Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor

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About a year ago Kosta Grammatis contacted Microwave Journal about satellite and communications experts he might contact to start an effort to supply Internet to everyone in the world for free. A huge challenge but a great idea and if anyone can pull it off, he can. He is now part of BuyThisSatellite.org which says it'll take $150,000 in contributions to take the first step toward a successful bid on the bankrupt Terrestar-1 satellite (they will probably need over 10 times that much to purchase the satellite plus costs to supply modems and maintain the whole system). After obtaining the...

The upcoming Apple iPhone 5, due this summer, will be powered by TriQuint and Skyworks PAs. While it is disappointing that it will not have 4G LTE capability, according to an article from The Street about TriQuint, the Apple iPhone 5 will be a full featured world phone equipped with "seven power amplifiers" to improve the wireless reception on the full array of WCDMA and EVDO frequencies in the U.S. and Europe, says Rodman Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar. This is good news for power amp supplier Triquint, which was left out of the Verizon iPhone 4 this year. The...

ABI Research has commented on the fact that Nokia has announced this sweeping and profound change in its strategy. Accepting that the Symbian operating system cannot meet the needs of today’s smartphone consumer, Nokia has opted to throw in its lot with Microsoft and use the Windows Phone 7 operating system in future Nokia smartphones . In addition, the Nokia devices unit has been split into two business units that will address smartphones and low cost phones separately. I have heard rumblings about this partnership but thought it would take more time to pull it off with these two...

Although spending on RF power semiconductors in wireless infrastructure markets has continued to stagnate, according to ABI Research other markets – notably the military – are seeing increased activity. Also, according to a new study from ABI Research, Gallium Nitride – long seen as a promising new “material of choice” for RF power semiconductors – is continuing to gain some market traction. Gallium Nitride (GaN) increased its market share in 2010, and is expected to do the same in 2011. Although its adoption hasn’t been as rapid as originally expected, it is nonetheless forecast to be a significant force by...

According to ABI research, Surging sales of netbooks, media tablets, and other “always connected” consumer and industrial electronics products mean equally robust performance in markets for wireless connectivity ICs. ABI Research expects that when the final numbers for 2010 are gathered, shipments of wireless connectivity chipsets will reach a total of approximately two billion units, a 22% shipment increase compared to 2009. "Market demand for wireless connectivity chipsets has been increasingly robust in recent years, a trend that will continue in the medium term," says industry analyst Celia Bo. “Total shipments of wireless connectivity chipsets are forecast to reach seven...

I am very happy the iPhone 4 is coming to Verizon soon as I have been with them for many years and would welcome the chance to get one. We have covered the antenna issues in a couple of previous posts and the Verizon iPhone brings some changes to the antenna design. Initially, Apple seemed to indicate that the changes to the antenna design were only to make it compatible with CMDA. Taking a close look at the exterior antenna, one can see that there are now 4 spaces between the antennas instead of 3 so there appears to be...

I have not seen that Femtocells have really caught on in the market as they seem to be only used for local range extenders. ABI Research says they are now attracting consumers’ attention in other ways. Their initial use-case has been to enhance indoor cellular coverage, but it is now clear that their potential utility is much wider. It is based on “ femtozone services” that use key attributes such as location and presence to trigger innovative applications residing on the mobile device, or in the access point, the core gateway, or the cloud. A simple example: a family alert...

Below is a list of the Top 10 most viewed technical articles for 2010. Many of these articles are from ealier in the year or 2009 as they had more time to be read than articles published toward the end of this time frame so don't miss our Nov cover story, The State of RF/microwave Switches , and Dec cover story, Smart Grid Communications Evolution , as they have been quite popular over the limited time they have been onilne. Here is the list: Fundamentally Changing Nonlinear Microwave Design (March 2010 Cover Story) RFID: The Next Generation Auto-ID Technology The...

Adaptive cruise control ( ACC ) has been an option on high-end luxury vehicles for more than a decade, but in the next few years ABI research says it will become available on mid-size and family vehicles. Costs have been falling slowly but steadily over the years, and now a new development promises to bring significant price reductions for the consumer. “The highest cost component of ACC has always been the radar sensor,” says ABI Research principal analyst David Alexander, “and now the cost advantages of silicon technology are going to take effect. We project that, by 2016, the lower...

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...