EDI CON 2013 (March 12-14, Beijing, China), the industry-driven event for RF, microwave and high speed digital electronic design announces the recent addition of several leading RFIC, component and material manufacturers, semiconductor foundries, EDA software and test equipment/solution providers as participants in the technical program and exhibition. As solution providers in high frequency electronic design and system integration, experts from these companies will offer attendees the latest information on the technology used in today’s communications and aerospace industries. Participation ranges from exhibiting solutions with hands-on demos to workshops and panels on the latest communication standards, semiconductor processes/technologies, test equipment and techniques.

National Instruments

National Instruments, a leading provider of customer-defined automation, test and measurement hardware and software, will join its wholly-owned subsidiary, AWR Corp., as a Gold sponsor of EDI CON and will present a 40 minute workshop in addition to papers submitted by the company’s engineering staff in the areas of cognitive radio, MIMO, spectrum monitoring and re-use and more. Sharing the company’s graphical system design approach with EDI CON’s China-based design engineering audience, NI will be supporting the conference portion of the event as members of EDI CON’s technical advisory committee and as speakers in the technical sessions.

MIMO Over-the-Air (OTA) Testing

Spirent Communications, a global leader in test & measurement, offers an extensive portfolio of solutions to test data centers, cloud computing and virtualized environments, high speed Ethernet networks and services, 3G/4G/LTE wireless networks and devices, network and application security, and positioning technologies. As a major sponsor of the EDI CON technical program, Spirent will sponsor an hour long panel session on “The Changing Face of Testing: Moving from Conducted to OTA”.  This panel will include key industry players and OTA testing for both Multiple-In, Multiple-Out (MIMO) antenna systems and Assisted Global Navigation Satellite Systems (A-GNSS).  Spirent will also be presenting a workshop on MIMO in all its forms including TD-LTE and a technical paper on MIMO OTA testing methodologies.

Spectrum Monitoring and Signal Analysis

Tektronix, a leading provider of test solutions for communication and aerospace applications will present a talk on spectrum monitoring and multi-domain signal analysis based on the company’s mixed-domain oscilloscopes operating in the time and frequency domains. Supporting designers with the ability to isolate and eliminate signal integrity problems anywhere within a system, Tektronix engineers will discuss how to properly and quickly locate faults by viewing the RF spectrum at any point in time to see how it changes with time or device state.  Attendees will learn how to trace faults back to their source in order to address high-speed signal deviations and eliminate reliability issues.

CETC 41 is the only professional “Electronic Measurement Instrument Institute” in China, developing and manufacturing electronic measurement instruments and automatic testing systems in microwave, millimeter-wave, electro-optical and communication applications. Offering an indigenous product line of test equipment including microwave spectrum analyzers, RF and microwave signal generators, vector network analyzers, network protocol testers and more, CETC 41 engineers will be available to support designers with information on a wide range of test and measurement solutions. With seven research divisions including microwave/millimeter wave measuring, digital/photoelectric/radio communications, electronic application and microwave active, passive and multifunctional module parts department, CETC 41 will join other test and measurement solution providers in sponsoring a workshop and exhibiting at EDI CON 2013.

RF/Microwave and High Speed PCB Design

Rogers Corp., a leading global supplier of laminated materials for RF, microwave and high speed digital printed circuit boards, will present recent findings on the effect of random roughness on conductor loss including experimental data indicating that conductor loss on high frequency microstrip transmission lines is larger than twice the amount predicted by the most widely used roughness factor correction correlations. The greater-than-predicted effect of conductor profile on loss, which is particularly evident on thin circuitry, will be a great interest to engineers designing with such materials at high frequencies. 

LPKF offers a growing number of high-speed digital and high-frequency RF/microwave electronics manufacturing companies with in-house prototype circuit fabrication capabilities. Demonstrating the speed and cost-effectiveness of in-house prototypes, LPKF will be exhibiting their in-house circuit-milling machine and laser systems, which allows design engineers to rapidly explore a range of possibilities on which circuits can be fabricated as prototypes, experimenting with alternative designs, such as different weights of copper on a dielectric board or other changes in key design parameters that might be too expensive to try at an outside PCB fabricator.

The State of Compound Semiconductor Foundry Technology

OMMIC is a supplier of MMIC circuits, Foundry Service and Epitaxial Wafers based on III-V (GaAs, GaN and InP) materials, providing its customers with cutting edge performance for telecommunication, space and defense applications. As a speaker and exhibitor at EDI CON 2013, OMMIC will be discussing state-of-the-art technologies in mixed mode E/D PHEMT, low noise and power PHEMT, metamorphic HEMT and InP DHBT, which support a wide range of MMICs including LNAs from 900 MHz to 160 GHz, highly integrated T/R functions and millimeter wave power amplifiers.

WIN Semiconductors, an advanced pure-play 6-inch GaAs foundry addressing the growing demand for low cost manufacturing of high speed and high quality GaAs MMICs and RFICs to design houses as well as IDM partners, will speak and exhibit at EDI CON 2013. The company’s experts will present information for designing with its HBT and PHEMT MMIC fabrication services based on state-of-the-art GaAs process technology for use in a broad range of applications from 5MHz to 130 GHz. Company experts will present a range of available technologies including 1 μm HBT for fiber communication systems; 2 μm HBT and 0.5 μm PHEMT Switch for handsets and WLAN applications; 0.1 μm, 0.15 μm, and 0.25 μm PHEMT technologies for applications from discrete low noise/power FETs, SATCOM, VSAT, base station, automotive radar, and 40Gb/s fiber optic MMICs and 0.5 μm PHEMT for SATCOM, GPS, Cable TV tuner, Electronic toll collection and WLAN.

Integrated Device Manufacturing

Peregrine Semiconductoris a fabless, global leader of high-performance RF CMOS solutions.  Peregrine will participate in the sponsored workshops and as an exhibitor, highlighting their patented UltraCMOS® process technology utilizing a synthetic sapphire substrate. This near-perfect electrical insulator provides low parasitic capacitance, enabling high signal isolation and excellent broadband linearity. These attributes result in RF devices with excellent high-frequency performance and power handling performance, reduced crosstalk between frequencies, enhanced network efficiency and supports unprecedented levels of monolithic integration throughout a broad portfolio of mixed-signal RF ICs.

Understanding Nonlinear Device Characterization

Auriga Microwave, a leading innovator in the design of high-powered RF and microwave devices will be showcasing the company’s expertise in solid-state device measurement, characterization, and modeling, which is critical to understanding the device physics behind state-of-the-art GaN- and GaAs-based technologies. The company’s Chief Technical Officer, Yusuke Tajima has been invited by the conference organizers to present a talk on high-frequency nonlinear device characterization techniques, discussing a pulsed IV and S-parameter system designed to capture device parameters with a controlled environment and providing the basis of accurate compact device model parameters. Extraction of these parameters and simulation results will also be presented.

Focus Microwaves, a leading manufacturer of automatic impedance tuners for on-wafer integrated load-pull and noise measurement systems operating from 10 MHz to 110 GHz, will examine a variety of problems associated with the practical application of load-pull systems, offering a detailed description of the problem, the principle, and effective solutions. As speakers and exhibitors, the company’s experts will address the issues facing high power RF amplifier designers using the load-pull system to investigate ultra-low impedance matching criteria and concerned with a load-pull system’s test limit.

Maury Microwave, leading manufacturer of laboratory devices and system components, with an emphasis on device characterization and automated tuning systems, will be offering its expertise in microwave test and calibration technology in a special workshop on nonlinear device characterization. Maury will also be featuring hands-on demonstrations of the company’s comprehensive line of precision instruments, coaxial and waveguide components, including vector receiver, active and hybrid-active load-pull and noise figure/noise parameter measurement systems.

Integrated Device and Passive Component Manufacturers

Sanetronic, a Hong Kong registered distributor supplying RF/Microwave, millimeter-wave, optical and Hi-REL electronic components and devices to the mainland Chinese Mobile and Optical telecommunication, Wireless and Datacom industries will be exhibiting and speaking in a technical workshop. Representing well-known device manufacturers such as Cree, Dielectric Laboratories, Dow-Key Microwave, Emerson & Cuming, K&L Microwave, MITEQ and Voltronics, Sanetronic will be presenting solutions in RF passive and active components as well as sub-systems.

For more information, please visit our web site at www.ediconchina.com.