Here's the industry news that caught my attention last week. The European Microwave Week (EuMW) in London spawned many new product announcements, many noted here.

Companies and Products

Ampleon released a 1.9 kW pulsed LDMOS power transistor for broadcast, medical and industrial applications in the 10 to 500 MHz frequency range. Aiming to replace magnetrons with LDMOS, the firm also announced the M2 RF Energy reference system for industrial heating.

After several weeks of rumors, Ericsson announced it will eliminate 3,000 positions in Sweden, including deep cuts at the point-to-point radio factory in Borås, outside of Gothenburg.

Keysight unveiled a 110 GHz, continuous sweep signal analyzer, with 1 GHz internal bandwidth that can be extended to 5 GHz using an external oscilloscope. The displayed average noise level (DANL) is −150 dBm/Hz up to 110 GHz. The unit has two connectors: 1 mm for full frequency coverage and the more rugged 2.4 mm for operation to 50 GHz.

MACOM announced 27 new products at EuMW, including a family of octave-band VCOs covering 6 to 12, 7 to 14 and 10 to 20 GHz with −95, −95 and −90 dBc/Hz noise at 100 kHz offset, respectively. The remaining products were amplifiers of various flavors, including a distributed amplifier covering 1 MHz to 22 GHz with 2 W output.

Nokia acquired Eta Devices, an MIT-based start-up formed to improve PA efficiency with asymmetric multilevel outphasing. Nokia’s acquisition includes approximately 20 employees, intellectual property rights, all fixed assets, the lease and supplier agreements. The price was not disclosed.

NXP announced the third generation of Airfast, releasing four asymmetric Doherty PAs for macro base stations. The four devices, which use NXP's +28 V LDMOS process, cover 1805 to 1880 MHz with 56 and 89 W average output power, 2110 to 2200 MHz with 80 W average, and 2496 to 2690 MHz with 37 W average.

Peregrine Semiconductor released two 9 kHz to 60 GHz, reflective, SPDT switches, fabricated with their UltraCMOS® SOI process technology. Peregrine says SOI’s RF switch performance beats GaAs, based on a performance comparison at 50 GHz. The two switches are the same except one model operates over an extended temperature range from −55°C to +125°C.

Qorvo announced new 0.15 µm GaN on SiC transistors with linear, nonlinear and noise models from Modelithics. The +28 V devices provide saturated output powers from 2 to 14 W and noise figures from 1.2 to 1.5 dB.

After Qualcomm expressed interest in acquiring NXP, NXP retained an investment bank to explore a possible sale. NXP will widen the discussions to other companies, possibly Broadcom, Intel and Samsung.

Raytheon and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency are planning to upgrade the AN/TPY-2 X-Band radar to replace GaAs with GaN in the T/R modules. Other insertions of GaN have demonstrated increased range, better detection and discrimination performance and lower production cost.

Sivers IMA announced the company is developing a 57 to 71 GHz SiGe transceiver for wireless infrastructure. Initial samples will be available during Q1 of 2017.

Skyworks released two antenna tuner switches for mobile applications: a 0.8 to 2.7 GHz SP3T switch and a 0.7 to 2.7 GHz triple SPST. Both are MIPI-controlled.

Wolfspeed released a >800 W GaN HEMT for L-Band radar, covering 1.2 to 1.4 GHz. The +50 V device has greater than 65 percent efficiency and less than 0.3 dB pulse amplitude droop.

Markets and Technology

Broadband — AT&T's AirGig broadband over power lines concept has piqued interest in Wisconsin, hoping to increase internet bandwidth to those living and working in rural parts of the state.

In a written submittal, Google asked the FCC to allow point-to-multipoint operation in E-Band, which would eliminate the requirement to register each link.

Cellular — If you're challenged keeping up with the 3GPP releases and how they relate to the migration from LTE to 5G via LTE-A, LTE-A Pro and eLTE, Zahid Ghadialy, author of the 3G4G blog, wrote an informative summary of that path and what is and isn't defined.

Technology in Society — Will augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) eliminate your commute and give you a (virtual) corner office? Verizon Labs thinks that AR and VR just may transform the workplace.

If you come across news that you think I should include in the weekly report, please send it to me at glerude@mwjournal.com. Your feedback about content is always welcome.