White Papers

There is a wide variety of coaxial connectors and cables available for use in the RF and Microwave spectrum. While often not much thought is given to these essential components, a misstep here can result in undesirable system degradation. Given that typical RF systems are comprised of any number of items, e.g. RF generators, amplifiers, attenuators, power meters, couplers, antennas, etc., it is not uncommon that a great deal of thought is given to these “high end devices while mundane items such as connectors and cables are often treated as an afterthought".

Whenever time to market is critical, rapid prototyping can produce a first draft of a new product that allows testing, evaluation, and further refinement of the product idea, which helps a company more quickly and cost-effectively transform early concepts into marketable products. At the same time, for concepts that may not make practical products, rapid prototyping can spare a company further investment time and expenses by revealing the product's flaws at an early stage of the development process.

This White Paper begins by explaining how fading occurs and describing traditional methods of radio channel emulation. It continues to describe the innovative, all-digital, approach used in the Aeroflex 7100 Series Radio Test Platform. It will be demonstrated that the Aeroflex platform allows realistic testing of LTE user equipment to be performed in a way that is impractical with traditional methods.

Fast, accurate radar pulse measurements are critical when designing or manufacturing radar components. Knowing how to optimize power measurement tools will help engineers meet stringent market demands. Get tips on how to make the fastest and most accurate radar pulse measurements by reading this application note. This article also includes real-world scenarios that demonstrate how to put these tips into practice with Agilent power meters and sensors.

This application note is designed to provide you with the latest insights on enabling simulation, generation and analysis of the 802.11ad emerging IEEE standard providing Very High Throughput (VHT)—up to 7 Gbps using approximately 2 GHz of spectrum at 60 GHz over a short range.

This white paper discusses a variety of RF materials and substrates capable of meeting RF Front-End module designers’ requirements. You will gain insight into how state-of-the-art expertise in substrate technology can enable the mobile devices of the next decade.

The small-signal nonlinear distortion of a system can be described with sufficient accuracy using a third order Volterra expansion of the output in terms of the input. This simple model assumes a memoryless, frequency independent amplifier system, whereby the amplifier characteristics remain constant over the operation bandwidth or, stated equivalently, the operation bandwidth is small compared with the available amplifier system bandwidth....

The mismatch between these real loads and the amplifier's output impedance result in a percentage of the forward power being reflected back to the amplifier. In some cases, excessive reflected power can damage an amplifier and precautions that may affect forward power are required. This Application note highlights the major RF amplifier characteristics that impact forward power as well as net power allowing the use of Ohm's law, even when conditions are far from ideal.

This application note discusses the Measurement of Group Delay and Amplitude response of RF and Microwave components and assemblies, including frequency converters, using the 6840 series Microwave System Analyzer with the Group Delay option from Aeroflex.

Optimizing a PA design for one parameter invariably requires sacrifi cing the performance of another. This delicate balance between performance and effi ciency is not the only conundrum, because designers of 4G PAs must also contend with demands for greater instantaneous bandwidth. As a result, designers of next-generation PAs are relying on simulation more than ever before, and their tasks include frequency domain simulation, time domain simulation, and now circuit envelope simulation.