Subsystems and Systems

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Noise is a limiting factor for sensitive reception. In recent communication receivers, noise, along with many external factors, including intermodulation, reciprocal mixing and spurious response, may disturb the sensitive reception of the desired signal. Thus, much consideration for the noise and other factors that disturb the signal reception and...

Electromechanical distribution systems (switch matrices) are used in both commercial applications and military systems. Computer control of these switch matrices facilitates their use in automated testing and in those systems requiring remote control of switching functions. The newest product in Dow-Key's line of electromechanical switches is a single-pole 12-throw...

As the environments in which cell sites are located becomes more constricted, designers of base stations for third-generation networks are faced with challenges such as increased functional integration and other size-reduction techniques similar to those of their mobile phone counterparts. The model FEU-WCDMA1 is a W-CDMA RF front end...

Quadrifilar helical antennas (QFHA) are one of the best candidates to provide a high gain, shaped beam with excellent circular polarization axial ratio for satellite radio and mobile satellite phone systems. One of the most compelling reasons to use these antennas for digital radio and mobile satellite systems is...

Technical Feature The Use of Intermodulation Tables for Mixer Simulations The use of intermodulation table (IMT) files can lead to accurate prediction of the output frequency content of an up-converting or down-converting mixer in system simulations. For best results, custom IMT files should be constructed from mixer output spectrum...

Product Feature A Portable Base Station Installation and Commissioning Test System Racal Instruments Limited Slough, UK Testing in the field puts singular rigorous demands on both the engineer and test equipment used, with the installation and commissioning of field installed base stations presenting particular challenges. Specific considerations include being...

Cover Feature A Complete Spectral System Analysis for RF/Microwave Engineers Eagleware Corp. Norcross, GA Historically, RF and microwave system designers have been forced to resort to a hodgepodge of commercial and custom-written software to characterize and simulate the frequency-domain behavior of complex RF systems and subsystems. This approach tends...

Technical Feature Measurement of On-wafer Transistor Noise Parameters Without a Tuner Using Unrestricted Noise Sources This article presents a method for calibrating the four noise parameters of a noise receiver which does not require a tuner. The method permits using general (mismatched) noise sources, which may present very different...

Technical Feature Two-tone vs. Single-tone Measurement of Second-order Nonlinearity Darioush Agahi, William Domino and Nooshin Vakilian Conexant Systems Inc. Newport Beach, CA This article describes how to correctly find the second-order intercept point (IP2) from one- and two-tone tests, and presents measurement results in support of the theory. Relation...

Technical Feature Designing a Bluetooth Transceiver in RF CMOS Bob Koupal and Marshall Wang Signia Technologies Milpitas, CA Cory Edelman Agilent Technologies Westlake Village, CA The design of a 2.4 GHz Bluetooth transceiver RFIC in CMOS requires careful verification of key performance criteria at all stages of the design...