June 9, 2005 Newsletter

June 9, 2005
============================== Microwaves & RF UPDATE PlanetEE - www.planetee.com MWRF - www.mwrf.com June 9, 2005 ============================== Greetings and welcome to your personal copy of PlanetEE's Microwaves and RF UPDATE e-newsletter. Please ...
==============================
Microwaves & RF UPDATE
PlanetEE - www.planetee.com
MWRF - www.mwrf.com
June 9, 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. UWB Communications Is Coming 
2. FOCUS Enhancements Tapes Out 880-Mb/s UWB Chip 
3. Smallest Transistor Package Debuts 
4. NI Teams With SeaSolve Software For Wireless Solutions 
5. Software Test Bench Targets cdma2000
6. Modelithics To Develop AVX 0201 Cap Models 
7. Alcatel and Freescale Join Forces on Gigabit PON 
8. Book Review
9. Happenings - Conferences 


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August 16-19, 2005, San Diego, CA

http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC69:FFCBF


*******************************************************************


***************
1.  Viewpoint 
***************
UWB Communications Is Coming

Ultrawideband (UWB) technology has long held great promise for 
wideband communications at short distances, but available hardware 
has been limited. With the announcement by video-specialist FOCUS 
Enhancements (see below), however, it appears that a two-chip 
hardware solution is on its way. Following the partitioning of other 
wireless standards, of RF/analog circuitry on one chip and baseband 
and medium-access-control (MAC) circuitry on the other, the chip set 
should at least simplify the ability of engineers to evaluate UWB 
technology for short-range applications (to about 10 m or more).

It is expected that this announcement should uncover work being 
performed at other leading semiconductor houses (FOCUS Enhancements 
is a "fabless" semiconductor house that relies on outside foundries 
for its device fabrication) during next week's Microwave Theory & 
Techniques Symposium (MTT-S) in Long Beach, CA. And when the devices 
are available, the advantages and disadvantages (interference?) of 
UWB technology will become more clear. As for what is unveiled at 
the MTT-S, don't miss the next edition of this newsletter.  

JACK BROWNE
Technical Director


*************
2. News
*************
FOCUS Enhancements Tapes Out 880-Mb/s UWB Chip

FOCUS Enhancements has announced the taping-out of the first 
ultrawideband (UWB) radio chip capable of 880-Mb/s performance at 8 
m. The analog/RF chip is designed to be one member of a two-chip 
set, with the second device, a baseband/medium-access controller 
(MAC), expected to tape out in September. According to Brett Moyer, 
FOCUS Enhancements' president and CEO, "Taping out the first of our 
two UWB chips is an important milestone in our strategy to bring 
wireless video to the home." The FOCUS Enhancements' UWB chipset 
will contain a fully compliant and interoperable WiMedia-MBOA UWB 
radio, plus an extended mode that will produce much higher data 
rates. Cadence Design Systems is performing design services for the 
FOCUS Enhancements' UWB chipset, while Jazz Semiconductor is 
supplying RF device fabrication. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing 
Corp. (TSMC) will supply the baseband/MAC chips. 

FOCUS Enhancements ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6A:FFCBF


*********
3. News
*********
Smallest Transistor Package Debuts

Engineers seeking to shrink their voltage-controlled-oscillator 
(VCO) designs can now benefit from the industry's smallest 
transistor package. Developed by NEC and measuring just 0.64 by 0.84 
by 0.40 mm including the leads, the low-profile M33 package is 
available with a line of silicon and silicon germanium (SiGe) 
transistors aimed at VCO applications. The models NE685M33 and 
NE851M33 silicon bipolar transistors and the model NESG2107M33 SiGe 
device are suitable for wireless handsets and wireless 
infrastructure equipment operating from 0.8 to 6.0 GHz. In addition, 
two VCO buffer devices, silicon-bipolar model NE687M33
and SiGe model NESG2046M33, are also available in the new package. 
Visit the California Eastern Laboratories web site for more 
information on the NEC devices.

California Eastern Laboratories ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC74:FFCBF
 

*********
4. News
*********
NI Teams With SeaSolve Software For Wireless Solutions

By working with SeaSolve Software, test and software developer 
National Instruments has created RF/communications test and analysis 
solutions based on modular hardware and software. SeaSolve's 
software, integrated with NI's PXI-based RF hardware results in 
compliance test systems for various wireless standards, including 
IEEE 802.15.4 WPAN (ZigBee) and IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi). According to 
Joe Kovacs, NI RF product marketing manager, "With the addition of 
SeaSolve's software solutions based on NI LabVIEW, engineers can 
perform RF physical layer compliance tests while taking advantage of 
the flexibility and speed that the NI PXI-based RF hardware offers." 
SeaSolve recently developed a compliance test software solution for 
the ZigBee and Wi-Fi standards that integrates with the NI PXI-5660 
vector signal analyzer, the NI PXI-5670 and PXI-5671 vector signal 
generators as well as the NI Modulation Toolkit for LabVIEW.
"SeaSolve chose to develop this solution on the proven National 
Instruments LabVIEW and PXI-based RF platform because of the PXI 
platform's inherent speed advantage as well as the short time to 
market that the solution offers as a whole," said Nadeem Sayed, 
SeaSolve business development manager.

National Instruments ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC65:FFCBF
SeaSolve Software ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6D:FFCBF


**********
5. News
**********
Software Test Bench Targets cdma2000

Applied Wave Research (AWR) announced the release of its cdma2000 
test bench for the company's Visual System Simulator (VSS) design 
suite. The new test bench helps users evaluate the impact of RF link 
impairments on frame error rate (FER), bit error rate (BER), symbol 
error rate (SER), and other metrics. The VSS test bench consists of 
transmit and receive blocks and supports variable frame sizes, data 
rates, and multiple channels including fundamental and supplemental 
traffic, pilot, and an orthogonal channel noise simulator (OCNS). 
The code includes all of the bit-level functions, framing, cyclical 
redundancy code (CRC), forward-error correction (FEC), interleaving, 
Walsh and quadrature spreading, and modulation for forward and 
reverse link operation.

Applied Wave Research ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6F:FFCBF
 

*********
6. News
*********
Modelithics To Develop AVX 0201 Cap Models

Capacitor supplier AVX Corp. has contracted Modelithics to create 
new equivalent-circuit models for three of its 0201 families of 
capacitors. Modelithics will apply its Global Model technology to 
fashion models for use with leading RF/microwave simulation tools, 
such as the Advanced Design System (ADS) from Agilent EEsof. 
According to AVX Marketing Manager Tim Hollander, "We're confident 
that, by making Modelithics models for AVX parts available to 
RF/microwave design engineers, our components will see their way 
into more designs, and that those designs will reach the production 
stage much sooner. It's a clear win for everyone."

AVX Corp. ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6E:FFCBF
Modelithics ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC68:FFCBF


*********
7. News
*********
Alcatel and Freescale Join Forces on Gigabit PON

Passive optical networking (PON) technology offers the wide 
bandwidth needed for the "big three" services: voice, video, and 
data. In pursuit of achieving higher performance with the 
technology, Alcatel and Freescale Semiconductor have collaborated on 
an advanced Gigabit PON (GPON) standards-compliant silicon solution 
for broadband access services. The cost-effective, low-power GPON 
System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution leverages Freescale's 
industry-leading PowerQUICC communications processor architecture 
based on PowerPC cores and digital signal processors (DSPs) based on 
StarCore technology, along with Alcatel's implementation of the 
standard GPON medium access control (MAC). Alcatel's implementation 
of the GPON MAC offers full compliance to ITU-T G.984 with data 
rates of 2.5 Gb/s downstream and 1.25 Gb/s upstream at a 1:128 split 
ratio. The MAC also integrates advanced encryption standard, forward 
error correction in both upstream and downstream directions, and 
dynamic bandwidth assignment.

Alcatel ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC70:FFCBF
Freescale Semiconductor ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6C:FFCBF
 

***************
8. Book Review
***************
The Design of Modern Microwave Oscillators for Wireless Applications

Written by Ulrich Rohde and Ajay Kumar Poddar of Synergy Microwave 
(Paterson, NJ) along with Professor Georg Boch of the German 
Technische Universitat Berlin, The Design of Modern Microwave 
Oscillators for Wireless Applications serves as an excellent text on 
microwave oscillator design. It provides several basic design 
approaches, methods for analyzing phase noise, a variety of noise 
and oscillator nonlinear models, and several fine examples of 
oscillator circuits, including coupled-mode oscillators, push-pull 
oscillators, and a parallel resonator oscillator. Just for the 
examples , this is a text worth having.

John Wiley & Sons (201-748-6395) ---> http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC72:FFCBF


*******************************
9.  Happenings - Conferences
*******************************
Microwave Theory & Techniques Symposium (MTT-S)
June 12-17, 2005
Long Beach Convention Center
Long Beach, CA 
http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC73:FFCBF

Bipolar Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)
October 10-11, 2005
Santa Barbara, CA
http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC6B: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=BC71:FFCBF

Wireless Congress 2005: Systems and Applications
November 9-10, 2005
Munich, Germany
http://nls.planetee.com/t?ctl=BC66: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:
Mike McCaffery at 1-201-845-2414 or
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Copyright 2005 Penton Media Inc. All rights reserved.

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