Pasternack Blog

Signal power tappers, signal taps, power tappers, or just taps, are passive RF devices designed to draw a small portion of power from the main transmission line without causing substantial loss. Signal power tappers are similar to directional couplers, but a signal power tapper is typically a 3-port devices, but come in many additional tap ..

Random Electrical and thermal noise are natural phenomenon that is produced by every devices within a RF and microwave system. Depending on the severity of the noise, the introduction of a noise source in an RF system could reduce the signal integrity, bit-error rate (BER), overload a receiver, reduce the dynamic range, and otherwise degrade ..

RF Diplexers and Duplexers are very common RF components in transmitters, receiver, and transceiver circuits for communications, radar, and other sensing applications. As the terms are similar, they are sometimes mistakenly used interchangeably, which isn’t appropriate. Diplexers and Duplexers perform very different functions, though they are located in similar areas in a circuit block diagram. ..

Coaxial rotary joints are necessary inline components when a static RF system must be connected to a rotating RF line. These rotary joints are used in military, aerospace, and commercial applications, most often with rotary antennas and radar. Specifically, coaxial rotary joints are used in Air Traffic Control, image transmissions, medical/industrial, telecommunications control, and ground-, ..

Bias Tees and DC blocks are both low frequency filters designed to pass certain wanted signals and power rails while blocking other signals and limiting the performance impact on RF/microwave circuits. Bias Tees are essentially diplexers with an extremely low crossover frequency, and DC blocks are high pass filters with cutoff frequency down to audio ..

Frequency translation is the backbone of superheterodyne communications and radar circuits, as well as many other useful RF/microwave devices. There is often confusion surrounding these nonlinear devices, specifically the role of mixers, multipliers, and dividers, and how to select the best device for an application. This post aims to briefly describe the similarities and differences, ..

Directional couplers are extremely useful passive RF components capable of extracting a small portion of the energy from the main transmission path, and redirecting it to one, or more, coupled ports. As isolation from the coupled ports to the main transmission path is desirable, directional couplers typically have high isolation among the ports. There are ..

Coaxial calibration kits (Cal-kits), or vector network analyzer (VNA) coaxial calibration kits, are indispensable tools for ensuring that a VNA is providing the most accurate measurements possible. Without regularly calibrating a VNA with quality termination components, the conditions in which a device under test (DUT) is testing will also be included in the test data. ..

In the case of test and measurement, cable and connector installations, and coaxial assemblies, there is substantial design effort and thought dedicated to selecting the optimal coaxial cables and connectors for the project. These factors include electrical properties, mechanical properties, infrastructure logistics, pricing, environmental ratings, and standards and qualifications. However, there is more to a ..

Modern transmitters and receivers leverage oscillators and frequency synthesizers to generate carrier signals, upconversion/downconversion local oscillator frequencies, aid in frequency tuning, and more. There are many different types of materials and technologies used in precision frequency generation. This post will provide a brief explanation of the different types of oscillators and frequency synthesizers common in ..