ISSUE DATE: MARCH 2006  OPTIONS
Communications

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March 2006 - In This Issue

[Cover Story]
Single Chip Houses Analog/Digital TV Receiver
Television technology will undergo a dramatic makeover in the next several years, as terrestrial, satellite, and cable broadcasters make the transition from analog to digital. Manufacturers of consumer televisions, however, have already gotten the jump on digital technology with sets bearing "digital-ready" or "high-definition (HD) ready" labels to entice consumers. Many of these newer liquid-crystal-display (LCD), plasma, or rear-projection televisions still incorporate...  — Jack Browne

[News]
Frequency Synthesizers Tune Communications Systems
Bandwidth is everything in communications. It is vital to the spread of wireless multimedia, instant data, high voice quality, and other key services. But it is also a limited resource, requiring the use of advanced amplitudeand phase-based modulation formats to squeeze the maximum amount of information into a given portion of bandwidth. One of the most critical components in enabling maximum bandwidth efficiency is the microwave frequency synthesizer. Modern synthesizers have leveraged...  — Jack Browne

[The Big Picture]
Preparation Is Key For The Future Of Circuit Design
What if we could go back 10 years and predict what the next decade of electronic design would bring? In the late 1990s, one of the crystal-ball forecasts of the electronics industry (from the ITRS SIA roadmap) looked out over the next 10 to 15 years. It predicted clock speeds edging into the low gigahertz range. When the roadmap was updated a few years later, predicted clock speeds rose to five to ten times that range. This change was due to disruptive technologies ...  — Jim McGillvary

[The Big Picture]
ICs Have Steady Influence On Microwave Market
Over the last 30 years, significant changes have taken place in the microwave industry. Perhaps the biggest shift was the emergence of a commercial market driven by the evolution of highly customized, low-volume products. Up until the '90s, the majority of the microwave component market was dominated by military spending with the occasional scientific-user-related test equipment. During that era, the focus was on durability in the field under harsh environments while...  — Russell Shaller

[The Big Picture]
WiMAX Muddies The Wireless Waters
 — Pierre Piel

[Design Features]
Filtering Compromises From Co-Located Systems
Co-location of different wireless-communications base stations often makes economic sense, but poses a variety of technical challenges. The approach allows carriers to still use existing infrastructure while deploying new wireless networks. The practice helps reduce capital expenditures while supporting rapid network rollouts. A decision to co-locate base stations is also impacted by the scarcity of premium base-station locations and the growing demand for aesthetically...  — André Doll , et al.

[Design Features]
Simulation Spices RFID Read Rates
Implementers of RF-indentification (RFID) readers have sometimes struggled with meeting read rate requirements due to the difficulty of isolating different factors-that can affect performance. These include the material to which the tags are attached, the orientation of the tags, power constraints, operating frequency variations, and other factors. The large number of design parameters for evaluating RFID read-rate performance translates into a large work space for physical...  — Tudor Breahna , et al.

[Design Features]
Microwave Connector Choices Determine System Performance
Few components have the paradoxical attributes of the microwave connector. These precision-crafted devices play a vastly greater role in determining system performance than their diminutive size would suggest. For as long as there have been transmission lines to connect, the microwave industry has been searching for the "ideal connector." This connector "Holy Grail" would be a lossless, reflectionless interface. Because it would have no length, it would contribute ...  — Steve Thomas

[Design Features]
Analyzing EM Parameters For Shielded Bandline
Shielded symmetrical bandline transmission lines offer some noteworthy characteristics for high-frequency designs, including low signal loss. In order to better understand the nature of these transmission lines, they were examined using the finite-element method (FEM) 1,2 method-of-moments (MoM) analysis, 3 and curve-fitting techniques. Through these analysis approaches, a set of closed-form equations was developed to determine the characteristic...  — Nasreddine Ben Ahmed , et al.

[Product Technology]
Software Library Speeds Mobile WiMAX Designs
Broadband wireless access (BWA) via WiMAX technology has been projected by many research studies to be a market with the growth potential of cellular communications. As that market heats up, the race to deliver products to market will accelerate. Prepared suppliers will have the right development tools even in advance of a finalized standard, such as the Mobile WiMAX library from Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, CA), for their Advanced Design System (ADS) electronic-design-automation (EDA)...  — Afshin Aimini

[Product Technology]
EM Software Suite Models IC Coupling
Coupling effects are often overlooked until their unwanted effects are quite noticeable. At the system level, coupling can be defeated by means of additional shielding and metal enclosures. But at the integrated-circuit (IC) level, unwanted coupling usually results in a mask redesign and another (expensive) run at the foundry. Fortunately, some of those extra wafer runs can now be avoided by studying the effects of IC component coupling with software, the PeakView suite...  — Jack Browne

[Product Technology]
Peak Power Meters Offer 65-MHz Bandwidth
Power measurements are among the most important methods of characterizing a wireless system's transmitted signal quality. Whether that system is a military radar or a third-generation (3G) cellular or wideband WiMAX network, the new ML2490A series of peak power meters from Anritsu Co. offer the measurement power needed to accurately characterize the power levels of short pulses, complex modulated waveforms, and continuous-wave (CW) signals. The new power meters ...  — Jack Browne

[Editorial]
Dreaming About Hawaii In 2007
FOR MANY OF US in the RF and microwave industry, the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) is the "place to be" every year. Boasting roughly 10,000 attendees, the show—known by many as the Microwave Theory & Techniques Symposium (MTT-S)— focuses on components and technologies for both commercial and military applications. Although the show's location changes every year, MTT-S is always a magical place where the industry's leading products and technologies are unveiled and...  — Nancy Friedrich