Industry News

A Dynamic Approach to Synthesizer Design

New developments in direct digital synthesis-based synthesizer technology
Broadband synthesizers based on direct digital synthesis (DDS) technology have traditionally led the industry in frequency agility and switching performance, but have also led in high NRE and recurring costs. These high costs stem from the custom nature of DDS-based synthesizers and have resulted in digital synthesizers being primarily...
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Dual Slant Linearly Polarized Antenna for Broadband High Power Applications

Enhanced performance is needed from antennas, radomes and other microwave components to support ever-increasing functionality for military communications and electronic warfare (EW) applications. There is a continuing demand for antennas with broader bandwidth, higher power handling and better controlled radiation patterns, while at the same time reducing size and...
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High Speed Digital Packaging

This article presents the detailed design drivers for high speed digital packaging. Transmission line and interconnect requirements for packaging high speed digital assemblies are discussed. Details of the mechanical requirements to properly attach the...
A number of factors are driving the design of high speed digital packaging. At the assembly level, metal boxes are the dominant configuration due to mounting and interconnect constraints. The next assembly connectivity is accomplished through cables, requiring coaxial connectors. Since a variety of companies manufacture many of the...
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Fast and Accurate High Power Device Characterization with a Microstrip SOL Method

High power device characterizations, performed with a microstrip short-open-load (SOL) calibration kit, are presented. This article demonstrates an interesting alternative to the classical through-reflect-line (TRL) method, when only terminating impeda...
Precise device characterization is the starting point of any good circuit design. This task can be particularly challenging when the device is a high power transistor having low input and output impedances. For devices working only under pulse conditions, specific test benches exist 1 but are rather complicated and...
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An Aircraft Single-antenna FM Radio Altimeter

Advantages of a frequency modulated single-antenna radio altimeter, including lower cost and weight, improved accuracy and higher altitude range
As is well known, there are two general types of altimeter systems - a pulse radar altimeter and a frequency modulated, continuous wave (FM-CW) radio altimeter. Aircraft radio altimeters typically operate at altitudes from 0 to 8000 feet utilizing separate antennas for transmit and receive. Such radio altimeters have...
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