Industry News

Microwaves in Europe: Past Challenges, Future Prospects

How have the events of the last decade impacted on the European microwave industry? How has it emerged from the market downturn of the early 2000s, accommodated the expansion of the European Union and embraced the globalisation of the marketplace? And ...
European Microwave Week (EuMW) celebrates its first decade in October and the intervening 10 years have been eventful and consequential for the European RF and microwaves industry. Back in 1997 confidence was fairly high after what was seen as recovery from the recession that had hit the microwave community...
Read More

Noise Minimization Techniques for RF and MW Signal Sources

Low noise RF and microwave (MW) signal sources (oscillator/VCOs) are crucial for the development of high bit rate wireless link multi-standard systems such as point-to-point radios or multipoint radios. Since the oscillator/VCO is one of the key contri...
The phenomenon of phase noise generation in oscillator/VCOs has been the main focus of important research efforts and is still an open issue, despite significant gains in practical experience and modern CAD tools for design. In the design of oscillator/VCOs, minimization of the phase noise is the prime task...
Read More

Oscillator Phase Noise: Theory and Prediction

Oscillator phase noise is a complex topic that has been explored by several authors from both theoretical and practical perspectives. That perspective has sometimes obscured some of the basic principles involved in low noise oscillator and synthesizer ...
Signal source spectral quality has become the single parameter that limits achievable performance of many modern communication and radar systems. In communication systems that utilize complex modulation to achieve spectral efficiency, the achievable bit error rate (BER) is often limited by the transmitter and local oscillator phase noise. In...
Read More

Measuring Performance in Pulsed Signal Devices: A Multi-faceted Challenge

This article describes several approaches for generating modulated pulsed signals with signal generators and analyzing devices stimulated with these kinds of signals using vector network analyzers. In particular, it focuses on when an analog signal gen...
Measurements with pulsed stimulus signals are undertaken for a number of reasons. For instance, in a wide range of applications, devices under test (DUT) must be characterized by using pulsed signals instead of CW signals. Here, the DUT is stimulated either with a pulsed RF signal or the device...
Read More