Articles by Patrick Hindle

Agilent unveiled the PXA signal analyzer today which replaces the high end PSA unit and completes the X series with a full line ranging from the low cost CXA to the high performance PXA. The unit features 75 dB spurious free dynamic range at 140 MHz bandwidth which is the best in the industry. Agilent now has the low cost CXA which starts as low as $12.5k. Then the economy class unit is the EXA, the mid class is the MXA and of course, the high performance unit is now the PXA. Guy Sene and Ron Nersesian were on...

We arrived in Rome on Sunday and the weather is beautiful (sunny and 80s during the day, high 60s are night). After some quick sightseeing in the afternoon we made our way over to the conference Monday morning. The venue is nice but quite spread out and not much surrounding the area. The sessions are in large, nicely arranged rooms all in the same area with a cafe so the setup is very well done for the conference. The exhibition is in a separate building next door so hopefully everyone will make there way over when it opens tomorrow....

As I head over to Rome this weekend, I see the EuMW news starting to pour into our e-mail box. We have the EuMW Online Show Daily posted on our home page that will be updated continuously during the week but with so much news to cover, we decided to make a news summary page so you can quickly browse the headlines. Please use this blog to talk about or comment on any news items, new products, interesting papers, hot events, etc. during the week. Also, as noted below we have quite a number of companies and individuals using Twitter...

The Microwave Journal Online Show Daily for EuMW 2009 is live at http://www.mwjournal.com/#EuMWOSD (on our home page). Our September show issue contains several articles about the conference, exhibition, events and what to see and do in Rome. The site is updated frequently with news and featured products from the show plus a live Twitter Feed. Set the keyword to " EuMW " to follow the action and follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pathindle . We will have various entries on this blog over the next couple of weeks covering the show and what we find are hot topics and...

Appeasing the Russians or making a smart strategic move for the US? Obama announced yesterday that he has modified the previous Bush administration's missile defense strategy by changing it from a long range, fixed system based in Poland and the Czech Republic to a mobile short/medium range defense system. This could ease tensions with the Russian's who strongly objected to such a system in their back yard and possibly help the US convince them to put pressure on Iran to curb their nuclear efforts. I think this change in strategy seemed to be presented poorly (or sensationalized by the press)...

ABI Research has new M2M report out showing how the market grew rapidly from 2003-2007 but collapsed in 2008. They began tracking the cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) module market in 2003, and for five years shipments increased on average more than 25% per year. In 2007 module shipment growth peaked at a phenomenal 45%. The economic collapse of 2008 put an end to such double-digit growth rates, but the M2M market was still up 4%. Feedback from vendors indicates that most feel the market bottomed out in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Starting in...

Last year around this time there was some renewed concern that cell phone radiation could be dangerous, especially to kids. The Environmental Working Group has brought up the subject again with their release of the best and worst phones for radiation emissions and bringing up their concerns of the possible dangers. But there still does not seem to be any scientific evidence that they are dangerous and non-ionizing radiation is not known to be dangerous to the human body at the levels one would experience in everyday use of cell phones. It is interesting that Samsung dominated the top 10...

Strategy Analytics states that vendors will ship $4 billion in Wi - Fi radio chips in 2013, most of these for cellphones, notebooks, netbooks , infrastructure, home entertainment systems and wireless gaming consoles. At the same time, adoption of 802.11n MIMO with multiple transmit streams will help boost the market for Wi - Fi power amplifier modules to twice its 2008 size, despite continued pricing pressure. They have determined that Broadcom will probably remain on top, but the firm faces increasing competition from cellular chip vendors bundling connectivity with their platforms, and from chip specialists targeting emerging applications, such as...

Over the next year NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will scout and collect more information about the moon's surface and environment than any previous mission. It takes a powerful system to send all of this information more than 238,800 miles back to Earth so equipped with a new type of TWT amplifier, LRO can transmit 461 GB of data per day. It transmits this information at a rate of up to 100 MB per second. The 13-inch-long TWT is the first high data rate Ka-band transmitter to fly on a NASA spacecraft. L-3 Communications Electron Technologies built the amplifier under...

There have been 40 deaths (30 high school players) to football players due to over heating since 1995. Now wireless transmitter systems are being tested that are embedded into football helmets with temperature sensors to monitor player's body temperature. The cost is about $100 per player - pretty cool stuff. See the video below from CBS:...