With the Microwave Journal November supplement “WiMAX and Emerging Technologies” hitting the streets and the WiMAX World and European Microwave Week (EuMW) conferences still fresh in the minds of those who attended, now seems like a great time to consider the impact these utopian “wireless everywhere” systems will have on the health of our industry and related job security. Certainly the hype over WiMAX as well as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) is keeping the business and marketing departments employed and busy. Is this technology a panacea for the near and long-term engineering job market as well?
At WiMAX World, Sprint Nextel CTO, Barry West, stated, “all the emerging wireless technologies would be differentiated by the width of available spectrum channels and bound by physics.” The wider spectrum of course will provide the speed and capacity necessary for the services (mainly the mobile Internet) to win over customers. The major service providers seem committed to the vision and are acknowledging the hardware challenges; chief among these are bandwidth, linearity, efficiency, size and cost. So what’s the industry response?
Judging from various press releases at both shows, the current wave of activity is coming mostly from the test and measurement equipment providers and the active device manufacturers (power transistors and MMICs/RFICs). This is no big surprise, as advancements in transistor technology from GaN, LDMOS and High-Voltage HBTs will be needed to address the demanding efficiency and linearity system requirements. And of course, testing is required to verify the performance of these devices.
News items in these areas were reported in the MWJ online coverage of both the WiMAX World and EuMW conferences. New test solutions addressing Wave 2 system profile, modulation quality and interoperability testing, fast-switching signal generators for rapid R&D and production test, handheld test solutions for field engineers as well as configurable 4 x 4 multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) test systems were announced from Agilent, Aeroflex, Anritsu, Rohde & Schwarz and Keithley to name a few.
Articles in our WiMAX supplement this month further discuss the latest in test and measurements with features on “Design and Test Challenges of 3GPP LTE,” “Mobile Fading Simulation,” and “Generating UWB Waveforms.” From the integrated device manufacturer’s perspective we have the supplement cover story “Making Sense of WiMAX” from Triquint in which the author relates the history of the WiMAX Forum™—the industry consortium, the various IEEE standards, terms such as “profiles, releases and waves” and how these factor into hardware specifications. Additionally, Freescale presents the latest advances in its LDMOS RFIC technology, targeting the simplification of WiMAX Base Station Design. And this month, in one of our spotlight web exclusive articles on the MWJ home page, a senior system engineer from SiGe Semiconductor presents the challenges of WiMAX for handset and RF front-end module design.
Of course the engineering work extends beyond transistors and test systems. Device makers such as Nitronex were on hand at WiMAX World to promote its new GaN-on-Si broadband Doherty Power Amplifier reference design for the engineers who will be developing mobile WiMAX infrastructure. Other members of the RF food chain from balun, switch and filter manufacturers to antenna and connector companies are also staking their claims in this emerging technology landscape as many report on new products specifically for the various 802.16 standards. Clearly the sheer number of product related news items speaks volumes for the amount of engineering effort that is being applied to the emerging technologies that will be critical to the success and proliferation of mobile-based (Internet plus) services. I share the big service providers’ belief that consumers will want this level of connectivity. Like high-definition television that may seem frivolous until you’ve seen the side-by-side comparison to a standard picture, mobile connectivity will be a must have service in the near future.
Looking back at last year’s IMS technical program, one can see how the presented papers reflect the industry’s dedication to both basic microwave R&D and specific applications such as WiMAX. Perhaps that is why we have enjoyed such a long and healthy existence—advancing the state-of-the-art, adapting to changes and benefiting from opportunities. So lets work together to expand what Sprint’s Barry West called the “bounds of physics” and change the way the world is connected. Next month the Journal looks at how microwaves have affected our lives through medical, scientific and industrial (including automotive) applications. There’s lots of work to be done and personally I love it when we’re busy.
