Here’s my collection of the news items I saw last week that I think are worth passing along.

Companies and Products

3D Smith Chart Tools S.R.L. released a software tool that constructs a 3D Smith Chart, which represents both active and passive microwave circuits on a spherical plot and enables new capabilities that are not available with the traditional Smith chart: plotting negative resistance, quality factor, power level and group delay. The licensing fee ranges from €49.99 to €99.99.

Ampleon introduced five LDMOS power transistors based on their Gen10 LDMOS processs.

 Note 1: In a three-way PA

AT&T announced the launch of their U.S. LTE-M network, which will provide large scale and low power IoT services across the U.S. AT&T said monthly plans for LTE-M will begin at $1.50 per device, and LTE-M modules will be available for as low as $7.50 each, including a SIM card. Verizon completed their U.S. deployment in April.

Apple settled their patent lawsuit with Nokia, turning their relationship from courtroom adversaries to “business partners.” Terms weren’t disclosed, but Apple will be paying Nokia.

Chuck Swoboda, Cree’s president and CEO is stepping down. He said, “My decision to change my work-life balance follows a recent medical issue, which was resolved, and which caused me to re-evaluate my priorities.” Cree’s board begins the search for a new executive.

Google Fiber began signing up customers for their fiber-to-the-home service in Huntsville, Alabama. However, it’s not their fiber; they are leasing fiber from the city-owned utility. In areas where Google would have to deploy fiber, they seem to be looking for wireless delivery to the home.

Mitsubishi and NanoSemi will be demonstrating a high efficiency, wideband GaN Doherty power amplifier at next week’s IMS. Mitsubishi’s GaN is combined with NanoSemi’s digital predistortion technology to achieve 2 W output power with 44 percent efficiency and −50.5 dBc ACLR; the amplifier is driven by an input signal comprising 10, 20 MHz LTE carriers at 3.5 GHz.

National Instruments announced a set of 28 GHz radio heads for their mmWave Transceiver System. The new frequency band complements the current 71 to 76 GHz coverage and allows the system to support R&D with the 3GPP and Verizon 5G specs at 28 GHz.

Qorvo held their 2017 Investor Day on May 25, with presentations covering their infrastructure and defense products and mobile products businesses and their operations strategy. View or download the slides here.

Raytheon’s proposed GaN-based AESA upgrade to the Patriot radar system completed 1,000 hours of testing in half the typical time for such a test program.

As Resonant continues to scale for more design and production wins, the company recruited Andrew Kay to fill the new role of VP of engineering operations. Kay comes from Skyworks.

In an interesting discussion at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom conference, Verizon’s CEO, Lowell McAdam, outlined Verizon’s strategy for combining a fiber network for small cells with wireless to provide customers with fixed wireless access using 5G technology at 28 and 39 GHz. Listen to his remarks:

Markets and Technology

Cellular — Huawei, Oppo and Vivo led China's smartphone shipments in Q1, taking share from Apple, Xiomi, and Samsung.

Broadband — I found this column to be a thoughtful assessment of the FCC's proposed undoing of the Obama administration’s net neutrality and move back to what the current FCC chair calls “light touch regulation.” Light touch regulation worked as the internet was born, but will it work in today’s environment?

Aerospace & Defense — President Trump released the proposed defense budget for fiscal 2018, requesting $603 billion for defense and $65 billion for overseas operations. The budget includes 70 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters, 14 Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and eight new ships for the Navy, including an aircraft carrier, two destroyers and a littoral combat ship.

DARPA selected Boeing to build the XS-1 “space plane,” a reusable craft meant to launch 10 satellites in 10 days by 2021. Boeing will manufacture the space plane during phase 2 of the program and conduct 12 to 15 flight tests during phase 3.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) released a cool looking concept of a low-cost, stealthy drone, apparently developed as part of the Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology program.

Autonomous Driving — Toyota is “teaming” with MIT’s Media Lab and other partners to explore and apply blockchain technology to autonomous driving. A blockchain is “a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of records.” The technology may provide an efficient way to aggregate road data, driving habits, insurance information, etc., so regulators, car manufacturers, insurance companies and consumers can see how autonomous driving is performing.

Technology and Society — The Supreme Court ruled that patent suits must be tried in the defendant's home state, which seems like it will set back the swarms of east Texas patent trolls, who tend to get good results suing companies in east Texas.

Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook while at Harvard, gave this year’s commencement address at Harvard, telling the soon-to-be grads: “do big things not just to create progress, but to create purpose ... You are graduating into a world that needs purpose. It's up to you.”

Don't lose sight of your purpose. Thoughts? Leave a comment below.