Articles by David Vye

Diamond Microwave Devices Ltd (DMD) and its partners have won funding worth £1.34M from the Technology Strategy Board, the government-funded body that supports technological innovation in the UK. The investment will help to fund a £3 million project that will see the development of a new, innovative diamond-based high power, high-temperature, microwave transistor and build a demonstrator microwave pulsed power amplifier capable of >100W output power. Dr Richard Lang, general manager of DMD says, “We are delighted to receive this significant backing for our work on the next generation of microwave transistors based on innovative diamond material and device concepts....

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon, I thought I would find a little microwave trivia from the Apollo 11 mission. My search produced the following exchange from an online forum ( www.2012forum.com ). I thought it was worth sharing with all of you. Enjoy! "I have a MA in Communications/Computer Engineering.(IBM Veteran Engineer/Inventor) One thing that I have always questioned in the Moon landings was:In communications there is a thing called Attenuation, weakened signals even when used in radio waves. When an average radio wave travels here on earth, there are many...

I'm sitting in a meeting when, looking down at my notepad, I noticed that I had jotted the name of "Tesla" on it some time ago. I forgot why I had to remind myself about Tesla when I last used this pad of paper, but seeing the word made me think of this truly aweful song from the 1980's called "Tesla Girls", which got me thinking about songs with titles that would be relevent to engineers. Not able to let a good mind contest go unchallenged, I began to list any song that referred to engineering or science. This brief...

The NFC Forum is a non-profit industry association just outside of Boston that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. In early June the association introduced its target mark, a stylized letter "N" that enables consumers to easily locate embedded NFC tags. The N-Mark indicates the spot where an NFC device can read an NFC tag to establish a connection. By holding an NFC-enabled device close to the N-Mark, consumers can "pick up" information stored on NFC tags embedded in everyday objects such as posters, bus stop signs, parking permits, street signs, medicines, magazine pages and food packaging....

Years ago, when I was starting my engineering career (at just about the same time as the HP8510 (automatic) Network Analyzer), I worked for M/A-Com's corporate research. My mentor would jot down some ideas he wanted me to pursue, provide a little scientific guidance and then send me to the lab to experiment. Around this time, a lot of research centered around Gallium Arsenide. Distributed circuit designs that had been applied to PCBs and alumina were being adopted for MMIC interconnects and on-chip passive components. Much of my time was spent using the available design software (SuperCompact or Touchstone) and...

With coverage of the IMS 2009 behind us, now is a good time to take a quick look at what visitors to the Microwave Journal web site have been most interested in (based on page views). Why now? Well, the IMS is a time of heavy activity for both company product releases and a curious industry that wants to know who is doing what. So here's the quick run down of the ten most visited web pages since the third week of May. 1. The IMS 2009 Multimedia section. About 1600 "readers" came to see our video interviews shot from...

How Big was this year's IMS? That seems to be the metric that everyone measures the show by. For me, this annual event is almost more than I can handle. Really. Fortunately our staff editors were able to stay on top of all the press releases and keep the online show coverage up to date. As for me, by the last day my head was spinning from all the input and brainstorming and information overload and piling up action items. Not that I'm complaining. I just don't see how bigger could possibly be any better. I already have regrets for...

There seems to be a direct (and perhaps obvious) connection between the length of my driving commute to work and the state of the economy. I have a pretty lengthy drive to the office, right along the famed Route 128 that surrounds greater Boston. This highway once known as America's Technology Highway can be more of a parking lot than a freeway. However, as the economy began its slide last November, the traffic became noticeably lighter. While I am grateful for the absence of traffic jams, there have been times that I felt uncomfortable knowing why there were so...

My youngest child loves those old war movies, which (I confess) I don't mind watching either. Last weekend, AMC ran a full day of the classics and we sat down and watched some of them before heading out to enjoy the breaking New England weather. The two of us watched the classic George C. Scott movie "Patton" and "The Battle of the Bulge". While we only caught parts of each, the two major scenes we did see involved the Army's and Air Force's inability to function during bad weather. Somewhat like me and my son waiting for the sun to...

Huawei beats Alcatel-Lucent in 1Q09 to top optical networking market for the first time as Asia-Pacific led by strength in China and India, shows remarkable resilience despite the global downturn. The global optical networking (ON) market was $3.6 billion, down 15% sequentially and down 8% compared with 1Q08. “This marks the second time in two quarters that the ON market has shrunk compared with the year-ago quarter, but given the global financial meltdown the situation could have been much worse.” remarks Ovum’s Vice President, Optical Networking, Dana Cooperson. “Spending in Asia-Pacific was surprisingly strong. We did not see the seasonal...