 Two Sides of the DoD Coin: Budgets Slashed, UAV Market Soars
By Fred Ortiz, President
dB Control
As we embark on a new year, imminent cuts to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) budget are top of mind for those of us in the military electronics market. At a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing, the nation’s military chiefs cited a $600 billion defense cut as “catastrophic to the military” and having a “severe and irreversible impact.”
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LightSquared:
The Show’s Over
…Or Should Be
By Barry Manz
There are a lot of very technically astute people at the Federal Communications Commission. Many have decades of experience at every level of RF and microwave technology. How then might LightSquared’s proposal for a satellite/terrestrial LTE network have ever gotten past its first hurdle? Even a cursory inspection of the plan, in which the company's network would operate extremely close to GPS frequencies at L-band, makes interference to GPS devices almost a certainty. Read More...
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 Parallel Gap Welder
Model SMAPRO180 parallel gap welding machine can weld gold and silver ribbons as well as enameled wires without additional coating layer stripping steps. It eliminates the expensive and difficult stripping process and results in more reliable joints.
SW Tech Equipment
 Signal and Spectrum Analyzer
The R&S FSW signal and spectrum analyzer comes in three models that cover the frequency ranges from 2 kHz to 8 GHz, 13 GHz and 26.5 GHz. The analyzer outperforms all other high-end instruments on the market, with phase noise values that are up to 10 dB lower.
Rohde & Schwarz
 Externally Biased Balanced Mixer
Model SFB-15-N2 is a V-band, externally biased balanced mixer. The mixer employs high performance GaAs Schottky beamlead diodes, balanced configuration and proprietary bias circuitry to produce superior RF performance with very LO pumping level.
Sage Millimeter
See all products in this issue
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June 2009
Satellites Needed for GPS, STAT!
 Something that many take for granted - and without which some of my friends and relatives would be wandering the countryside - is in danger, the GPS satellite network. I’d heard a short news item about this on the radio, so when I got home, I Googled it and found a great article in The Pueblo Chieftain (Southern Colorado), “Backlog in GPS satellites may someday crimp use of navigational devices.”
According to this piece, “GPS satellites originally scheduled to head skyward in 2006 in a $7 billion-plus program aimed at keeping the system going are awaiting launch in 2010. The delay means pieces of the high-altitude network could start falling out of service as early as next year. Such decay in the system could ultimately foul everything from the accuracy of U.S. bombs to the reliability of your neighborhood cash machine.”
I understand that you need a minimum of 24 satellites in the network. Currently, the U.S. Air Force has 30, some of which are 20 years old. Replacements are needed.
Those of you in the satellite business know what you have to do!
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SEARCH MPD’S EXTENSIVE DATABASE! |
MILITARY MICROWAVE DIGEST |
•Switch Solutions for Systems with Low PIM Requirements
Dow-Key Microwave has invested in R&D for new RF switch products designed specifically to reduce intermodulation (IM) in coaxial switches.
Dow-Key Microwave
• How to Specify RF and Microwave Filters
Covers cavity, ceramic, LC, crystal and helical filters.
Anatech Electronics
• Establishing An RF Safety Program
Topics include basic RF safety, standards, monitoring instruments, performing an emitter inventory, and the steps required to create a program.
Narda Safety Test Solutions
• Mounting Considerations for Medium Power Surface-Mount RF Devices
Covers all factors that must be considered when mounting SMT devices.
TriQuint Semiconductor
• Biasing MMIC Amplifiers
How to bias MMICs along with theory and techniques.
Mini-Circuits |
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