Articles by David Vye

On Monday (April 20th) high-frequency EDA supplier AWR® announced record annual revenues for its 2009 fiscal year that ended March 31, as well as for the year’s fourth quarter, and record backlog as it enters the 2010 fiscal year. This achievement marks the twelfth consecutive year of revenue growth for the company and was broad-based, with strong bookings throughout Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region from both new and existing customers. It is an impressive streak for the software innovator - especially in light of the worldwide recession. AWR executives attribute the performance to several factors. The company...

Back in the mid-80s, do you remember sign-up sheets for workstations, which were extremely expensive and in short supply. Design software such as MDS (HP), Libra (EEsof) and Harmonica (Compact Software) required the high performance computing only available on these machines and EM simulation software such as HFSS was not yet widely available. Many of us (junior) engineers had to work later in the evening waiting for a workstation to became available. Do you remember the Unix wars between the proponents of BSD from Univerity of California, Berkeley and System V from AT&T? BSD Unix vendor Sun Microsytems and AT&T...

It was announced this week that Sean Maloney, executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer at Intel Corporation will give the opening keynote address at the WCAI’s Wireless Policy Summit on May 5 in Washington, DC. The Summit, being held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, will gather key officials from government and industry in an open forum for the exchange of ideas between attendees. This event is an ideal opportunity to meet face-to-face with top decision-makers who are shaping the future of the industry in 2009 and beyond. As the new Administration is acting on its commitment to...

At CTIA Wireless 2009, Rohde & Schwarz is demonstrating their LTE frequency division duplexing (FDD) testing capabilities based on the newest femtocell design from mimoOn. The compact test setup features the R&S® SMBV100A vector signal generator and the R&S® FSV signal analyzer to generate and analyze LTE signals that meet the newest specification. The test setup on display at Rohde & Schwarz booth 6033 verifies that the femtocell reference design from mimoOn correctly operates according to the LTE specification that is about to be finalized. Accurate validation of the generated downlink signal of the mimoOn reference design is carried out...

2009 Editorial Calendar...

Greenray Industries of Mechanicsburg, PA announced a new High Frequency TCXO for Wireless & Mobile Apps last month, the T121 TCXO just in time for Satellite 2009. The device is designed to serve as a super-stable frequency reference in high shock and high vibration environments. The T121 Series TCXO, available from 50 to 100MHz, provides extremely stable sinewave output and temperature stability to ±0.5ppm over -40 to +85°C. The T121 measures 0.68 x 0.68 x 0.200” and features vibration sensitivity of 7 x 10-10/g or better. The T121 Series combines a compact, rugged package, tight stability and high frequency availability...

CPI Satcom Division is featuring its 100 watt Ku-band outdoor SSPA at the SATELLITE 2009 Conference and Exhibition. This outdoor SSPA is the latest addition to the company’s extensive range of solid state amplifiers and is being touted by the company for its flexibility and easy maintainance. Frequency bands can be changed among X-, C- and Ku-band very quickly without rewiring and using only minor hand tools. Swapping out fans typically takes less time than it does to simply remove the cover on competing products. The ease of owning a CPI SSPA is enhanced by the company’s fifteen worldwide service...

At Satellite 2009 in Washington DC, Aeroflex announced the commercial availability of their Synthetic Multifunction Adaptable Reconfigurable Test Environment (SMART^E™) 5200 Series. This new hybrid synthetic Satellite Payload Test Environment includes hardware, software, test practices and support provides standard and customizable test programs tailored to the specific problems of testing (standard and customizable) high performance payloads, which consist of multiple channels, each with up to hundreds of connections between the test system and payload under test. “The SMART^E 5200 replaces the STI1000C Satellite Payload Test System currently installed and in operation at customer sites worldwide,” according to Dr. Francesco Lupinetti,...

More news from the "microwaves in applied science" front. A new minimally-invasive option for treating liver tumors, called microwave ablation, is now available at UC San Diego Medical Center and Moores UCSD Cancer Center, the only hospitals in the region to offer this technology to patients. “Microwave ablation causes the tumor to be quickly and precisely removed. If necessary, multiple tumors can be treated at the same time,” said Marquis Hart, MD, transplant surgeon at UC San Diego Medical Center. “This method appears to be more efficient than other ablation techniques which translates to better tumor destruction and less time...

Agilent has just recently announced the release of ADS 2009, targeting the high-frequency & high speed front end co-design (IC/Package/Board) challenges discussed in February's MWJ lead story - "The Dawn of Nano-scale Technology". The complexity of these designs require tight integration between the the front-end (simulation & verification) and back-end (Cadence or Mentor Graphics)tools. For example, 4G LTE phones must also have Bluetooth, Wifi and MIMO capabilities which means multi-antennas operating over multi-frequency bands while remaining backward compatible with 3G and 2G modes. In turn, high frequency and high speed components will need to fit into smaller volumes and closer...