs originally sought 5 billion dollars as recompense for pain, suffering, lost wages, and lost opportunity
by its class of more than 25,000 electronics manufacturing workers worldwide. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge M.R.
Strickland; however, after finding defense counsel in contempt on multiple occasions during
...
