Articles by Dan Massé, Associate Technical Editor

The worldwide market for digital set-top boxes—including hard-to-track free-to-air satellite (DBS) boxes—will grow from 205 million in 2010 to 226 million in 2015. Shipments in North America and Western Europe are falling following largely successful digital transitions, while Asia-Pacific, Latin-America and Eastern Europe all see significant growth. Set-top boxes...

Raytheon Co. has received a contract from Boeing for the production of advanced APG-63(V)3 Active Electronically Scanned Array radars. The US Air Force and the US Air National Guard will receive radars from the contract and deliveries will begin in the second quarter of 2011. The radars are intended...

Harris Corp., an international communications and information technology company, has received orders from the US Marine Corps totaling $21 M for additional Falcon III AN/PRC-117G multiband manpack radios, vehicular amplifier adapters and other accessories. The Marine Corps will acquire the systems as part of its accelerating transition to high-speed,...

Lockheed Martin announced that the Lockheed Martin-Raytheon team competing for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) Development and Sustainment Contract has received the final request for proposal from the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA). MDA issued the request for proposal December 2, with a submission due date of January 28....

The US Navy awarded Raytheon Co. $240 M for production and delivery of critical components of the Aegis weapons system for the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers. Under the contract, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) will provide production, engineering and support services for four ship sets of the AN/SPY-1D(V)...

Rapid Chinese TD-SCDMA rollouts and the often-maligned GSM/GPRS/EDGE equipment markets have benefited the base station RF power amplifier and RF power device markets. GSM/GPRS/EDGE RFPAs and devices are still shipping in the millions. The Asia-Pacific region is presently accounting for more than 50 percent of the RF power semiconductor...

While LTE is destined to become the dominant wireless airlink, several formidable challenges will make its widespread adoption slower than many expect. For starters, spectrum has to be cleared, licensed and either allocated or sold off before LTE takes hold. As every country has its own telecommunications regulations, these...

Capital expenditure on mobile backhaul varies greatly by region and by technology. While most countries face similar current or future struggles to reduce network congestion, the solutions being adopted differ according to existing infrastructure, network generations, and government mandates and incentives. One major division is whether to use optic...

A recent survey of 2,000 consumer technology users conducted by ABI Research in the United States has revealed that nearly half of smartphone users say they have already, or soon will, use their phones to do mobile shopping. Fifty-three percent also use, or intend to use, their smartphones for...

In 2015, shipments of fixed wireless terminals (FWT) and cellular routers will total nearly 13 million, according to the latest forecasts from ABI Research. The research includes market analysis for industrial terminals, business gateways, telephony adaptors—all relatively mature markets showing stable modest growth—and the newest market segment, mobile broadband...