RF, Microwave, and Wireless Components Reference Materials

Description: Selecting the right antenna for a situation can sometimes seem confusing when considering all the necessary criteria. Frequency is a paramount consideration and often the starting point for a design. ...

Description: IIoT is enabling everything from the Oil Drilling Rig's of the Future to Autonomous Commercial Vehicles and Self Healing Manufacturing Equipment and TECAT is excited to be working on the leading edge ...

Description: A Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) natively measures complex S-parameters of a device under test (DUT) in the frequency domain mode by sweeping across various frequency points. While there is an ...

Description: Thru-Reflect-Line (TRL) calibration has a number of advantages over the Short-Open-Load-Thru (SOLT) method often used in VNA calibration. For SOLT calibration, the standards must be accurately ...

Description: This article presents a generic digital control system for the stabilization of Radio Frequency (RF) fields used in particle accelerators, the Libera LLRF. ...

Description: The most common uses of RF Shielding in the medical industry is for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). MRI is a non-invasive way to take a 3D images of a person for diagnostic purposes. The MRI creates ...

Description: Almost every RF test setup requires connectors and cables. Connectors will influence test results in various and sometimes unpredictable ways. Test equipment can compensate for some of these ...

Description: The latest military and industrial radar and microwave to millimeter wave backhaul applications require precise control of the input and output phase of their antenna arrays over a wide range of ...

Description: RF and microwave switches route signals through transmission paths with a high degree of efficiency. Four fundamental electrical parameters characterize how these switch designs perform. Several ...

Description: Among the broad array of tools used by designers for stimulating and measuring the performance of their creations, benchtop amplifiers are some of the most basic and useful. Over the last few years, ...

Description: After decades of remaining dormant for want of suitable applications, millimeter wave systems operating at 60 GHz are finally appearing. Short range, very high data rate wireless links for cellular ...

Description: As most RF and microwave companies are privately held and industry analysts rarely track sales of microwave components other than semiconductors and interconnects, determining the health of an ...

Description: Attenuators are electrical components designed to reduce the amplitude of a signal passing through the component, without significantly degrading the integrity of that signal. They are used in RF and ...

Description: Figure 1 • For either weather or military radar, high power amplifiers often generate hundreds to thousands of watts of RF energy to the radar antennas or antenna arrays. Source: ...

Description: RF/microwave cable assemblies are critical components in many systems, essential for providing high-frequency signal interconnections with no room for failure. Coaxial cable assemblies are ...

Description: Recent breakthroughs in radar technology combined with the demand for compact, affordable and high precision radar for military and commercial applications, has led to a renaissance in the methods and ...

Description: Q: The “Internet of Things,� that is, everything being connected, will have an impact on the RF and microwave industry. Will it affect your company? A: The name Internet of Things (IoT) misses the ...

Description: A common question from users of Copper Mountain Technologies' USB-based Vector Network Analyzers is whether the analyzer can be used as a signal source. Users' motivations for doing so vary, but most ...

Description: Abstract-This paper reports the design and performance of state-of-the-art GaN MMICs and a fully packaged Ka-band SSPA. Incorporating harmonic tuning, the MMICs produce power levels up to 10 W CW with ...

Description: Communications providers are in the process of rolling out fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks that promise to revolutionize a wide range of applications through significantly higher data rates, ...

Description: A poorly matched antenna throws away valuable RF signal power and thus degrades wireless connectivity. Dr. Anitha Govind, Abracon's Senior Product Engineer - Antenna Solutions, simplifies the ...

Description: A key issue engineers are working on today involves wireless charging of batteries. Wireless charging eliminates the need to wrestle with heavy duty charging cables or the expense of devices like ...

Description: Experimenting with harnessing the power of the sun ...

Description: A mobile device battery has many demands to fill: photos, maps, social media, apps and ride-hailing services, etc. These demands increase at conferences and during travel. Almost inevitably, device ...

Description: Antenna Terms and Definitions ...

Description: The system is ideal for production areas subject to frequent change, production operations using mobile inventory carts/racks and more. ...

Description: This application note covers resistive and reactive power divider/combiners. The main goal of this app note is to help customers choose the correct power divider/combiner type for their application. ...

Description: The slip ring, being the key component of the instrument and equipment, tends to be worn when it works under the influence of many factors. The friction and wear characteristics of the contact ...

Description: As demand grows for ubiquitous wireless connectivity and the promise of new and previously unimagined applications - such as autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, telemedicine and virtual ...

Description: Radar signal analysis applications require highly specialized test equipment to model and test transmitted or received signals. Secondary surveillance radar is a type of radar that is often used for ...

Description: As the market gets ready to deploy 5G, wireless connectivity expert Skyworks Solutions explains how the next generation standard will be rolled out in three usage cases: EMBB for mobile platforms, ...

Description: Users of Vector Network Analyzers (VNAs) often need to estimate and strive to optimize their instrument’s measurement speed. Many RF Engineers are interested in the tradeoffs between speed, ...

Description: Pulsed S-parameter measurements are important when testing a DUT at a higher power than it can handle without damage in the steady state, or when the normal operating mode of the DUT involves RF ...

Description: Mixers are 3-port devices that incorporate nonlinear elements, typically diodes or transistors, to produce the sum or difference of two input frequencies. For example, in transceivers mixers are used ...

Description: Vector network analyzers (VNAs) are widely used in research, manufacturing, and service environments. These instruments contain stimulus signal sources and receivers with one or more frequency ...

Description: Vector Network Analyzers (VNAs) are used to measure the reflection and transmission coefficients, or S-parameters, of a Device Under Test (DUT). When the DUT is passive, the VNA may be the only tool ...

Description: As the Internet of Things (IoT) starts to materialize, more and more consumer and industrial products are incorporating wireless interfaces such as Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, or proprietary wireless radio ...

Description: Wireless infrastructure encompasses a broad range of radio technologies, antennas, towers, and frequencies. Radio networks are built from this infrastructure and from mobile radiosâ€"the radios used ...

Description: Article explaining an antenna's antenna factor ...

Description: Summary: Two standard methods for field-strength measurement are described. The standard-antenna method consists of measuring the received power or open-circuit voltage developed in a standard ...

Description: The constant in the above equation is derived as follows. Power is related to voltage according to Ohm's law. The Log10 function is used for relative (dB) scales, so applying the logarithmic function ...

Description: Interest in microwave-absorbing material technology has been growing. As the name implies, microwave-absorbing materials are coatings whose electrical and/or magnetic properties have been altered to ...

Description: Modern wideband microwave systems often require a flat overall gain response with respect to frequency. Achieving this performance can be difficult, however, since most wideband microwave components ...

Description: Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) MMICs are a critical component in virtually all radar, wireless communication and instrumentation systems. There are a wide range of options and tradeoffs an engineer must ...

Description: Phase noise is rapidly becoming the most critical factor addressed in sophisticated radar and communication systems. This is because it is the key parameter defining target acquisition in radars and ...

Description: When microwave engineers hear the words "Gallium Nitride" (GaN), one thought usually comes to their minds: power amplifiers. Due to its physical properties of high-breakdown voltage and high-thermal ...

Description: In modern telecommunication systems, the range of parameters an engineer must consider while optimizing a design is staggering. Not only must electrical specifications be achieved, but physical and ...

Description: The Gallium Nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) is well known for its use in microwave and millimeter wave power amplifiers due to its high breakdown voltage and ability to handle ...

Description: In this paper, the placement of microwave absorbers on the outer layers of multi-layer printed circuits boards (PCBs) with several high speed channels, to mitigate electromagnetic radiations from ...

Description: There's increasing demand for low power long-range wireless devices to serve the needs of the emerging IIoT market. Collectively known as LPWA (Low Power Wide Area), the main players are Sigfox, LoRa, ...

Description: An attenuator is an electrical component that reduces the amplitude of a signal passing through it without significantly degrading the integrity of that signal. In a programmable or step attenuator, ...

Description: The current state-of-art and comparing the benefits of advanced wireless charging solutions using a totally integrated approach. ...

Description: Measuring the performance of microwave materials requires a test apparatus that includes a measurement fixture and a microwave analyzer, which are usually connected with microwave or radio frequency ...

Description: Connecting to an Antenna Under Test (AUT) integral to a Device (DUT) may involve some tradeoffs between measurement accuracy, electrical considerations, and mechanical ruggedness. In this paper, we ...

Description: The smartphone market has diversified into multiple categories with differing design goals and priorities, which require different approaches to RF front end (RFFE) integration. Flagship phones are ...

Description: In the past 10 years, the use of military radios has increased dramatically, and, in turn, so has the need to test those radios. In part, this increase stems from the advent of such military-based ...

Description: Voltage Standing Wave Ratio - Is the ratio of the maximum to minimum amplitude (or the voltage or current) of the corresponding field components appearing on a line that feeds an antenna. Here is an ...

Description: Voltage Standing Wave Ratio - Is the ratio of the maximum to minimum amplitude (or the voltage or current) of the corresponding field components appearing on a line that feeds an antenna. ...

Description: Voltage Standing Wave Ratio - Is the ratio of the maximum to minimum amplitude (or the voltage or current) of the corresponding field components appearing on a line that feeds an antenna. VSWR Cheat ...

Description: Wireless means cable-free: with this motto in mind, Paus is fitting its Sky Worker PTK 27 crane series with special safety equipment. Wireless switching devices monitor the position of the crane hook ...

Description: A manufacturer of metal fa?ade elements uses a hydraulic swing-folding machine for its metalwork controlled by a wireless safety foot switch. Doing away with a conventional cabled switch improves ...

Description: A ?Wireless Kanban? system based on remote control switchgear gets to work in Salzburg's renowned ski production. ...

Description: Not all Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi or ZigBee® solutions are created equal. That is the inescapable conclusion of some recent tests comparing popular system-on-chip (SoC) platforms ...

Description: The cultural development of humanity is essentially determined by communication. A major problem of linguistic communication, however, lies in the limited range of sound waves. A virtually unlimited ...

Description: In order to help better identify signals of interest from ambient signals that might already be in the area, we have included a table of VHF, UHF, and FM frequencies, as a companion to our TDS-536 TV ...

Description: There are many different conducted susceptibility test procedures, below is an example of bulk current injection (BCI) testing. Other specifications on bulk current injection and susceptibility ...

Description: They say that creativity thrives on constraints and not many design situations are more constrained than wireless devices. The notion of "always on" connectivity comes with significant analog and RF ...

Description: Selecting the most appropriate RF components is the key to successfully addressing the requirements of these applications. Here we look at the growing demand for RF communications, highlight the ...

Description: As today's wireless networks become more and more complex, so do the requirements for testing them. JFW Industries has put together a helpful instruction on how to make sure that the RF test system ...

Description: Receiver system designers are seeing a change from the widely adopted heterodyne architecture to a direct RF-sampling approach. In the traditional receiver, the designer selects the analog-to-digital ...

Description: AIRDATA AG offers a portable way of accessing the Internet using new 3G standards. The new Internet access has completed a successful trial and it is now possible to use the Internet wirelessly in ...

Description: BCL (Broadcast Communications Limited) is an experienced wireless solutions partner in the New Zealand communications industry supplying broadcast and telecommunications services for over 60 years. ...

Description: In 2005 BAE Systems was awarded a $2 million contract to provide a Continuous Wave (CW) Doppler radar to the UK Aberporth Test and Evaluation Range, operated by QinetiQ on behalf of the UK Ministry of ...

Description: One of the world's leading motorsport and automotive groups, Prodrive run a series of high profile programmes around the world, including the Ferrari 550 GTS programme in the Le Mans 24 hours and ...

Description: The X-48B was an experimental X-Plane and a joint venture between NASA, US Air Force Research Laboratory and The Boeing Company. The X-48B is an unmanned airborne scale model BWB (Blended Wing Body) ...

Description: Cobham Antenna Systems designed a light weight, directional antenna (model DHDA-2.4V/1448) for integration within the Body Worn Video Wireless Solution developed by Reveal Media and Cobham Tactical ...

Description: Cobham Antenna Systems designed this light weight, directional antenna (model DHD-2.4V/1448) for integration within the Body Worn Video Wireless Solution, developed by Reveal Media and Cobham Tactical ...

Description: Cobham Antenna Systems, Microwave Antennas has designed a new body-worn antenna for the Thales UK Future Integrated Soldier Technology (FIST) programme, part of the Soldier Modernisation programme. ...

Description: Cobham Antenna Systems, Microwave Antennas has designed and manufactured antennas for Thales for use on Section 2 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) project between Fawkham Junction in Kent and ...

Description: MARK Resources, Inc. was founded in 1974 by several experienced engineers who wanted to establish a creative work environment for advancing state-of-the-art radar system technology. Today, MARK ...

Description: Cobham Antenna Systems, Microwave Antennas are pleased to have supplied the London Fire Brigade with antennas that have been mounted on the mobile Command Unit vehicles. The antenna is a compact, ...

Description: Port of Felixstowe (PFL) is the largest container port in the UK and one of the leading ports in Europe. PFL is a member of the Hutchison Port Holdings Group, the world's leading port investor, ...

Description: The dual polar Regional BGAN external antenna model FPA17-17RL/1020 has been superseded by model FPA17-RBGAN/1281. The new antenna has right hand circular polarisation only and is exactly the same ...

Description: Cobham Antenna Systems, Microwave Antennas, in partnership with Jenkins Engineering Defence Systems and BAE Systems Australia, developed and built a new sector antenna solution for the Royal ...

Description: Cobham Antennas Systems, Microwave Antennas has supplied Swedish Space Corporation with an omni antenna for use on their balloon gondola, providing an effective link to transmit data to the ground. ...

Description: Cobham Antenna Systems, Microwave Antennas developed a directional antenna (FPA-0.4-2.7R/2023) specifically for an airport application in the US.Developed for an airport in New York, the antenna was ...

Description: Homes are getting smarter, and this means the components that allow the processes within products need to be smarter as well. In today's world, homes are being stocked full of items that are ...

Description: One of the greatest changes to home security technology has been the introduction of remote monitoring and control of systems via mobile devices. This fundamental change in the way home security ...

Description: The knowledge of operational loads on a helicopter rotating components is important for condition based maintenance (CBM) and health usage monitoring systems (HUMS). In the past, the need to deploy ...

Description: We report on the development and test of an integrated structural health monitoring and reporting (SHMR) system for use on Navy aircraft. Our goal was to develop and test a versatile, fully ...

Description: Direct load monitoring of helicopter rotating structural components could provide enhanced condition based maintenance and improved flight regime recognition for future health and usage monitoring ...

Description: With a myriad of wireless sensors available, it can become confusing to determine which one is best for you. This paper outlines the most important considerations when selecting a wireless sensor, to ...

Description: Digital signage is a development of traditional signage and nowadays it is available in wireless form as well. Digital signs use LCD, LED and projectors to display digital images, videos, and ...

Description: An RF module is a small electronic device designed for transmission and reception of radio signals between two devices. As the name suggests, these modules operate at radio frequency and transmit ...

Description: An RF Wireless Module is a small electronic device used to transmit or receive radio signals between two devices. Such modules are complex to build and requires careful monitoring in the manufacturing ...

Description: NYC Transit operates 820 miles of track, making it one of the largest rail transit systems in the world. Millions of people ride the subway every day. In fact, in September 2014, the agency recorded ...

Description: With the discontinuation of the Holtek® encoders and decoders, the KH2 Series is also being discontinued. Linx has developed the KH3 Series as a replacement. The KH3 replaces the Holtek® ...

Description: One application for Linx RF modules is to make a transceiver out of the separate transmitter and receiver modules. This allows for the bi-directional transfer of information while using low-cost and ...

Description: As wireless systems have become more integrated and lower in cost, more and more products are seeking a competitive edge through the addition of remote control features. Despite this wireless ...

Description: Embedded antennas are ideal for products that cannot use an external antenna. The reasons for this can range from ergonomic or aesthetic reasons or perhaps the product needs to be sealed because it is ...