Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor

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The Brooklyn 5G Summit celebrated its 5^th meeting for 2018 at NYU WIRELESS. Leaders and technologists from leading operators such as AT&T, DoCoMo, KT, T-Mobile US, Verizon and Vodafone discussed the latest results and plans for future 5G networks. In addition, major infrastructure leaders like Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei, plus smaller companies such as Phazer, Blue Danube, BluWireless and InterDigital, were on hand showing off the latest results and technology. It was the most exciting 5G Summit to date by many accounts, as the rollout of 5G starts this year with the accelerated standards and deployment schedule from a few years ago.

I was suppose to fly down to DC on Tues  to spend a couple of days catching up on the newest trends and products at Satellite 2018. But the Nor'easter dumped 2 feet of snow on Boston and every flight I could find was cancelled. So I remotely monitored the happenings at the event and collected the following materials from press releases and emails about what was on display for RF/microwave products.

Mobile World Congress solidified that 5G is fast approaching with deployments this year. In the US, Verizon is rolling out 5G millimeter wave Fixed Wireless Access in many cities and AT&T is rolling out 5G mobile service. T-Mobile will not be far behind with their dual band 600 MHz and 28 GHz 5G rollout starting Q2 of next year.

With all of the focus on 5G these days, we tend to forget about Wi-Fi which actually carries the bulk of mobile traffic relatively effortlessly. That is not typically the case at events where there are hundreds or thousands of people using their mobile devices in a confined area. But the upcoming generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11ax, will change those poor service experiences into noticeable better ones.

With all of the semiconductor industry consolidation, there are many RF and microwave parts being discontinued or obsoleted after a rationalization of the merged companies is complete. This posting covers how some other MMIC companies are filling in the gap in supply.

Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. announced last week the development of the first method for bonding single-crystal diamond to a SiC substrate at room temperature. Using this technology for heat dissipation in high-power GaN HEMT devices enables stable operation at higher power levels than currently used. Application of this technology is expected to significantly enhance the performance of radars and wireless communications since they can operate at higher powers.

The Cambridge Consultants Innovation Day 2017 addressed how insightful design, smarter products and digital services are transforming business with keynote sessions and seminars given by their experts and customers. The day started off with CEO Eric Wilkinson discussing how Cambridge Consultants (CC) is investing in digital services, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology.

Yole Developpment just reported that between 2017 and 2022, an 8% CAGR is expected for acoustic wave filters. The market is dominated by historical players with a strong international position that has a big barrier to entry. They also reported that acoustic wave filter patenting activity was very high between 2000 and 2006 but since then, it has progressively decreasing reaching a plateau in 2010.

Early this year, T-Mobile identified 1 million square miles where the 600 MHz spectrum is available for deployment and acquired 35 MHz of contiguous uplink spectrum between 663-698 MHz and corresponding 35 MHz of downlink spectrum between 617-652 MHz. See how Qorvo and Qualcomm are meeting the demand for this band.

The oven is going under a revolutionary change in the next few years, as RF energy enters the cooking market in the form of new microwave ovens. As the technology is perfected over the next year or two, microwave ovens will be replaced with multiple source solid-state RF ovens which in turn could be introduced into the traditional gas/electric heated ovens most widely used today. It just so happens that this is the 50^th anniversary of the first commercial countertop microwave oven sold in 1967--so a good time to celebrate a new innovation, as not much has change with the microwave oven over the last 50 years.