Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor | Microwave Journal

Pat Hindle is responsible for editorial content, article review and special industry reporting for Microwave Journal magazine and its web site in addition to social media and special digital projects. Prior to joining the Journal, Mr. Hindle held various technical and marketing positions throughout New England, including Marketing Communications Manager at M/A-COM (Tyco Electronics), Product/QA Manager at Alpha Industries (Skyworks), Program Manager at Raytheon and Project Manager/Quality Engineer at MIT. Mr. Hindle graduated from Northeastern University - Graduate School of Business Administration and holds a BS degree from Cornell University in Materials Science Engineering.

LTE Market Provides Enthusiasm for Market Growth

January 13, 2009

Patrick Hindle

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While WiMAX dominated the news over the last year or so, LTE will probably be the hot topic this year as deployments start to happen. ABI Research reports that more than eighteen operators globally have announced LTE deployment plans, and the tough economy does not seem to have dampened their enthusiasm. ABI Research estimates that operators will spend over $8.6 billion on LTE base station infrastructure alone . Verizon has announced acceleration of its LTE deployment timetable, bringing the launch forward from 2010 to 2009. Many of the others are looking at a 2011-2012 time frame , by which time,...

Economic Ups and Downs

January 2, 2009

Patrick Hindle

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As we kick off the new year, we will be posting our thoughts and related news items that discuss economic trends we see in the hope of gaining some insight into the markets that will grow this year as we try to pull out of this recession. This is certainly a time where market focus is more important than ever and targeting growth markets and any other market opportunities that arise will be a key to success. In this type of economic market, we believe that new product development and targeted marketing are two key areas to concentrate on. Strategy...

Look Mom, No Batteries - Peregrine & K-State Working Together on Energy Harvesting Radios

December 19, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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Kansas State University engineers are helping Peregrine implement its idea of an energy-harvesting radio. This concept could be used to implement bridge structural integrity monitoring with wireless sensors since changing the batteries on hundreds of sensors on each bridge is not practical. Kansas State is developing the energy harvesting radios for Peregrine to be used in these types of applications. Peregrine's UltraCMOS process leads itself well to very low power devices and K-State engineers are looking at the design challenges of a radio system. Although the prototype captures and stores light energy with solar cells, these energy-harvesting radios could be...

A Sparkling New Microwave Idea for the Holidays

December 17, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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In case you did not see this news item, I just thought I had to share it since it is so appropriate for the holidays (Source: Carnegie Institution for Science): If you are still deciding on what to give the woman (or microwave engineer) who has everything this holiday season, then researchers in Washington may have solved that last minute gift problem – microwaved diamonds. Members of Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory have used a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method to grow synthetic diamonds for their experiments. Unlike other methods, which mimic the high pressures deep within the earth where natural...

Defected Ground Structures

December 8, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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We receive several technical articles each month about circuits that utilize Defected Ground Structures (DGS) to improve performance. A DGS is where the ground plane metal is purposely modified with a certain geometry (and positioning of that geometry) to enhance performance. They can be used in various circuits with antennas, filters, delay lines, phase shifters, etc. to improve performance such as modifying the band pass/reject characteristics for filters or modifying the slow wave effect for delay lines or phase shifters. While DGS may improve performance, these circuits are highly susceptible to the effects of the packaging since they radiate. Any...

RF/microwave in Cars

December 1, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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The Auto show is coming to Boston this week, so I am excited to make my annual visit to this event. We get a group together each year and spend several hours salivating over the new cars (especially the exotics) and then have a nice Italian dinner in the north end. Every year I look for more RF and microwave products in cars but hope the severe down turn in the industry does not effect what we will see too much (I am not counting on getting any giveaways this year). RFID is available on the new Ford F150...

Changing of the Guard- Cell Phone Leaders

November 24, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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There have been several market research reports out over the last month that show what I think is a permanent shift in cell phone leaders. Samsung took over as leading mobile phone shipments in the US market (Apple moved up to #6). RIM seems to be holding strong and introducing some nice products. It seems like the global market leaders of Nokia and Motorola are loosing some of their grip on some of the market. The iPhone also took over as the best selling phone which had been held for a couple of years by the outdated Razor. The smart...

Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA) Conference

November 19, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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I attended the AMTA Conference this week in Boston at the Park Plaza hotel including the keynote speech by Dr. Eric D. Evans (Director of MIT Lincoln Labs) about radar measurement activities within their organization. I was surprised at the wide array of RF/microwave projects they are working on. He said they are concentrating on key technology enablers such as digital sensors, portable software, open system architectures, sensor/network sidecars and online processors. He said they are still innovating in hardware but spend more effort these days on software. They use rapid proto-typing (3 months from inception to hardware) and...

New Microwave Technologies for Medical Applications

November 13, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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Microwave technology currently has relatively limited uses in medical applications such as MRI and Telemetry systems with RFID starting to find some uses, but I can think of many others. However, there seems to be a resurgence in some new medical research activities that could change that. Our Dec. issue feature story will describe research being done by Duke University to use microwaves to mildly heat tumors so they respond better to other treatments. New modeling software has enabled better results to eliminate hot spots so that this technique shows promise now. And now UMass has just released news that...

New Tunable Capacitor Technology for Mobile-TV

November 10, 2008

Patrick Hindle

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Speaking of mobile-TV (see David's entry below), Peregrine Semiconductor has developed a new digitally tunable capacitor (DTC) technology using their UltraCMOS process. Mobile-TV antennas must be able to receive signals efficiently over the frequency range of 470 to 862 MHz, so using a traditional passive internal antenna can result in a VSWR of 6:1 across the band causing reduced sensitivity. But using a DTC to change the antenna match across the band can maintain a VSWR of better than 2:1. In addition, this DTC technology can withstand the GSM transmitted power levels without affecting the mobile-TV signal integrity. The...