Pat Hindle, MWJ Technical Editor
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.
January 3, 2011
Last year was my first year of predictions for the RF and microwave industry. So what are my predictions for 2011 and how did I do last year? 2011 Industry predictions: Tunable devices and circuits like RF MEMS and switched capacitor banks will be adopted in cell phones and alleviate some of the antenna reception issues that plagued phones like the iPhone 4. Smart Grid applications will take off this year with ISM and Zigbee wireless applications being widely implemented around the world. LTE will dominate the 4G networks as it is implemented around the world and zooms past...
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December 21, 2010
According to a report from Strategy Analytics last weeek, the market value for GaAs revenues, driven by smartphones and consumer adoption of data-intensive applications, has grown strongly from the lows it struggled for in early 2009. The recently published Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductors (GaAs) report, “ GaAs Device Vendor Market Share 2009: North America ,” reports that this growth brought the total market value for GaAs revenues to little more than $4 billion, a slight increase over 2008 revenue levels. Skyworks Solutions nudged past RFMD to take the top revenue spot for North American vendors. However, less than...
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December 9, 2010
ABI recently talked about the 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. The stated that GSM/GPRS/EDGE RFPAs and devices are still shipping in the millions. The Asia-Pacific region is presently accounting for more than 50% of the RF power semiconductor devices sold into the mobile wireless infrastructure segment. Recent Chinese TD-SCDMA base station deployments have been massive, and have buoyed RF power vendors to a tremendous degree. That demand is expected to strengthen the market until at least sometime in 2011, and the Chinese...
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December 9, 2010
A new ABI report says that 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 fiber or microwave for mobile backhaul . CAPEX for microwave backhaul will peak in Western Europe this year at almost $4.4 billion, more than triple the figure for the next-highest region, Asia-Pacific. The European spending surge is due to the expansion of 3G networks to...
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November 24, 2010
There has been a wide array of cell phone radiation protection devices such as antenna shields, cell phone holders/covers, gloves and hats but now there is Belly Armor . It claims to protect an unborn child from everyday radiation from sources ranging from cell phones to WiFi with a material that is provided to act as a Faraday cage. It comes in various forms such as a blanket, belly band and tee. I have not seen any evidence that non-ionizing radiation does any damage to the body other than heating from very high power sources. The FCC has set conservative...
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November 16, 2010
Some industry experts and research analysts agree that today's WiMAX (802.16e) and LTE technologies are 4G but do they really meet the definition of 4G as others say they do not. Now that the ITU has officially accepted 802.16m and LTE -Advanced as IMT -Advanced technologies (4G), the issue has surfaced again. What makes it more confusing is that where the ITU mainly referred to IMT -2000 and IMT -Advanced in the past, it is now including 3G with IMT -2000 and 4G with IMT -Advanced. It is true that the current LTE and WiMAX systems are 4 th generation...
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November 10, 2010
There was a report last week that Apple is already testing a prototype iPhone with near-field communication (NFC) capability inside that could lead to using future iPhones as a mobile wallet or payment device. Unnamed sources say that Apple is testing an iPhone with NFC chips procured from NXP Semiconductor. It's not clear what exactly what they are testing and is very preliminary at this point. But coupled with the hire of Benjamin Vigier from mFoundry as mobile payments product manager, it seems possible that Apple could be planning to open up to mobile commerce. Using it the iPhone for...
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November 3, 2010
One of the major trends at MILCOM this year is leveraging the use of commercial smartphones for military use to field advanced communications to the field quickly. Billions of dollars are invested in commercial development for smartphones so why not use that advanced technology for the military. The commercial market also updates capabilities quickly so if the commercial smart phone can "plug" into a secure military network, the comm device does not become obsolete after a year or two. One of the best examples of utilizing this strategy is Lockheed Martin's MONAX 3G broadband network. MONAX is designed to...
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November 2, 2010
Although IP communications have been around for many years, interoperable and secure IP systems are now being realized in many military applications. The Warfigther is now being connected with vehicles, UAVs, ships, helicopters and other aircraft so that everyone can share information immediately and there is no single point of failure in the network as they can all act as nodes. This year's theme, "The Next Decade of Military Communications," addresses the issues with connecting various Defense, intelligence and homeland security networks as well as the evolution of communications systems and networks as we move into network-centric operations as...
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October 30, 2010
Good news for cell phone component manufacturers as ABI Reserach reports that the mobile handset market is set for a stellar performance in 2010. 3Q-2010 is up 346.2 million in handset shipments. For the first three quarters of the year, YoY growth has been hovering around 20%. “This is a remarkable feat, irrespective of the rebound effect following the deferred handset purchases during the economic recession,” says Jake Saunders, VP for forecasting at ABI Research. “Layer on ‘ smartphone -envy’ and you have a recipe for high handset volumes.” This rebound is having some interesting consequences: 1) Component manufacturers have...
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