RF & Microwave

Digi-Key has signed a global distribution partnership with Mini-Circuits for its MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) product line. Through the agreement, Digi-Key is now stocking its 50 GHz, LTCC filters, baluns and couplers, and patented reflectionless filters. Mini-Circuits is a specialist in radio frequency (RF), microwave and millimeter-wave components and systems. Its products are used in commercial, industrial, and military ...

EnOcean has created a dual-standard radio module that operates with Bluetooth Low Energy or Zigbee Green Power radio standards. Called PTM 535BZ, the 2.4GHz device is designed to be combined with the company’s ECO 200 finger-press energy harvester to create battery-free wireless switches. An integrated NFC (near field communication) receiver is included to ease switching between the two radio standards. “PTM ...

Smiths Interconnect, the RF systems specialist for Aerospace and Defense, has signed a contract with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation to participate in the development of a G-band satellite for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Smiths Interconnect will design a component with dual band millimeter wave antenna and receivers as a part of the advanced microwave scanning radiometer 3 (AMSR3). The ...

CML Microcircuits has announced a range of high frequency, high bandwidth RFICS and MMICs aimed at RF and mmWave applications from 860MHz to 28GHz – all under a ‘SµRF’ brand. “The global demand for faster downloads and more data is driving bandwidths up. Moving to GHz frequencies is the only way to deliver wider pipelines to the handset, desk, home and ...

The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the growth in Bluetooth annual device shipments has been outlined by the Bluetooth SIG. Effectively, with total shipments remaining at the 4 billion mark, it sees growth in Bluetooth shipments shifted out by one year, A report it has produced predicts that some markets, including wearables and locating systems, expect to experience substantial ...

Renesas has introduced an ultra-low-power MCU with Bluetooth 5.0 for energy harvesting systems and IoT devices that need to operate for long periods from a battery. RE01B is a 32bit Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller made on the company’s ‘SOTB’ silicon on thin buried oxide process. Current consumption can be as low as 35µA/MHz during operation, and 600nA during stand-by (core 500nA ...

Atlantic Microwave has launched a quad-band satellite simulator for multiple frequency loop-back testing at satellite earth stations. Working over C, X, Ku and Ka bands simultaneously, it permits earth station set-up without a satellite to connect to. “The Quadband Satellite Simulator makes testing multiple frequencies easier as up to four ground terminals can be tested at the same time, rather ...

STMicroelectronics has further stripped down the memory in its STM32WBxx wireless microcontroller family to reduce cost in Bluetooth 5.2 applications. STM32WB15 and STM32WB10 retain the Arm Cortex-M4 application processor and paired Cortex-M0+ Bluetooth 5.2 stack processor, but come with: 320kbyte flash for stack and application – with sector protection against R/W operations, 48kbyte SRAM – 36kbyte has hardware parity check 20 x ...

Geoff Schulteis, an antenna applications specialist with Antenova, considers the challenges of antenna placement for new wireless designs with 5G. 5G offers the advantage of greater data throughput and lower latency, and will enable a host of new mobile applications, for example in broadcast, robotics, Augmented Reality, Autonomous Driver Assisted Systems (ADAS), vehicle telematics, remote surgery and Cloud computing. There ...

Test equipment maker Rohde & Schwarz has joined the ultra-wide-band industry body FiRa Consortium as an associate member. The organisation is dedicated to ensuring interoperability between multiple devices UWB devices through compliance and certification programs, focussing on three core UWB services: hands-free access control, location based services and device-to-device services that rely on UWB-based secure ranging technology specified by the IEEE 802.15.4z ...