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We recently were introduced Uhnder coming out of stealth mode as a semiconductor startup headquartered in Austin, TX supplying the first all digital automotive radar chips.

Every year at the end February, we make our annual pilgrimage to Barcelona, Spain for the world’s largest wireless conference, the Mobile World Congress.  The shear scale of the conference can be overwhelming with all wireless companies demonstrating the latest technologies, outlining future directions, and of course showcasing the latest wireless products.  I just returned from Barcelona and MWC 2019, and here are some thoughts.

The biggest hit at MWC19 was flexible display technology that was shown off in 2 foldable phones, the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, and in a wearable smartwatch phone from ZTE, the nubia Alpha. Read this review of the event.

Interview with professor Ted Rappaport about the deployment of 5G mmWave technology.

Canalys has been providing some nice, detailed data since the beginning of the year on smartphone shipments around the world for 2018. I have summarized their last few reports here.

According to Yole Développement, the RF GaN industry is showing high growth with a 23% CAGR between 2017 and 2023 driven mostly by telecom and defense applications. By the end of 2017, the total RF GaN market was close to US$380 million and 2023 should reach more than US$1.3 billion with an evolving industrial landscape. 

The characteristics of circuit materials have a great deal to do with how well a printed circuit board (PCB) performs, especially at RF/microwave frequencies. Circuit material parameters such as dielectric constant (Dk), dissipation factor (Df), even material thickness can affect the way that different transmission lines, such as microstrip, stripline, and coplanar waveguide, perform in high-frequency circuits. Fortunately, there is a simple and pain-free way to predict how different high-frequency transmission lines will behave when fabricated on different circuit materials: the Microwave Impedance (MWI) Calculator software.

To date, mmWave deployments have been targeted to fixed wireless access, or in other words fiber to the home (FTTP) replacements.  The early 5G sub 6 GHz rollouts are a milestone but mmWave is the pathway to the transformational impact needed for the 5G ecosystem.  

With the implementation of 4G, many companies took liberties in saying they had 4G networks even though they did not meet the performance specifications of the 3GPP standard just so they could be first to market (or at least an early provider). This is already happening now with 5G.