Mini-Circuits, a long trusted supplier of RF/microwave components, is teaming up with X-Microwave to offer the company’s components on X-Microwave’s X-MWblock drop-in module format. By employing the modular, solderless drop-in system along with companion hardware, software, and simulation tools, designers using Mini-Circuits components can speed and simplify the process of evaluating components working together in subsystems and subassemblies, such as receivers or transmitters. Furthermore, they can quickly redesign and optimize their assemblies as needed thanks to the flexible, modular nature of the X-Microwave approach.
Over 400 X-MWblocks are initially available for Mini-Circuits components, including filters, amplifiers, mixers, multipliers, limiters, couplers, switches, power dividers/combiners, and attenuators, with more planned. Each component for use in the X-MWblock format is supported by a computer simulation model based on measurements, enabling online computer simulations of multiple components working together in a signal chain.
The X-MWsystem drop-in prototyping approach already features components from Analog Devices, Custom MMIC, and others. Using these drop-in X-MWblock components as part of an assembly or subsystem makes it possible to evaluate the interactions among the components, such as reflections or mismatches, in software as well as in hardware.