Pasternack Blog

The rise of emerging millimeter-wave applications has begun to change the landscape of millimeter-wave device and system testing. In previous years, millimeter-wave applications were the purview of scientific research, military/defense, and satellite communications. These applications are typically comfortable with low-volume production, high single-unit costs, long lead times, custom solutions, and labor-intensive testing/quality/verification methods. Unlike previous ..

RF filters are passive or active components commonly used in the signal chain of virtually all radio and RF sensing technologies. The main purpose of a filter is to significantly attenuate unwanted portions of the spectrum, or specific frequencies, while only minimally impacting the operating frequencies. RF filters are typically constructed of various resonator technologies ..

Ferrites are high electrical resistance, magnetic, and ceramic materials constructed from a mix of metallic oxides, often including Iron (Fe), Zinc (Zn), Manganese (Mn), Nickel (Ni), Cobalt (Co), Barium (Ba), and Strontium (Sr). These metallic oxides exhibit magnetic behavior that allows for their use in RF circuits as inductors, transformers/baluns, isolators, circulators, phase shifters, chokes, ..

The proliferation of sensors, storage, display, communications, and processing is only accelerating. The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to an explosion of connectivity of systems in nearly every application, including homes, automobiles, shopping centers, industrial installations, manufacturing facilities, and even the battlefield. In order for the plethora of wirelessly connected systems ..

Gallium nitride (GaN) based semiconductors have been commercially available for several years at this point. GaN technology has made extensive inroads into many power electronics applications, and increasingly in RF/microwave/millimeter-wave applications. GaN, as a semiconductor, has high electron mobility, high band-gap voltage, is very rugged, and can be realized in a variety of technologies using ..

In a similar way to how wireless technology is enabling new functionality and opportunities in civilian life, there are a wealth of military applications embracing, and being enhanced, by wireless technology. Unlike civilians, military operators require a much higher level of reliability and redundancy, as a few second gap in coverage for a military operator ..

A local oscillator (LO) is an electronic oscillator that generates a very narrow bandwidth signal, or tone, with high purity and stability for use in frequency conversion circuits and timing. As the performance of frequency conversion circuits and timing systems are often dependent on the LO performance, the quality of the oscillator and LO electronic ..

In many cases in RF/Microwave electronics it is advantageous to generate, modulate, receive, and demodulate communication and sensing signals at frequencies lower than the RF transmission/reception carrier frequency. The frequency difference between the modulation/demodulation (baseband) signals and the RF signals may be so vast, that multiple frequency conversion stages may be required. In these instances, ..

Circulators/isolators and switches are both commonly used in the RF front-end of communication and radar systems. The purpose of circulators/isolators and switches in RF front-ends is to enable the use of transmission and reception from the same antenna, duplexing. For instance, in a transmit/receive module (TRM) for an active antenna system (AAS) (phased array antenna), ..

Planar transmission lines are used to carry a variety of analog, RF, and digital signals on insulative, planar substrates from kilohertz to hundreds of gigahertz frequencies. Planar transmission lines are constructed of one or more layers of metal traces with one or more parallel metal traces. There are several common types of planar transmission lines: ..