ISSUE DATE: JUNE 2009  OPTIONS
Defense Technology Trends

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June 2009 - In This Issue

[Cover Story]
Nonlinear VNAs Extend To 50 GHz
Vector network analyzers (VNAs) provide measured information about active and passive devices that can be invaluable when developing models for those devices. Recognizing the growing need for scattering-parameter (S-parameter) device characterization through millimeter-wave frequencies, Agilent Technologies has expanded its high-performance PNA-X series of VNAs to include a model with a frequency range of 10 MHz to 50 GHz (model N5245A). And for those not needing the full...  — Jack Browne

[News]
Microwave Solutions Guard Against Mounting Threats
Terrorism continues to plague the US, as evidenced by the recent arrest of four men who planned to bomb synagogues in New York City. From a law-enforcement perspective, the problem with such threats is the varied forms that they take. The plan that was just foiled, while harmful and frightening, was localized. Yet the events of September 11, 2001 clearly were not. Those working in counter-terrorism must imagine every possible attack scenario and figure...  — Nancy Friedrich

[News]
Targeting Trends In Military Electronics
Military applications often push technologies to their limits. Applications such as electronic warfare (EW), radar, communications, and surveillance have made demands on RF/microwave technologies over the years, causing oscillator manufacturers to design sources with lower phase noise, and synthesizer developers to increase frequency switching speeds. Although it would be difficult to summarize the many trends in electronic technologies for...  — Jack Browne

[News]
Squeezing Maximum Amplifier Efficiency
Efficiency ratings for an amplifier can be the difference between battery operation and the need for a more robust power supply. High efficiency is a design goal for any power amplifier, although achieving efficiency typically comes at the expense of linearity. In addition, as the efficiency of an amplifier increases, the amount of bias power dissipated as heat decreases, simplifying the thermal management concerns. Efficiency is defined in...  — Jack Browne

[Design Features]
Tracking Trends In Military IFMs And DFDs
Digital frequency discriminators (DFD) and instantaneous- frequency-measurement (IFM) receivers are still considered to be the preeminent advanced components for real-time, tactical signal identification and analysis. Widely used in many military electronics systems, they remain the essential component in a variety of applications including airborne and shipboard ESM, ground mobile ELINT collection, defense avionics, and RWR systems. DFDs and IFMs are...  — Kevin Burns

[Design Features]
SiGe PLL Synthesizer Suits Space Applications
Space applications require a phase-lock-loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer that cannot only provide lowphase- noise performance, but operate within a hostile environment. When the PLL must be small in size, low in power, and low in cost, commercial choices are limited. Most are optimized for landbased mobile-communications use. Space applications usually require high phase-detector comparison frequencies to reduce the phase-noise impact of the...  — Martin Thornber

[Design Features]
Launching TM Mode Onto A Single Conductor, Part 2
Last month, the first part of this three-part article series introduced a transversemagnetic (TM) propagation mode that is present with the better-known transverseelectromagnetic (TEM) mode in conventional coaxial transmission line. Put simply, waves move along a conductor having no outer shielding and no insulation or special surface conditioning. Part 2 will describe the TM mode around an unconditioned conductor, backed by models and measurements ...  — Glenn Elmore

[Design Features]
Use A VSA To Analyze Quad Demod Noise Figure
In-phase/quadrature (I/Q) demodulators contribute to the noise figure of a direct-conversion receiver’s signal chain, although it can be difficult to predict the effects. While noisefigure meters can measure noise figures at microwave frequencies, they do not operate low enough for use at baseband frequencies. An alternative approach is to use a calibrated noise source and spectrum analyzer with preamplifier to measure the noise rise through the...  — Eric Newman , et al.

[Design Features]
Targeting Measurements For Mobile Radio Systems
Radio-frequency (RF) system impairments can disrupt mission-critical communications. Deploying vehicles, aircraft, or portable radios for tactical applications requires a fast and nonintrusive test method to ensure that the radio system will fulfill its intended functions and under a wide range of adverse environmental conditions. Therefore, mission-critical RF system verification must be performed in situ, requiring a test system that is fast,...  — Stan Pierson

[Design Features]
Finding Ways To Reduce Filter Size
Smaller filters are a requirement for a growing number of commercial and military applications. With available spectrum becoming ever more crowded, filtering requirements are increasingly more severe, but filter suppliers are being asked to shrink their packages to fit more portable and compact applications, from cellular telephones with embedded Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to tactical radios for miniature military unmanned aerial. ...  — Jack Browne

[Design Features]
Pattern Generators Deliver Data To 12.5 GHz
New serial-data standards are operating at continuously rising speeds. Yet most patterngenerator solutions are either limited in their capabilities or very costly. Now, a pair of pattern generators is promising to provide solid performance at reasonable prices. The 8-GHz model 12040 and 12.5-GHz model 12050 pattern generators boast a 20-ps 10-to-90-percent rise time that ensures low-distortion data patterns. Output levels are programmable from 250 mV to 2 V. In...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editorial]
To Some, Safety Comes At A Hefty Price
When cellular telecom services began rolling out on a wide scale, many microwave companies downplayed their defense heritage as they jockeyed for a position in the expanding commercial market. As the growth in communications dipped and then hit a plateau, however, microwave firms realized how fortunate they were that some of their business remained in military technologies. Following September 11, 2001, the call for military solutions grew while a need for...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Feedback]
Feedback
Don’t Forget RLC’s Filters Dear Editor, In reading the RF Primer article in the April issue of Microwaves & RF, we noticed that you featured microwave filters (“Screening Requirements For Microwave Filters,” p. 40). As you know, RLC Electronics has been a leading manufacturer of microwave filters for 50 years, although RLC was not mentioned in the article. As we are a paid...  — Various Readers

[The Front End]
Bluetooth High-Speed Technology Puts Pressure on UWB
WELLINGBOROUGH, UK—In April, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group formally adopted Bluetooth Core Specification Ver. 3.0 High Speed (HS) or Bluetooth 3.0. Thanks to the inclusion of the IEEE 802.11 Protocol Adaptation Layer (PAL), Bluetooth 3.0 provides increased data-transfer throughput at the approximate rate of 24 Mb/s. Mobile devices including Bluetooth 3.0 will also realize increased power savings...  — Dawn Hightower

[The Front End]
CRFS Completes Spectrum Survey Of UK
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND--CRFS, the developrs and manufacturer of RFeye real-time spectral-monitoring and management tools, has completed a project to generate a detailed spectrum survey of the UK for Ofcom, the UK telecommunications regulator. CRFS equipped a fleet of vehicles to build a detailed picture of radio spectrum use in key frequency bands (100 MHz to 5 GHz) across the UK while the vehicles traveled about their normal business. The project used the RFeye...  — Dawn Hightower

[The Front End]
Antenna-Based Control System Can Stop A Train
BLOOMINGDALE, IL—Technology exists to design a system that can start applying a train’s brakes if an engineer fails to obey stop signals. Positive Train Control (PTC), a system that monitors railroads through a wireless network, can help to prevent train crashes and enhance railroad safety. Currently used in several pilot programs, PTC systems will be required under the federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act (RSIA). Antennas are a critical component ...  — Dawn Hightower

[Financial News]
WiSpry Closes Additional Series C Financing
WISPRY, INC. HAS CLOSED an additional $10 million of Series C financing, which brings the total of the Series C round to $20 million. The round was led by two new investment partners, Chart Venture Partners and Acadia Woods Partners. This funding round will help to expand the company’s operations, engineering, and applications-support structure as WiSpry begins production shipments to leading wireless-handset OEMs and ODMs this summer. WiSpry,...  — Dawn Hightower

[Company News]
Company News
CONTRACTS Lockheed Martin—Has been awarded a fixed-price contract from the US Air Force for nearly $25 million to develop a prototype for the next-generation 3-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR). Lockheed Martin was one of two industry teams placed under contract for the technical development of this new land-based radar. The Electronic Systems Command at Hanscom Air Force Base leads the...  — Dawn Hightower

[People]
People
Moorthy Promoted To Microchip Technology COO GANESH MOORTHY has been promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer by the board of Microchip Technology, Inc. Moorthy started his business career at Intel Corp. in 1981 and worked there for 19 years, rising through varous engineering and management positions. He joined Microchip in 2001 as Vice President of the...  — Dawn Hightower

[Educational Meetings]
Educational Meetings
MEETINGS The 1st International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ASQED'09) July 15-16, 2009 (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) For questions and contact information: www. isqed-asia.org 13th Annual Worldwide MASTERs Conference July 29-Aug. 1, 2009 (Phoenix, AZ) To register, go to: ...  — Dawn Hightower

[R&D Roundup]
Microwaves Detect Malaria At Its Onset
MALARIA CLAIMS THE LIVES of an estimated one to three million people every year. No vaccine is available for this infectious disease. With early diagnosis, however, patients have a better chance of responding to drug treatments. A method of detecting malaria at its onset has been developed by Anil Lonappan, Vinu Thomas, Joe Jacob, and K.T. Mathew from India’s Cochin University of Science and Technology with C. Rajasekaran from the Medical College...  — Nancy Friedrich

[R&D Roundup]
Notch Filter Eliminates UWB System Interference
FOR ULTRAWIDEBAND (UWB) SYSTEMS, interference comes in many forms: Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11b/g systems, cellular phones, and a variety of in-band and out-of-band WiMAX services. These sources of interference can cause receiver-gain compression. In addition, second- and third-order modulation products can fall in-band. Because another portion of spectrum is available for UWB at a higher frequency, a lowpass filter cannot be used in a full-band UWB...  — Nancy Friedrich

[R&D Roundup]
SWB Antenna Exhibits Impedance Bandwidth Beyond 25:1
NUMBEROUS SUPER-WIDEBAND (SWB) antennas have been developed with impressive return loss, radiation pattern, and gain. Yet such performance characteristics do not reveal the SWB antennas’ ability to transceive pulse signals. Antenna applications also are impacted by phase variation of the far field, transfer function, and transient response in the time domain. Keeping these aspects in mind, a printed SWB antenna has been proposed and studied by...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Application Notes]
Pulse Generator Triggers At 10 ps
THANKS TO RECENT ADVANCES, many test instruments are able to perform a variety of tasks. For example, Picosecond Pulse Labs’ model 4022 is labeled as a time-domain-reflectometer/ time-domain-transmission (TDT) enhancement module. Yet it does not need to be used for these applications. In fact, this pulse generator can supply less than 10 ps risetime differential test signals for the testing of numerous ultra-highspeed logic families. The...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Application Notes]
Silicon-CMOS PSP Models Excel In Complete PDKs
PENN STATE PHILLIPS (PSP) models are part of a new transistor-model class, which was created to solve RF design challenges like the need for RF transistors to operate across a wide range of bias conditions. PSP models satisfy these requirements by computing the surface potential in the gate region of a transistor’s silicon/silicon-dioxide interface. Alternatively, the Berkeley Short-channel IGFET model (BSIM)—the industry’s most widely used ...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editor's Choice]
WiMAX PA Supports Mobile Devices From 3.4 To 3.6 GHz
A family of mobile WiMAX fourth-generation (4G) power amplifiers (PAs) supports cellular communications applications in the following frequency bands: 2.3 to 2.4 GHz (South Korea and Malaysia), 2.5 to 2.7 GHz (US, Taiwan, Russia, and Japan), and 3.4 to 3.6 GHz. To enable the design of equipment for use during the transition from fixed-point to mobile technologies, for example, the AWM6433 supports both the IEEE 802.16d-2004 and 802.16e-2005 standards. This PA exceeds...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editor's Choice]
Rotary Attenuator Covers DC To 2700 MHz
With its compact size, a new rotary attenuator promises to save benchspace while testing a frequency range from DC to 2700 MHz. The 50BR-112 rotary attenuator features an attenuation range of 0 to 110 dB that is adjustable in 1-dB increments. This 50- benchtop attenuator is capable of handling 2 W RF input power. It maintains a voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of 1.8:1 maximum and 1.6:1 typical. It exhibits maximum insertion loss of...  — Nancy Friedrich

[Editor's Choice]
Telemetry Signal Simulator Spans 2200 to 2300 MHz
The DS-7210 portable telemetry signal simulator is a handheld, battery-powered, synthesized test signal source designed to tune from 2200 to 2300 MHz in 500-kHz steps. Its output-power level can be set from +10 to –20 dBm in 1-dB increments. The instrument allows a pulse-code-modulated (PCM) data stream to be selected with various data rates from 10 kB/s to 10 mB/s. The signal simulator includes a USB port for connectivity to an external personal computer, thereby allowing ...  — Nancy Friedrich