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Pat Hindle is responsible for editorial content, article review and special industry reporting for Microwave Journal magazine and its web site in addition to social media and special digital projects. Prior to joining the Journal, Mr. Hindle held various technical and marketing positions throughout New England, including Marketing Communications Manager at M/A-COM (Tyco Electronics), Product/QA Manager at Alpha Industries (Skyworks), Program Manager at Raytheon and Project Manager/Quality Engineer at MIT. Mr. Hindle graduated from Northeastern University - Graduate School of Business Administration and holds a BS degree from Cornell University in Materials Science Engineering.
Yesterday, the X-47B UAV made the first arrested landing on a carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush. It previously had made the first take off from the carrier and practiced the landing on shore. This is the first time a tailless, unmanned autonomous aircraft landed on a modern aircraft carrier. This was the completion of testing of the X-47B over the last eight months, culminating a decade of Navy unmanned integration efforts to demonstrate the Navy's readiness to move forward with unmanned carrier aviation.
Having traveled to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress (MWC) in late Feb, heading back out to Beijing for EDI CON 2013 in early March and then returning quickly to get the May IMS 2013 issue in ready, I am only now catching up with some of the items of note from these shows. The one item that sticks out in my travels is the Qualcomm announcement. Although there has been some commentary about Qualcomm announcing the RF360 Family just prior to MWC, it is surprising that it has not gotten more attention as it could turn the industry upside down.
One subject that received a lot of attention at Mobile World Congress was mobile device charging as our batteries seem to drain faster and faster each day. Besides the wireless charging mats that have been available for a while, there were many new wireless charging designs where you can set you phone on a table or on your car middle console and it will charge inductively through the surface. For now, they are not widely available as a built-in function so what can you do to charge your battery. I found some interesting ways to plug in your phone to keep it charged.
We just finished our first RF, microwave and high-speed digital conference and exhibition in China, EDI CON 2013. The inaugural event took place at the Beijing International Convention Center (BICC) which is just blocks from the Olympic area with the iconic Bird’s Nest in sight. EDI CON 2013 was a huge success by all accounts with double the predicted audience including an impressive delegate attendance. The exhibition sold out prior to the event, so the show floor was filled with leading RF and microwave companies for the attendees to visit.
This was the first year at the new venue for Mobile World Congress taking place at the Fira Gran Via. The new venue has eight large halls laid out in a linear fashion (hard to know if you count Hall 8 and 8.1 as two of not). The top floor ran over all of the halls making it easy to get from one place to the next despite the large crowds of people. There were also nice outdoor garden areas along the concourse for networking. The show formally announced that 72,000 people attended the show making it by far the largest wireless show in the world.
Tens of thousands of people from around the world are heading out to Barcelona this weekend to attend GSMA Mobile World Congress 2013 (MWC13) which will take place at new venue this year, Fira Gran Via. Back in November we did a MWC13 preview that was made up of contributions from 3 leading test/measurement companies and 3 component companies. Agilent, R&S, Anritsu, RFMD, TriQuint and Skyworks all wrote pieces about what they expected to be hot topics at the show. Read this preview of the show.
I recently read a great book, Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez, about the next step in UAVs using artificial intelligence to become completely autonomous making their own decisions by communicating with each other as a collective intelligence. The drones use a weaver ant algorithm and communicate via a chemical agent like the real ants. Weaver ants are used because they are a highly aggressive and organized species. I was having a Terminator moment after reading the book as we seem to be getting closer to this situation all the time. But I love the technology that enables these capabilities since much of it is based on advances in wireless technology (along with some software, of course).
Swami Hindle makes his 2013 microwave industry predictions and reviews some trends from last year. Read his predictions and let us know if you have any of your own.
Our Nov article, Linearization and High-Efficiency RF Design Techniques for Small Cells, by authors from Scintera and TriQuint stirred up the following comments from 2 groups on LinkedIn.
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Swami Hindle makes his 2013 microwave industry predictions and reviews some trends from last year. Read his predictions and let us know if you have any of your own.
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