Pasternack Blog

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: ..

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 ..

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 ..

In wide-band microwave systems there is a tendency for the gain to roll-off at higher frequencies, reducing the overall gain-flatness of the system due to the negative gain slope of signal chain components. Active devices, such as amplifiers tend to exhibit a negative gain slope, as well as passive components, such as connectors, adapters, coaxial ..

It has been understood for nearly a century that the conductivity of conductive metals changes as a function of frequency. Though this is the case the phenomenon behind frequency dependent conductivity is not as well understood by man. It was observed early on that the attenuation and resistive losses of metallic transmission lines and traces ..

A hermetically sealed enclosure, or hermetic packaging, is a method of encapsulating a device or system in an environmentally protected package that prevents the exchange of the inside and outside environment. Hermetic packages are commonly seen in automotive, industrial, naval, military, and aerospace applications where the outside environment may lead to damage, early failure, or ..

Harmonics are spurious signal content (or spurious emissions) that are generated by a single frequency tone and nonlinear elements within a RF/microwave signal chain, or single-tone intermodulation distortion (IMD). The nonlinear elements create harmonics that are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency (often called the first harmonic). For instance, fo is the fundamental frequency and ..

There are several key methods of describing RF signal quality and device performance in respect to noise and linearity. As noise and linearity are often key considerations of both transmit and receive chains in communications and sensing systems, it is valuable for a technical professional to understand these parameters. The following is a brief description ..

Like with other key RF/microwave component and device parameters, accounting for power extremes in RF design and system integration requires a nontrivial amount of additional considerations. If the RF signal is optimized for other performance factors, such as noise, linearity, phase noise, or other signal quality factors and the signal power is well within the ..

A ground station, earth station, or earth terminal is the terrestrial radio system used in extraplanetary telecommunications with spacecraft and satellites. Ground stations are used to communicate, bidirectionally, with satellites and spacecraft, or receive electromagnetic energy in the radio frequency spectrum from astronomical sources. Given the nature of extraplanetary communications, ground stations and satellites/spacecraft typically ..