Microwave Journal
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A Few Thoughts While Traveling in China

October 10, 2012

I’m riding comfortably at 306 km/h on a train from Nanjing to Beijing after having more than a dozen meetings with Agilent EEsof customers over the last two weeks. I thought I’d pass on a few observations and thoughts.

Communications is bustling, nowhere more evident than the announcement of the iPhone5. News roared across the world: 5 million units sold in 3 days, teardowns with photos in hours from shipment, Agilent EEsof customers celebrating slot wins—or in some cases—learning from losses. I had a fun discussion yesterday in Shanghai about just how many PAs were in the new iPhone5; 4 or 5? How many switches and duplexers? No matter the ultimate count, every RF chip and module on the phone was designed, at least in part, by Agilent EEsof software.

More than just quantity is the incredible complexity of the modern phone. The number of bands and signaling formats that new phones support is astounding: 15 bands and 6 formats is not unusual. In fact, if you wanted a true world phone that worked on every common cellular format, you’d need 45 bands. Complexity creates problems, problems our software can help solve.

As I travel around, I run into all sorts of exploding communications: car-to-car, near-field, 802.11ac WLAN, mSATA, USB3, and many, many more. Today’s visit was about radar design, yet another application area. In all these applications, I see companies pushing extremely hard to innovate and differentiate their offerings. They are facing very difficult problems (better efficiency, smaller, more formats, speed speeds, and—always—lower cost). Agilent EEsof is ideally positioned to help solve them. No other company comes close to offering the technology, integration, and support of our organization.

Opportunities are everywhere. I look forward to helping our customers take advantage of them.

Todd Culter