Top News Stories the Month - March, 2016

New Flexible Antennas for 3G and MIMO Designed to fit inside Wearable Devices

Antenova has introduced two new flexible printed circuit board antennas for 3G and MIMO. Both antennas operate at GSM850, GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900 and WCDMA2100 and provide full coverage of the 3G bands in around the world.

The two new FPC antennas have been designed to be mounted inside a small mobile or wearable device, and are supplied with a cable and a connector so that they are very easy to integrate into a design. At just 0.15mm thick, they can be curved or folded, to fit into tight spaces. They have a ready applied adhesive with a peel-off strip making them easy to fix inside the casing of a product. Read more

Mapping Sea Level from Space Using GPS Reflections

New research conducted and published between the scientists from the National Oceanography Center (NOC) in the UK and the University of Michigan and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has utilized the GPS signal used for 'sat-navs' to map the sea level from space and help improve understanding of ocean currents.

As part of this research, sea surface height has been measured from space using GPS signals reflected off the sea surface for the first time. Information from these GPS signal reflections can be potentially used by scientists to monitor ocean currents by measuring the slopes currents cause in the ocean's surface. Read more

IDT Wireless Charging Solutions Powers the Samsung Galaxy S7

IDT (Integrated Device Technology) has announced that they have teamed up with Samsung to deliver wireless charging for the Galaxy S7, Samsung’s newest feature-rich smartphone. IDT is one of the leading providers of wireless charging solutions, their technology includes all of the hardware and software needed to enable mobile devices to be charged without a wired connection.

The IDT wireless charging receiver used in the Galaxy S7 supports Samsung’s fast charge mode, which enables users to charge up to 1.4 times faster than normal charge mode, reducing full charging time by about 50 minutes. Read more

Isotropic Systems Raises $1 Million to Develop the Most Efficient Satellite Antenna

Isotropic Systems Limited (ISL) has raised an additional $1M in funding to revolutionize satellite antenna technology for high throughput connectivity in mobility markets. ISL will design and develop antennas that address the most common operational challenges - efficiency, cost, form factor and durability.

As advances in high throughput satellites and constellations continue to drive demand for high capacity data on the move, a new range of low profile antennas, with no moving parts, exceptional spectral efficiency, at low price prices is required. Read more

GaN RF Market Expected to Double over the next Five Years

According to Yole Développement (Yole) analysts the market for GaN RF devices is expected to double over the next five years, led by GaN’s adoption across various market segments. In the new technology and market report 'GaN RF Devices Market: Applications, Players, Technology, and Substrates 2016 - 2022' analysts highlighted the dramatic increase in wireless infrastructure market sales driven by the massive adoption of LTE networks in China. By year’s end, the total RF GaN market was close to US$300 million.

This new GaN RF report from Yole, describes the GaN’s presence and development scheme in different markets including wireless infrastructure, defense and aerospace, satellite communication, wired broadband and other ISM band applications. Read more

ASUS Settles FTC Complaint Alleging that Routers Permitted Easy Hacking

RF equipment manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer, Inc. recently agreed to a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), settling an administrative complaint issued by the agency. The complaint contains two major allegations: (1) security defects in ASUSTek’s home routers put the networks of hundreds of thousands of consumers at risk; and (2) the routers’ insecure “cloud” services compromised consumers’ storage devices, revealing their personal information on the Internet.

The FTC’s complaint avers that ASUSTek falsely marketed routers with an “AiCloud” feature. AiCloud enables consumers to plug a USB hard drive into a router to create a “cloud” storage accessible from any of their devices. Read more

IOT and 5G Likely to be Held Back by the RF Spectrum Crunch

pureLiFi, the light communications technology company that leads the market in research and commercialisation of LiFi, has warned that advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G are likely to be held back by the looming radio frequency (RF) spectrum 'crunch'. LiFi benefits from a source that is 1000 times larger than the entire 300 GHz of RF spectrum and 600,000 larger than a 60 GHz WiFi/WiGig channel that, in turn, enables a huge exponential growth in future data rates and the advancement of IoT, Industry 4.0 and 5G.

While WiGig delivers 7 Gbps, industry research predicts we will need access points that can deliver 53 Gbps by 2020 and over 800 Gbps by 2025 (this would require at least 1/5 of the entire 300 GHz radio spectrum which already is mostly occupied by commercial and defence applications). Read more

Ampleon and Midea Develop First Commercially Available Solid State RF Energy Oven

Ampleon and Midea, a leading global consumer appliance manufacturer, have announced the results of a yearlong joint collaboration into the use of solid state technology for compact oven design. This initiative has resulted in Midea launching what is believed to be the world's first commercially available solid state RF energy oven. By addressing the technical challenges associated with designing a small cavity appliance with a single antenna, Midea has created a 200 Watt table top oven that achieves homogenous cooking. The oven can be powered either from a mains power source or, for portable use, from a 24 VDC battery. Read more

PLK Selects Telit GNSS IoT Module for Advanced Driver Assistance System Product

PLK Technology (PLK) has selected Telit’s SL869-V2 GNSS IoT module to deliver positioning functionality for Optian, a new product combining the features of an Advanced Driver Assistant System (ADAS) and a high-end automotive black box.

ADAS are systems found in modern vehicles designed to automate, adapt and enhance vehicle safety and driver experience. Safety features in ADAS include warnings for collision and accident avoidance which help drivers implement safeguards, and sharpen their focus on control of the vehicle. Read more

LTE Passes 1 Billion Subscription Milestone

The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), has confirmed that LTE is now growing faster than any other mobile communications system technology and is now responsible for 1 in 7 mobile connections worldwide. LTE gained almost 156 million connections in Q4 2015, which is 75% more than 3G/HSPA systems. The number of LTE and LTE-Advanced subscriptions is expected to pass the 3G/WCDMA-HSPA global total in 2020. GSM subscriptions fell by 141 million in the quarter.

Analysing mobile subscriptions data provided to GSA by Ovum Ltd for Q4 2015, GSA noted that the number of LTE and LTE-Advanced subscriptions reached 1.068 billion worldwide by 31 December 2015. Read more

Drone to Test Small Cell Sites Using Beam-Forming Antennas

RADWIN a developer of Non-Line-of–Sight (NLOS) Small Cell Backhaul solutions – announced its breakthrough patent-pending Drone with Smart Beam-Forming antenna set to completely simplify small cell deployments.

RADWIN offers comprehensive Site Survey Tools to its global small cells customer base. These tools allow carriers to rapidly qualify small cell sites and assess their viability to support NLOS backhaul. There are, however, instances where access to a site is problematic (e.g. when a site is on a rooftop or hard-to-reach street furniture) and highly time-consuming. Read more

TSMC and MediaTek Collaborate on Ultra Power Technology for IoT Market

TSMC and MediaTek have announced their commitment to a long-term partnership to continue developing innovative products for Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable products with TSMC's industry-leading and most comprehensive ultra-low power (ULP) technology platform. In this platform, TSMC offers multiple processes to provide significant power reduction benefits for IoT and wearable products and a comprehensive design ecosystem to accelerate time-to-market for customers.

In January, TSMC and MediaTek achieved their first product milestone on this platform by launching MediaTek's MT2523 chipset for fitness smart watches. Read more

Novel Broadband Substrate Interconnection Structure to Replace Bond Wires

Students at Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications have used NI AWR Design Environment to design a novel broadband substrate interconnection structure that overcomes issues associated with using bond wires in microwave systems, that limit the operating bandwidth. The designers developed a broadband interconnection using double bond wires with square-shaped defected ground structure under open stubs, which enabled the designers to increase the characteristic impedance of the microstrip line without narrowing its width.

Bond wires are used extensively in monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) and multi-chip modules (MCMs) for signal transmission in substrates with different heights. Read more

Iowa State Engineers Develop Flexible Skin that traps Radar Waves and Cloaks Objects

Engineers at Iowa State University have developed a new flexible, stretchable and tunable “meta-skin” that uses rows of small, liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from the sharp eyes of radar. The meta-skin takes its name from metamaterials, which are composites that have properties not found in nature and that can manipulate electromagnetic waves. By stretching and flexing the polymer meta-skin, it can be tuned to reduce the reflection of a wide range of radar frequencies.

The journal Scientific Reports recently reported the discovery online. Lead authors from Iowa State’s department of electrical and computer engineering are Liang Dong, associate professor; and Jiming Song, professor. Read more

Over 1 Million Sub-6 GHz Backhaul Links to be Deployed by 2020

The evolution toward 4.5G and 5G will be accompanied by substantial network densification and massive deployments of small cells. The trend will completely transform the backhaul market and create tremendous opportunities for wireless backhaul links. ABI Research, forecasts that the market will deploy more than one million Sub-6 GHz licensed backhaul links by 2020.

As the fastest growing market segment, Sub-6 GHz will challenge microwave and millimeter waves for the largest market share of 35% in 2020. Read more