Products
RF Energy Toolkit
provides fast path to GaN-on-Sibased
systems
Enabling commercial OEMs to capitalize
on a massive market opportunity for
solid-state cooking, lighting, industrial
heating/drying, medical/pharmaceutical
and automotive ignition systems, MACOM
Technology Solutions has made available
its RF Energy Toolkits, which provide a
flexible and cost-effective development
platform that helps accelerate their time
to market with high-performance, power
efficient solid-state RF systems.
The all-in-one versatility and easeof
use of MACOM’s RF Energy Toolkit
streamlines development cycles and costs
for GaN-on-Si-based RF systems, equipping
engineers to overcome the limitations
of legacy magnetron power sources while
achieving significantly higher efficiency
than LDMOS-based systems, at comparable
cost structures. With the Toolkit,
designers are enabled to fine-tune RF
energy output for any application requirements,
with push-button ease and an
intuitive display interface. OEMs designing
for more complex RF energy applications
can tap MACOM and its partner network
for custom applicator and algorithm development,
plus expert engineering support.
The RF Energy Toolkits can scale
power output up to 300-W leveraging
the onboard MACOM GaN-on-Si power
transistor, and can be easily paralleled for
higher power applications. The toolkits
support pulsed and continuous wave
operation at the 2.45 GHz frequency band.
Future toolkits will support the 915 MHz
frequency band.
www.macom.com/rfenergy
RF connector
with built-in locking to handle
shock and vibration
The latest MHF brand I LK micro RF
coaxial connector and wire harness from
I-PEX is designed with a built-in lock that
keeps the connector in place on the PCB
in high shock and vibration applications.
Designers no longer have to glue their RF
connectors with messy epoxy or adhesive.
This new locking mechanism keeps the
connector in place on the board, increasing
productivity and reliability.
The connector has the same features
as the tiny MHF I connector, which is used
to connect antennas to radios and for testing
radios while maximizing performance
within minimal space. Because of the
tiny size of the connector, engineers have
greater flexibility in designing their PCBs.
This connector supports many of the
new transmission standards, including
Wi-Fi®, 4G LTE, Bluetooth®, GPS, M2M,
SigFox, WiSUN, NB-IoT and LoRa®. They
are ideal for high shock and vibration
applications, particularly in the automotive,
airline and drone industries. The MHF
I LK Connectors are available in a variety
of cable sizes and lengths with outer
diameters of 0.81 mm, 1.13 mm, 1.32 mm,
1.37 mm and 1.80 mm.
www.i-pex.com
Full-duplex 802.11ax
mesh chipset
Quantenna Communications’ QSR10RAX
chipset for 802.11ax mesh repeater
networks is what the company claims to
be the world’s first chipset to combine
three 4x4 802.11ax radios and integrated
CPU cores for optimal mesh repeating
functionality. It supports the newest Wi-Fi
standard, 802.11ax, in order to address
the growing needs of customers who
want to offer high performance and cost
optimized mesh products.
The chipset includes three 4x4
802.11ax radios that allow full-duplex
operation as opposed to half-duplex
found in many mesh products today. Fullduplex
allows mesh repeaters to reliably
extend network coverage without unnecessary
interfering with a home gateway
by using a different radio frequency. This
allows not only higher speeds but also
better quality of service and coverage.
In addition, the QSR10R-AX has embedded
CPUs to provide full Access Point
(AP) and bridging functionality. There is
no need for customers to add an external
CPU thereby saving size, power and cost.
First sampling is expected in the first half
of 2018.
www.quantenna.com
RFSoCs target 5G, cable
and radar
With silicon shipped to multiple customers
already and an early access programin
place, Xilinx has announced its Zynq®
UltraScale+™ RFSoC family that features
a breakthrough architecture integrating the
RF signal chain into an SoC for 5G wireless,
cable Remote-PHY, and radar.
Based on 16nm UltraScale+ MPSoC
architecture, the All Programmable
RFSoCs monolithically integrate RF
data converters for up to 50-75 percent
system power and footprint reduction, and
soft-decision Forward Error Correction
(SD-FEC) cores to meet 5G and DOCSIS
3.1 standards.
Zynq RFSoCs combine RF data
converters and SD-FEC cores with high
performance 16nm UltraScale+ programmable
logic and ARM® multi-processing
system to create a comprehensive
analog-to-digital signal chain. While RF to
digital signal conditioning and processing
is typically segmented into standalone
subsystems, these RFSoCs bring
analog, digital, and embedded software
design onto a single monolithic device for
system robustness.
The All-Programmable RFSoC integrates
up to 16x16 carrier-grade RF
sampling ADCs and DACs tightly coupled
to programmable logic and an ARM multiprocessing
subsystem. By eliminating discrete
ADC and DAC components, systems
can achieve up to 50-75 percent reduction
in system power and footprint.
www.xilinx.com
www.mwee.com November - December 2017 MW 27
