RF & Microwave Community

Accurate Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) measurement of a Device Under Test (DUT) mounted on a printed circuit board fixture requires some form of de-embedding to eliminate the effects of the fixturing. Port extension, onboard calibration, and TRL might be exploited for this purpose, but each of these methods has limitations and drawbacks. The Automatic Fixture Removal (AFR) program from&n...read more

Advancements in test and measurement equipment are allowing millimeter wave component manufacturers and systems designers to ramp up production at mmWave and THz frequencies.“The D-band is the new E-band” read the shirts worn by Virginia Diodes (VDI) employees at a recent microwave symposium. Covering 60-90 GHz, the E-band is a well-established high-capacity solution for a number of mm...read more

Regardless of the application it’s been designed for, every IoT device network depends on an antenna. This fact of engineering life is so basic that developers don’t always pay adequate attention to the antenna choice. Rote thinking on this all-critical component is an unfortunate oversight and often the cause of expensive failures in the field. No other aspect of the IoT design cycle ...read more

If we learned one thing over the past few years, it’s that not even a global pandemic can stop technology evolution. For Communication Service Providers (CSPs), equipment makers, solution developers, and the enterprises worldwide depending on them, the race to push forward never pauses. But where exactly a given technology will go next is much harder to pin down—at least for most obser...read more

When a new generation of cellular technology is launched, services associated with such technology may initially be offered in limited geographic areas and then expanded gradually over a multi-year period to large areas including nationwide coverage and continent wide coverage. Unless a new operator is carrying out “greenfield deployment,” an existing infrastructure is reused to the ex...read more

5G is widely expected to transform how we live our daily lives, with many analysts now predicting that it will be a driver of the next wave of economic growth. The roll-out of this transformational networking technology is currently in its first phase. However, as the deployment begins to enter the second phase – with the rollout of mmWave, today’s RF design challenges will multiply. A...read more

5G brings huge changes to telecom networks, from open radio networks to ultra-low latencies to customizable network slices and more. Communication service providers (CSPs) are banking on these innovations to disrupt the value chain for digital services - and the role they play within it. But it’s the engineers staffing telco Network Operations Centers (NOCs) who must grapple with what this d...read more

What is RF drive testing?Drive testing is the process of collecting samples of RF signals while driving in a certain geographical area. As you're driving and collecting these samples, the samples are geo-tagged or geo-located, so each sample is associated with a specific location.To conduct a drive test, you need some equipment that can identify your geographical location, like GPS. Then you n...read more

The prospect of offering large contiguous frequency bands to meet the demand for extremely high data transfer rates in the Terabit/s range will drive the next generation of wireless communications - 6G. Before 6G is proven, nationwide 5G networks are already opening the door for new application scenarios such as Industry 4.0 with enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low-latency communications...read more

Practice makes perfect. But how you practice goes a long way towards deciding just how close to perfection you can get. This is particularly true when developing products that depend on precision technologies like Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).New applications in areas like autonomous vehicles, aerospace, and precision agriculture demand ever-greater positioning accuracy, in ever-more...read more

Wi-Fi networks have become a nearly ubiquitous backbone for the connected devices that are now part of every facet of the way we work and live. Today, so many devices rely on Wi-Fi that those networks increasingly suffer from congestion that negatively impacts the performance of devices. That kind of network congestion is a nuisance for consumer devices like tablets streaming music or movies, but ...read more

5G (fifth-generation) technology is the successor to 4G/LTE cellular technology. Telecom operators began deploying 5G networks worldwide from 2019 and the number of 5G networks have been consistently increasing over the last couple of years. 5G technology was designed and developed with significant advancements over 4G-LTE. It introduced the use of higher frequencies, improved data rates and lower...read more

An RF crossover or 0 dB crossover is a 4-port device that consists of two parallel transmission lines connected by multiple perpendicular λ/4 lines as seen in the image above. The input from Port 1 is routed to Port 3 and the Input from Port 4 is routed to Port 2, while keeping the signals reasonably isolated from one another. The name “crossover” comes from the fact that the si...read more

A Butler Matrix is an analog beamforming network that is used to feed the phased array antenna elements and control the directions of beams. Many modern wireless technologies used phased array antennas to provide directional beams resulting in higher spectrum efficiency. The direction of the beams in phased array antennas can be controlled by adjusting the relative phase of the signals to each ant...read more

GPS Spoofing is the process of using an RF transmitting device to intentionally make a GPS receiver calculate a false position. The transmitting devices used to do this are called spoofers and they are RF transmitters that are closer to the targetted GPS receiver than the GPS satellites and hence are able to overpower the weak signals coming from the satellites. GPS spoofers recreate GPS signals o...read more