Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor | Microwave Journal

Pat Hindle is responsible for editorial content, article review and special industry reporting for Microwave Journal magazine and its web site in addition to social media and special digital projects. Prior to joining the Journal, Mr. Hindle held various technical and marketing positions throughout New England, including Marketing Communications Manager at M/A-COM (Tyco Electronics), Product/QA Manager at Alpha Industries (Skyworks), Program Manager at Raytheon and Project Manager/Quality Engineer at MIT. Mr. Hindle graduated from Northeastern University - Graduate School of Business Administration and holds a BS degree from Cornell University in Materials Science Engineering.

Verizon iPhone 4 Antenna Better Than AT&T?

January 18, 2011

Patrick Hindle

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I am very happy the iPhone 4 is coming to Verizon soon as I have been with them for many years and would welcome the chance to get one. We have covered the antenna issues in a couple of previous posts and the Verizon iPhone brings some changes to the antenna design. Initially, Apple seemed to indicate that the changes to the antenna design were only to make it compatible with CMDA. Taking a close look at the exterior antenna, one can see that there are now 4 spaces between the antennas instead of 3 so there appears to be...

Femtocell Applications Could be Key to Success

January 18, 2011

Patrick Hindle

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I have not seen that Femtocells have really caught on in the market as they seem to be only used for local range extenders. ABI Research says they are now attracting consumers’ attention in other ways. Their initial use-case has been to enhance indoor cellular coverage, but it is now clear that their potential utility is much wider. It is based on “ femtozone services” that use key attributes such as location and presence to trigger innovative applications residing on the mobile device, or in the access point, the core gateway, or the cloud. A simple example: a family alert...

ABI Research Expects Adaptive Cruise Control for Most Cars

January 6, 2011

Patrick Hindle

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Adaptive cruise control ( ACC ) has been an option on high-end luxury vehicles for more than a decade, but in the next few years ABI research says it will become available on mid-size and family vehicles. Costs have been falling slowly but steadily over the years, and now a new development promises to bring significant price reductions for the consumer. “The highest cost component of ACC has always been the radar sensor,” says ABI Research principal analyst David Alexander, “and now the cost advantages of silicon technology are going to take effect. We project that, by 2016, the lower...

Pat's Predictions for 2011

January 3, 2011

Patrick Hindle

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Last year was my first year of predictions for the RF and microwave industry. So what are my predictions for 2011 and how did I do last year? 2011 Industry predictions: Tunable devices and circuits like RF MEMS and switched capacitor banks will be adopted in cell phones and alleviate some of the antenna reception issues that plagued phones like the iPhone 4. Smart Grid applications will take off this year with ISM and Zigbee wireless applications being widely implemented around the world. LTE will dominate the 4G networks as it is implemented around the world and zooms past...

GaAs Market Recovers Strongly in Recent Report

December 21, 2010

Patrick Hindle

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According to a report from Strategy Analytics last weeek, the market value for GaAs revenues, driven by smartphones and consumer adoption of data-intensive applications, has grown strongly from the lows it struggled for in early 2009. The recently published Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductors (GaAs) report, “ GaAs Device Vendor Market Share 2009: North America ,” reports that this growth brought the total market value for GaAs revenues to little more than $4 billion, a slight increase over 2008 revenue levels. Skyworks Solutions nudged past RFMD to take the top revenue spot for North American vendors. However, less than...

ABI Projects RF PA Revenue for Mobile/Cellular Markets

December 9, 2010

Patrick Hindle

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ABI recently talked about the rapid Chinese TD-SCDMA rollouts and the often-maligned GSM/GPRS/EDGE equipment markets have benefited the base station RF power amplifier and RF power device markets. The stated that GSM/GPRS/EDGE RFPAs and devices are still shipping in the millions. The Asia-Pacific region is presently accounting for more than 50% of the RF power semiconductor devices sold into the mobile wireless infrastructure segment. Recent Chinese TD-SCDMA base station deployments have been massive, and have buoyed RF power vendors to a tremendous degree. That demand is expected to strengthen the market until at least sometime in 2011, and the Chinese...

Microwave Backhaul Favored in W. Europe and Most of Asia-Pac

December 9, 2010

Patrick Hindle

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A new ABI report says that capital expenditure on mobile backhaul varies greatly by region and by technology. While most countries face similar current or future struggles to reduce network congestion, the solutions being adopted differ according to existing infrastructure, network generations, and government mandates and incentives. One major division is whether to use optic fiber or microwave for mobile backhaul . CAPEX for microwave backhaul will peak in Western Europe this year at almost $4.4 billion, more than triple the figure for the next-highest region, Asia-Pacific. The European spending surge is due to the expansion of 3G networks to...

Cell Phone Radiation Risks - Now I have seen it all

November 24, 2010

Patrick Hindle

1 Comment

There has been a wide array of cell phone radiation protection devices such as antenna shields, cell phone holders/covers, gloves and hats but now there is Belly Armor . It claims to protect an unborn child from everyday radiation from sources ranging from cell phones to WiFi with a material that is provided to act as a Faraday cage. It comes in various forms such as a blanket, belly band and tee. I have not seen any evidence that non-ionizing radiation does any damage to the body other than heating from very high power sources. The FCC has set conservative...

The 4G Controversy

November 16, 2010

Patrick Hindle

2 Comments

Some industry experts and research analysts agree that today's WiMAX (802.16e) and LTE technologies are 4G but do they really meet the definition of 4G as others say they do not. Now that the ITU has officially accepted 802.16m and LTE -Advanced as IMT -Advanced technologies (4G), the issue has surfaced again. What makes it more confusing is that where the ITU mainly referred to IMT -2000 and IMT -Advanced in the past, it is now including 3G with IMT -2000 and 4G with IMT -Advanced. It is true that the current LTE and WiMAX systems are 4 th generation...