It was a bit light on company and product news last week, which was more than offset by interesting market and technology items:

Companies and Products

At the ANGACOM show in Germany, Anadigics announced a cable modem reverse path amplifier for DOCSIS 3.1. With frequency coverage to 204 MHz, the amplifier provides 3 dB of margin to the DOCSIS 3.1 requirements for harmonic performance and distortion at +68 dBmV output.

Anadigics also released two MESFET-GaN power doublers that provide +73 dBmV total composite power while consuming only 12.7 watts of DC power.

Intel's acquisition of Altera reflects their shift from PCs to servers and the Internet of Things (IoT). Perhaps this will work better than their lackluster smartphone strategy.

Pasternack is expanding their solid-state high power amplifier portfolio with 22 models covering 150 kHz to 7.5 GHz. Reflecting the full range of semiconductor technologies — GaAs, GaN, LDMOS — all the HPAs provide greater than 10 watts output.

For the Patriot air and missile defense system, Raytheon is progressing toward a GaN-based active phased array radar with full 360 degree coverage.

For $29, Texas Instruments says you can connect a sensor to the cloud in 3 minutes using their SimpleLink sensor tag. The tag connects via Bluetooth low energy, 6LoWPAN and ZigBee, with a Wi-Fi version coming.

Markets and Technology

The FCC's net neutrality rules took effect Friday (June 12) after a federal appeals court declined to issue a stay. The court did agree to expedite their review of the lawsuits filed by AT&T and industry groups.

Cellular

The industry is jockeying to insert GaN in the cellular base station, the next big market opportunity to make GaN mainstream. Read my assessment of the competition

China is investing 430 billion yuan ($69 billion) in broadband, projecting 1.3 million 4G base stations supporting 300 million 4G subscribers by the end of the year.

Ericsson's latest Mobility Report provides a range of interesting data, including how usage of smartphones changes with screen size. Ben Bajarin and The 3G4G Blog offer this summary.

Freescale published an informative tutorial on the motivation for adopting network function virtualization (NFV).

Space

SpaceX founder Elon Musk is proposing a 4,000 low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to provide global Internet access.

In a related move, Facebook joined Google in dropping plans to deploy their own satellites network for Internet access. With Elon Musk's announcement and the OneWeb constellation, Facebook will likely find plenty of satellite capacity.

Automotive

The head of research in society and technology at Mercedes Benz shared his view of the future of the car with The New York Times.

“Mostly, we don’t think people will give up their own cars. Americans like to do everything in the cars. They eat in cars, they drink in cars, they have entertainment in cars and they change clothes in cars — people who leave the office at lunch and sleep in their cars, or wait in their cars for an hour at a time for their children.”

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is urging automakers to adopt forward collision avoidance systems to prevent or reduce rear-end crashes.

Internet of Things (IoT)

In another example of IoT applications, Disney is developing web-connected toys that get kids off the couch. Their Playmation products debut in October.

Other Items

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology won the $2 million top prize in DARPA's Robotics Challenge. Taking second place and winning $1 million was IHMC Robotics of Pensacola, Fla. The third place prize of $500,000 was awarded to Tartan Rescue of Pittsburgh.

If you're concerned that robots empowered by artificial intelligence will take over the world, Google says “get a grip.”

New York University researchers say temperature rise is the best standard for ensuring the safe use of millimeter wave radiation; they recommend standards be developed for the spectrum above 100 GHz.

China's exports were down 2.5 percent in May, and imports dropped 17.6 percent, raising doubts about the country's 6 percent growth target for 2015.