AOC International Symposium & Convention

I am at the 46th annual AOC International Symposium & Convention in DC and saw most of the microwave companies serving the EW world yesterday. The top priority is still IED defeat systems and the AOC show daily stated that more than 36,000 devices have been fielded (that number surprised me as IEDs continue to be the biggest challenge to saving lives in Iraq and Afghanistan). An estimated $628 million is expected to be spent on the JCREW program alone over the next 10 years. Battlefield SIGINT is also important but does not seem to have as much priority as IED defeat along with EW systems for UAVs. There is also a significant emphasis to update legacy protection on existing systems.

Many of the high performance component and test companies are represented here. Rohde & Schwarz, Agilent, Anritsu and Aeroflex were represented as well as components manufacturers such as Anaren, Empower, Aethercomm, Miteq, Microsemi, CPI, e2V, Werlatone, TRU/Sage, Teledyne, etc. Of course, the system/sub-systems companies such as Cobham, BAE, Northrup Grumman, Selex, Elt, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, DRS, EADS, ITT, Raytheon, etc. are the largest booths at AOC although Rohde & Schwarz also had a large prescence.

I am impressed at the increases in processing speed, bandwidth, memory, etc. that are achieved in the hardware/software each year improving the capabilities of the systems. Real time video, spectrum capture/analysis and data processing speeds are achieving unprecedented levels. Several systems we saw can capture radar signals, analyze them and send out countermeasures in real time.

I have to mention my friend Jim Fallon as he is receiving the Life Achievement Award at the AOC Annual Awards Luncheon. He ran the AOC Convention a few years ago and did a fantastic job. He has dedicated his career to bringing EW technology to the field to save lives. At M/A-COM he was instrumental in getting some of the first mobile IED defeat devices (Warlock Blue) manufactured and delivered to the field in record time to save more lives in the Iraqi War.

MILCOM 2009 Kicks Off in Boston

MILCOM kicked off today starting with Plenary speaker Mr. David Gergen (Editor-at-large, U.S. News & World Report and Commentator, CNN) who discussed his views on how various presidents related to the military. He stated how past presidents from JFK to Bush Sr. all had military experience so they were familiar with the military where as more recent presidents since Bush Sr. did not have such experience so there was a learning curve as they got to know each other.

He said the Obama is off to a good start with his strategic appointments from the military and Michelle Obama's support for military families. He stated that Gates is a decisive person and has the freedom and trust of the president. The Pentagon has had to make tough budget decisions and that will continue for a while as we have the lowest revenue and the highest deficit ever. He said he thinks Iraq was handled well toward the end and sees hope that the same will hold true for Afghanistan.

The exhibition was fairly well attended but traffic could be a little stronger so hopefully that happens tomorrow. The Microwave Journal had several people meeting with various companies today as we are local and a media partner this year. Our Oct issue is available in all of the publication areas.

One thing I noticed was a number of companies were touting the OpenVPX platform as the US Department of Defense and other users are mandating improved implementation of open standards and interoperability. The VPX Systems Specification, according to their web site, defines an architecture that manages and constrains module and backplane designs and sets interoperability points within VPX while maintaining full compliance with VPX. This specification, developed by VITA members and other companies working together outside of VITA, shall be introduced into the VITA Standards Organization (VSO) in October 2009 as VITA 65 for final comment, ballot, and ratification as a standard.

We will have a wrap up summarizing what we saw at the show toward the end of the week or early next week. I am off to DC tomorrow to cover AOC and will post my experiences from that show in the next day or two.

CEL introduces MeshConnect Extended Range ZigBee module

This week CEL released the new MeshConnect™ Extended Range module, which offers
+20 dBm output power, extended the range of operation to over two miles. The power boost also provides more reliable transmission and allows fewer nodes in the network. It is especially useful for open outdoor applications where the nodes are physically far apart, or for indoor use where the nodes have to connect in a noisy RF environment. The Extended Range Module’s outstanding +123.5 dB link budget ensures high quality connections even in such harsh environments.

For both the original Module and the new Extended Range Module, the company has complete development kits which include a wide range of software packages that will help engineers develop their end product more quickly. The modules support SNAP™, a software tool that quickly establishes simple mesh networks with minimal development time. Both modules also support SMAC, MAC and the full ZigBee stack where needed.

Data rates up to 1 Mbps help you meet the demands of higher bandwidth networks, while a unique, on-chip voice CODEC opens the door voice transmission applications. The MeshConnect modules are ideal for mesh, point-to-point, and point-to-multipoint networks. Their low current consumption especially in standby mode makes them ideal for battery-powered designs, while their miniature footprint and integrated antenna helps to further reduce system size.

Implantable Antennas/Power Amp Design

I attended the AnSys/Ansoft Smart Engineering Simulation Application Workshops earlier this week in Newton, MA. They had a complete RF/microwave track including sessions on Electrically Large Antennas and RCS; Statistical Modeling, DOE and Optimization; HFSS Tips and Techniques; RF Power Amp Design Using Coupled Circuit, EM and Thermal Analysis; Method of Analysis for Implantable Antenna Systems and RF Product Mgmt. Road Map and Dialog.

The Power Amp Design was very interesting as they showed how you can model the chip and package separately and merge the results to simulate the device. Then with a link to AnSys Mechanical, you can make a full model for thermal analysis and evaluate the performance. This allows you to trade of electrical and mechanical/thermal parameters to optimize device performance which is pretty powerful.

I also was intrigued by the Implantable Antenna Systems presentation given by Cambridge Consultants local here to the Boston area in Cambridge, MA (and headquartered in Cambridge, UK). They discussed how most of the radiation energy from a wireless signal is lost just by exiting the body due to losses in the tissues it goes through (especially fat) and reflections due to the changes in interfaces (fat, skin, tissue, etc. have large changes in permittivity). This loss also varies tremendously person to person depending on their build, etc. so over 99% of the energy is typically lost.

Therefore it is very important to have a optimized antenna system to maximize the gain and sensitivity of the signal. They use magnetic coupling for these applications since most of the energy is lost but the typical range requirement is 2 m. The FCC medial band used is 401-405 MHz but sometimes they used the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band for wake up since the FCC only allows 25 micro Watts ERP (if using an agile signal) for the medical band. Another design concern is a shift in frequency from the fat layer which varies by individual so they have to design for a broader bandwidth.

They have designed patch antennas that greatly improve sensitivity over the typical loop antenna currently used in many applications. The patch antenna results in about 3.4% of the radiated power while the loop antenna is only about 0.6% and the patch has better coverage. All of this has to fit into an enclosure about an inch square.

There were some very interesting applications that were presented here and it is very good to see the interaction with their customers as they strive to solve to their problems.

Power Amp Market to Double with MIMO 802.11n

Strategy Analytics reports that adoption of 802.11n MIMO with multiple transmit streams will help boost the market for Wi-Fi power amplifier modules to twice its 2008 size despite continued pricing pressure.

“As prices for single-stream 802.11n (1 x 1) chips dropped to match 802.11g, OEMs have quickly begun to switch from 802.11g to 802.11n in new products. Consequently, 802.11n will ship in more than half of all Wi-Fi systems by the end of 2010,” says Christopher Taylor, Director of the RF and Wireless Components service.

Not only will 802.11n quickly replace 802.11g, but as Wi-Fi continues to proliferate in new devices and applications, multi-stream MIMO configurations of 802.11n (i.e. 2 x 2, 3 x 3 and 4 x 4, transmit x receive) will rapidly grow in support of demand for greater range, faster file transfers and streaming multimedia in many of these applications.

SiGe Semiconductor has established a firm lead in power amplifiers despite increasing competition from GaAs PA module specialists such as Skyworks, RFMD, TriQuint and Anadigics. “A relatively small and nimble company, SiGe Semiconductor owes much of its success to concentrating its resources almost exclusively on Wi-Fi PA modules,” notes Asif Anwar, Director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductor market research service.

I am impressed that SiGe has done well in target markets against some of these larger companies. They seem to have identified the markets that best fit their core technology.

Introducing xMax®--the world’s first mobile VoIP network

This came across my desk and I thought it was worth sharing - Chris Whiteley, director of business development for xG® Technology, will be one of the presenters at the COMPTEL Conference next week in Orlando, Florida. COMPTEL members are entrepreneurial companies building and deploying next-generation networks to provide competitive voice, data, and video services.

Whiteley will be on the Monday afternoon panel examining “Emerging Technologies.” He will present information on xMax®--the world’s first mobile VoIP network, which allows consumers to benefit from much lower-cost mobile calls via the Internet.

xG Technology developed xMax as an alternative solution that enables consumers to benefit directly using mobile VoIP technology. xMax is similar to Vonage or Skype, but in the form of a fully mobile handset that doesn’t require the use and extra cost of a computer or broadband Internet connection.

xMax offers consumers the prospect of lower phone bills because:
• xMax transmits over unlicensed spectrum—the same as baby monitors and cordless phones. Major national cellular carriers paid billions of dollars for licensed spectrum that they recoup from customers.
• xMax was built as a totally Internet-based digital system from top to bottom—an extremely cost efficient communication approach.

xMax networks can enable communication providers to aggressively compete with national carriers by offering customers unlimited voice and data plans both locally and long distance, extremely low-cost international calling, no contracts, as well as home phone and high-speed Internet service.

xMax is the product of xG Technology's extensive R&D activity, a $100 million international effort that involves companies in the US, Europe and Asia. xG's impressive patent portfolio, which includes 50 US and more than 100 international patents and pending patent applications, has been developed with the goal of bringing lower-cost communications to consumers.

To experience this new technology in the Ft. Lauderdale area, xG has deployed an urban/suburban showcase, which allows accredited journalists, published telecom analysts, and prospective partners to test the xMax platform at highway speeds.

Unique/Novel Subjects at EuMW 2009

I like searching through the paper/poster topics for unique, novel subjects that are not main-stream and might be areas for future growth. I was able to attend a few of these talks but was busy with customer visits covering the exhibition which made it impossible to attend more of them. Here are some that I came across:

• Design of a Cellular Energy Harvesting Radio
• New Fabrication Process to Manufacture RF-MEMS and GaN on GaN/Si Substrate
• Design of a Fully Planar Chipless RFID Transponder with 35 Bit Data Capacity
• SP48T Module Architecture RF-MEMS Multi-Throw Switches for a Multi-Beam Antenna Measurement Setup at K- and Ka-Band
• A W-Band MMIC Vector Modulator Utilizing Tandem Couplers and 50 nm MHEMTs
• Design and Characterization of a Novel Battery-less, Solar Powered Wireless Tag for Enhanced-Range Remote Tracking Applications
• A Wideband OOK for Wireless Receiver Capsule Endoscope
• Analysis of New Polarizing Properties of Negative Indexed Materials at Microwave Frequencies
• RF Devices Written with Carbon Nanotube Ink on Paper
• A Novel Fabrication Process for Printed Antennas Integrated in Polymer Multi-Layer Car Body Panels
• UWB Frequency Modulated CW Synthetic Aperture Radar for Through-the-Wall Localization
• Computer Simulation of the RF System Effects on a mmWave
• Doppler Radar for Human Vital-Sign Estimation

One that I attended that was very interesting was the Design of a Planar Chipless RFID Transponder where they are trying to integrate low cost, rugged tags on money in Australia. They print chipless tags onto money that are comprised of 2 UWD antennas and a multi-section resonator to improve security and prevent counterfeiting. The goal is to get the cost down to about one cent so it is feasible to tag currency.

A very interesting conference this year with interesting topics – Let us know what you found interesting this year in the technical sessions or tutorials.

Going Non-linear

Like at IMS, there was a lot of buzz about various new non-linear characterization techniques at EuMW 2009. X-parameters from Agilent seem to be catching on and they now have many case studies/examples that show the benefits or using them. There is also S-functions from NMDG which was in the Rohde & Schwarz booth and MWJ has an article in the Sept issue covering their non-linear extensions. I also visited with Heuermann HF-Technik GmbH which is also involved with non-linear measurement and provides software that will work with any NVNA for automation of non-linear measurments.

Mesuro is working with Tektronix and has developed a high performance active load pull system that simplifies and speeds up the measurement and characterization. This lead me to check out the load pull companies such as Maury and Focus. Maury has added a high power capability so you can test X-parameters at up to 25 or 50 Watts and impedance can be a variable now. They have drag and drop capability for file import into ADS. Focus has also improved their system greatly with the measurements made before the tuners so calibration only has to be performed once and the results are more accurate.

A group of companies including Anritsu, AWR, HFE, Mesuro, NMDG, R&S and Tektronix have joined to create the Openwave Forum. The alliance seeks to standardize the data format for the industry so that customers have the choice of tools, equipment and vendors to use. You can visit their web site at http://www.openwaveforum.org/.

There is a lot of information out there on these new techniques and models so we hope to bring you future articles and information that will sort it all out. Our March Test and Measurement issue will also cover the subject in detail.

Accel-RF

I always like to find one new product that catches my attention that is from a smaller company that I have not seem before. At EuMW that was Accel-RF. Their new High Power RF (HiPR-AARTS) Automated Accelerated Reliability Test System will help manufacturers prove reliability for application specific GaN devices.

Manufacturers are using Accel-RF’s equipment to prove intrinsic reliability and performance degradation characteristics of GaN technology on discrete devices and lower power MMICs. The next stage in the development of the technology is to build and test high power devices for use in radar and military and communication electronics. The new system is either liquid or air cooled, has RF and DC pulsing capability, and can handle device power dissipation of up to 200 watts each. The system is very compact and can now test devices up to 60 GHz. I was very impressed with its capabilities.

EuMW Gala Celebration at Vatican

I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the Wed night gala at the Vatican and it was a spectacular event. We received a full tour, visit to the garden area and dinner in the Vatican. What a great opportunity for about 350 EuMW attendees to experience.

We broke up into small groups for the tours with headsets (wireless) that receive the guide's narration as there are many groups around as you walk through. We ended in the Sistine Chapel and then made our way out into the garden. After, we sat inside the Vatican for a beautifully catered dinner. Paolo Lampariello, General Chairman of EuMW, welcomed everyone and challenged next year's chair to top his event with perhaps a visit to the Louvre in Paris. Could be a great opportunity to attend the gala next year!!!

Free Workshops at EuMW

Don't miss the workshops and tutorials at EuMW as a chance to learn about a new area or brush up on an existing expertise. This year there is quite a wide range of exhibitor workshops that are free and open to anyone. Agilent has a series of test and measurement workshops ranging from nonlinear measurement to MIMO design. Rohde & Schwarz also has nonlinear plus other types of measurement workshopds. And Keithley has one covering LTE testing so there is quite a selection on the test/measurement front. Ansoft has a series of 3 workshops on simulation and modeling and CST is giving in-booth tutorials. So don't miss the chance to learn something new - free workshops are always a plus.

Agilent Unveiling of PXA

Agilent unveiled the PXA signal analyzer today which replaces the high end PSA unit and completes the X series with a full line ranging from the low cost CXA to the high performance PXA. The unit features 75 dB spurious free dynamic range at 140 MHz bandwidth which is the best in the industry.

Agilent now has the low cost CXA which starts as low as $12.5k. Then the economy class unit is the EXA, the mid class is the MXA and of course, the high performance unit is now the PXA. Guy Sene and Ron Nersesian were on hand to pull the blanket off the surprise unveiling in their booth complemented with champagne. Not a bad way to announce it!

They have some 20 demos in their booth covering ADS, NVNA/X-parameters, wideband receivers, scanning MW microscopy, etc. which we will cover in our wrap up article.

We arrived in Rome on Sunday and the weather is beautiful (sunny and 80s during the day, high 60s are night). After some quick sightseeing in the afternoon we made our way over to the conference Monday morning. The venue is nice but quite spread out and not much surrounding the area. The sessions are in large, nicely arranged rooms all in the same area with a cafe so the setup is very well done for the conference. The exhibition is in a separate building next door so hopefully everyone will make there way over when it opens tomorrow.

In quickly looking through the sessions, there seems to be much more about higher class amplifiers (Class E and F including inverse versions) as the demand for more power/efficiency increases and the characterization techniques improve. It will be interesting to hear the details about power amplifiers that are over 75% efficient! There also seems to be more CMOS based devices as Si is ever improving its upper frequency limits and of course, more about GaN amplifiers. The passive devices are always getting smaller and doing more functions than their previous generations.

The exhibition starts tomorrow and the setup is nearing completion. The exhibition hall is well laid out and just the right size for this type of show. The large test and measurement companies dominate the entrance with Agilent, Rohde & Schwarz and Anritsu present with large booths. Of course, the component and software companies are well represented along with the large Italian defense companies Electtronica/Selex and Finmeccanica providing a large sponsorship which we don't typically see at the other European locations. It is nice to see such good local support - maybe they can continue in the other locations.

Let me know your impressions of the conference and exhibition.

EuMW 2009 News Coverage

As I head over to Rome this weekend, I see the EuMW news starting to pour into our e-mail box. We have the EuMW Online Show Daily posted on our home page that will be updated continuously during the week but with so much news to cover, we decided to make a news summary page so you can quickly browse the headlines.

Please use this blog to talk about or comment on any news items, new products, interesting papers, hot events, etc. during the week. Also, as noted below we have quite a number of companies and individuals using Twitter to post the happenings at the conference and exhibition as they occur. Remember to include the text #EuMW in your Tweat as our feed and others searching for show information can easily find them.

EuMW 2009 Coverage Has Started!

The Microwave Journal Online Show Daily for EuMW 2009 is live at http://www.mwjournal.com/#EuMWOSD (on our home page). Our September show issue contains several articles about the conference, exhibition, events and what to see and do in Rome. The site is updated frequently with news and featured products from the show plus a live Twitter Feed. Set the keyword to "EuMW" to follow the action and follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pathindle.

We will have various entries on this blog over the next couple of weeks covering the show and what we find are hot topics and products in Rome. After attending IMS 2009 MTT-S, I think the two hotest topics might be new non-linear characterization techniques and high power GaN/LDMOS products. What do you think?

Is that a cell phone in your pocket....

Fertility researcher, John Aitken, is advising men wishing to have children to avoid keeping their active mobile phones below the waist. His research group at the University of Newcastle in Australia has found that human sperm exposed to mobile phone radiation (1.8 GHz) for 16 hours had reduced vitality and motility, two key indices of fertility. Notably, he has also confirmed his own previous study, published in 2005, which showed that RF radiation could lead to DNA damage. In that earlier experiment, he had exposed mice to 900 MHz signals and then looked at the animals' sperm, in contrast to the new study in which he exposed semen collected from human volunteers.

The new data show striking dose responses for all three effects over a wide range of SARs —above 0.4 W/Kg and up to 27.5 W/Kg. The changes in motility and vitality became statistically significant at 1 W/Kg and the DNA damage at 2.8 W/Kg. In all cases, the statistical reliability of the effects became much more significant with higher SARs. These new results appear in a paper published on July 31 in PLoS ONE, a Web-based, peer-reviewed journal. All Public Library of Science journals offer free access to all.

"After 16 hours exposure, there was clear evidence of DNA damage," Aitken said at a fertility conference in Brisbane last fall when he first presented these findings. Aitken is the director of the Australian Research Council's Center of Excellence in Biotechnology and Development. "Several independent lines of evidence suggest that RF-EMR has the potential to influence semen quality and could be an important contributor to DNA damage in the male germ line."

Aitken also demonstrated a "potential causative mechanism" as to how RF radiation can lead to DNA damage. He acknowledges that cell phone signals do not have enough energy to directly break chemical bonds, but, he goes on, "[T]his form of radiation may have other effects on larger scale systems such as cells and organelles, which stem from the perturbation of charged molecules and the disruption of electron flow." Specifically he believes that the RF can cause leakage of electrons from the mitochondria and produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), which in turn can attack DNA. This process, he states, is unrelated to thermal stress.

Is Obama Apeasing the Russians with a Change in Missile Strategy?

Appeasing the Russians or making a smart strategic move for the US? Obama announced yesterday that he has modified the previous Bush administration's missile defense strategy by changing it from a long range, fixed system based in Poland and the Czech Republic to a mobile short/medium range defense system. This could ease tensions with the Russian's who strongly objected to such a system in their back yard and possibly help the US convince them to put pressure on Iran to curb their nuclear efforts.

I think this change in strategy seemed to be presented poorly (or sensationalized by the press) as a scrapping of the Bush strategy rather than a modification of Bush's strategy as the threats have changed. Iran seems to have adapted to the initial Bush era system and bulked up its production of short and medium range missiles after we started working on a system to intercept long range missiles so the threat changed (assuming our intelligence is accurate which in the past has proven to be wrong). Therefore a more mobile, short/medium range intercept system could be the right strategy now and it should save money which is another benefit. Coupled with the improvement in Russian relations which could put pressure on Iran, this seems to be a very smart move providing our intelligence is accurate. It also protects our troops fighting in the area and our allies in the middle east such as Israel and Turkey. Having a mobile system (sea and land based) also makes it more flexible by being able to move the missiles around the globe to where the threats exist at the time.

How will this affect our industry? Do you think it is a better strategy or a mistake?? Below is video coverage from MSNBC.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

M2M Markets Seeing Life

ABI Research has new M2M report out showing how the market grew rapidly from 2003-2007 but collapsed in 2008. They began tracking the cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) module market in 2003, and for five years shipments increased on average more than 25% per year. In 2007 module shipment growth peaked at a phenomenal 45%. The economic collapse of 2008 put an end to such double-digit growth rates, but the M2M market was still up 4%.

Feedback from vendors indicates that most feel the market bottomed out in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Starting in 2Q 2009, they report that activity seems to be picking up again. ABI Research now forecasts that 2009 will show modest growth, with unit shipments projected to be about 16% higher than in 2008, and revenue up 10%. Below is a graph of projected growth for M2M module shipments by application:

Cell Phone Radiation Report Out

Last year around this time there was some renewed concern that cell phone radiation could be dangerous, especially to kids. The Environmental Working Group has brought up the subject again with their release of the best and worst phones for radiation emissions and bringing up their concerns of the possible dangers. But there still does not seem to be any scientific evidence that they are dangerous and non-ionizing radiation is not known to be dangerous to the human body at the levels one would experience in everyday use of cell phones.

It is interesting that Samsung dominated the top 10 best phones list with 5 out of the 10 that have the lowest emission levels with the Samsung Impression taking the top spot. Motorola seems to dominate the top 10 list of the the worst rated phones with 5 out of 10 on that list (they do have one in the top ten best list also so it seems to be phone specific).

As I said in my entry last year, the FCC does limit the radiation levels of cell phones to a maximum specific absorption rate (SAR) of 1.6 W/kg (European limits are 2.0 W/kg). You can find the measured SAR values for many cell phones on CNET's website (one of my favorite sites for Tech Info.).

WiFi is Pushing RF ICs to New Heights

Strategy Analytics states that vendors will ship $4 billion in Wi-Fi radio chips in 2013, most of these for cellphones, notebooks, netbooks, infrastructure, home entertainment systems and wireless gaming consoles. At the same time, adoption of 802.11n MIMO with multiple transmit streams will help boost the market for Wi-Fi power amplifier modules to twice its 2008 size, despite continued pricing pressure.

They have determined that Broadcom will probably remain on top, but the firm faces increasing competition from cellular chip vendors bundling connectivity with their platforms, and from chip specialists targeting emerging applications, such as Wi-Fi for home entertainment. In RF power amplifiers, SiGe Semiconductor has established a firm lead despite increasing competition from GaAs PA module specialists Skyworks, RFMD, TriQuint and Anadigics.

WiFi is becoming pervasive now and soon you won't be able to buy a phone, camera, printer, TV or PC that does not come with it. Remember when only the new and more expensive phones and PCs had cameras? Now you can hardly find them without one. That will be WiFi soon in consumer electronics.