Pasternack Blog

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), ..

Though transmit/receive modules (TRMs) have been used for some time in active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar technology, the benefits of phased array antenna and multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) for 5G applications have brought this technology to the mainstream. Given that phase array antennas for millimeter-wave 5G may employ up to, and possibly beyond, 64 antennas elements ..

Given the stringent timing requirements of 5G network and wireless applications, RF oscillator performance is of increasingly critical importance. Noise and phase noise are among the most significant of these requirements, as these parameters have the greatest impact on communication signal quality and receiver capability. Though noise and phase noise have always been RF oscillator ..

A communications transceiver performs the task of converting digital or analog signals to RF, transmitting those signals, and receiving incoming signals for conversion back to digital or analog signals. Hence, the key components of a communications transceiver are the modulation/demodulation circuitry, transmitter, and receiver. Depending on the architecture of the communications transceivers, direct digital synthesizers ..

Though highly sensitive receivers require low noise amplifiers (LNAs) that are also sensitive to extremely weak signals, this sensitivity can also put the receiver front end LNAs at risk of desensitization, latent performance degradation, or destruction. In the presence of a signal strength at the input of an LNA that exceeds the input signal power ..