Pasternack Blog

Ultra-sensitive systems depend on receiver components with as low an added noise figure as possible. Any added noise figure in the receiver chain reduces the signal-to-noise (SNR) of the receiver, and is cumulative. Hence, for each component in the receiver chain contributing noise, the noise floor of the receiver raises. A common method to reduce ..

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and inverse SAR (ISAR) are methods of using radar to map a stationary object, more usually terrain. SAR/ISAR systems are deployed on aircraft or satellites that move at high velocities in respect to the surface of the earth or potentially any stationary object or terrain. SAR/ISAR benefits from the phenomenon that ..

Like all waveguides, ridged waveguides carry electromagnetic radiation in the form of a transverse wave. The fundamental mode of most waveguides used in interconnect and RF devices is the transverse electric (TE) mode with no electric field in the direction of propagation. This means that the electric field is pointing from one of the side-walls ..

Though 5G comes with many promises of a ubiquitous high-speed experience with dramatically improved performance over 4G systems, there are several necessary upgrades to underlying technology and infrastructure that are necessary to achieve those desired ends. One such area is with timing and synchronization. In order to realize the desired 5G network responsiveness for high ..

Chirp Radar is a type of radar that uses frequency modulation and pulse compression (which may confuse many as chirp has also been used as a synonym for “pulse compression”), which combines the capabilities of frequency modulation and pulse radar. Some of the benefits of a Chirp radar over a simple pulse radar are range ..

A continuous wave (CW) Doppler radar can be augmented via the use of frequency modulation. This type of radar is known as a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar. The use of frequency modulation allows for the detection of both range and target velocity, as well as the ability to discriminate between multiple targets. A ..

A pulsed radar is a sensing system that uses a high power pulsed signal reflected off of objects to determine their distance from the radar antenna. The basic operation of a pulse radar is that a pulse modulator generates a short pulsed which is then amplified. The amplified pulse then passes through a duplexer or ..

There has been an increasing use of RF coaxial connectors, especially microwave and millimeter-wave coaxial connectors, for high-speed digital and precision sensing applications, There are also a growing trend toward highly compact and interconnect dense microwave and millimeter-wave systems, such as multi-input multi-output (MIMO) antennas for 5G and actively electronically scanned array (AESA) radar antennas. ..

Waveguide amplifiers, or full-band/multi-band waveguide amplifiers, are amplifiers housed in assemblies that have either waveguide or coaxial interconnect. Though waveguide interconnect is more common for waveguide amplifiers, some waveguide amplifiers have coaxial interconnect instead, but still perform as specified over a given waveguide frequency band. The main feature of waveguide amplifiers is that they are ..

Skew-matched coaxial cable assemblies are an emerging solution that leverages coaxial cable technology for high-speed digital signal applications. These applications require precision timing between the high-speed protocol transmitter and receiver circuits, such as SERDES, USB 3.1, Ethernet, and PCIe. Rigorous testing is often needed to troubleshoot signal integrity issues in the channel, such as jitter, ..