Articles by Patrick Hindle

The RF and Microwave Pavilion opened at CTIA today and the reception was strong. The Pavilion is located in the South hall toward the front on the main isle so traffic was good. I visited all of the booths today in the pavilion and will have a complete wrap up in a few days after I return. But the most interesting product so far is the Peregrine UltraCMOS products. They are making products that are solving many of the high power, high linearity and fast switching times needed for multi-throw switches, digital attenuators and tunable circuits. Included is a...

I got in last night and Vegas seems as busy as ever - there are several trade shows in town besides CTIA which by itself is very large. I will be going over to the exhibition soon as it opens at 11 but the news is already pouring in. It looks like femtocells are hot while high capacity microwave backhaul and LTE continue to get a lot of attention. Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation released three new UltraCMOS (TM) Digital Step Attenuators ( DSAs ) in the expansion of its popular 50 Ohm DSA line. Building on their high-performance predecessors, along with...

It must have been very difficult in this market but Cobham pulled it off and sold the commercial components portion of M/A-COM, M/A-COM Technology Solutions (MTS), to John Ocampo for $30 million in cash, $30 million in senior loan notes secured on the MTS assets and $30 million dependent on future revenue in the period 2010 to 2012. John is a very experienced RF/microwave person in the industry having been on the board at Sirenza and started Vari -L many years ago. MTS is exhibiting in the RF/microwave Pavilion at CTIA. At the time of the acquisition of M/A-COM on...

Satellite 2009 was dubbed Solutions Start Here and lived up to its billing of offering a glimpse into the future of the satellite-enabled communications market and the solutions new technology will provide. The sessions covered enterprise, military, commercial, broadcast, government, and others. The conference and panel sessions covered many topics like Satellite broadband, WiMAX , IP networking, SatCom , hybrid networks, financial impacts, military applications, HD , Mobile TV, backhaul , etc. I was impressed with the new RF/microwave technologies on display at the exhibition. Many companies were offering very high power, light weight amplifier and upconverter solutions from...

I attended the exhibition and one of the panel sessions yesterday. The show seems relatively busy which is a good sign these days. There were 2 interesting panel discussions I wanted to attend yesterday. One was on the capacity crunch and debated the different frequency bands as C-band seems to be slowing, Ku -band is growing and Ka -band is on the horizon. I was not able to make this one but made the one on the WiMAX and Satellite broadband debate - are they direct competition or complementary. The panel was moderated by Claude Rousseau ( NSR )...

I am heading out to the Satellite 2009 show in Washington DC tomorrow morning to meet with the RF/microwave companies there. I hope to recruit some good material for our August Satellite and mmWave issue and perhaps our October Gov't and Military issue. It should be an interesting trip before heading out next week to Vegas for CTIA . If anyone else is attending and wants to meet for coffee (or a drink), drop me a line....

There seems to be a trend these days in designing very broadband devices that will operate over many communications bands so a single device can be used in many applications. Triquint recently developed their PowerBand family of amplifiers that feature high power (10-50 W) and good efficiency (typically 45-50%) over a wide band from 500 MHz to 3 GHz with a single device. They state that 2 to 4 Powerband devices can replace a typical line up of 6 to 12 devices. The have plans to extend the range of these devices to 6 GHz and improve the power levels...

This is not totally new news but a recent article in Scientific American has called some attention to it as researchers have built the world's tiniest radio out of a carbon nanotube . The tiny nanotube is placed between two electrodes and combines the roles of the major electrical components in a radio, including the tuner and amplifier. It can tune in to a radio signal and play the audio through an external speaker. The nanotube radio works differently than a conventional radio that has an antenna, tuner, amplifier, and demodulator. A single carbon nanotube can tune in to...

I came across this recently launched product from World Mobile Congress as CSR has worked with Murata and released the CSR 9000 which they claim is the world’s smallest Bluetooth and Wi - Fi solution and supports a long list of connectivity technologies: Bluetooth , Bluetooth low energy, Wi - Fi ( IEEE 802.11 abgn ) and FM receive and transmit. This is achieved by a combination of CSR ’s ‘Smart Integration’ approach to silicon design as well as being as Wafer Level Chip Scale Packaging ( WLCSP ) technology. WLCSP achieves the smallest PCB footprint and is the packaging...

Growing up in the GaAs market in the 80's, I like to follow how the market is doing. In its latest GaAs report, Strategy Analytics states that RFMD , Skyworks and TriQuint lead the overall GaAs device market which grew 9% year-on-year in 2008, with early estimates showing that RFMD , Skyworks and TriQuint further consolidated their leadership of the GaAs device industry, accounting for up to 59% of total GaAs industry revenues. Merchant demand for GaAs devices continues to be centered upon MMIC -based products targeted at the wireless sector and this drove GaAs device industry revenues up to...