A mixer-first sliding-IF architecture has been chosen by a PhD student to create a 300GHz radio receiver front-end using 300GHz Ft (450GHz Fmax) transistors from a 130nm SiGe BiCMOS process. According to the thesis of Sumit Singh, studying at University of Oulu in Finland, down-conversion of the 300GHz carrier is initially by a local oscillator at two-thirds of the carrier, ...
Engineers at Lancaster University have transmitted, received and decoded data sent over a stream of fast neutrons. The proof-of-concept involved modulating neutrons from a calfornium 252 source using an Arduino-controlled mechanical shutter built from high-density polythene. Detection involved a one litre tank of scintillating meterial, a photo-multiplier and a ‘mixed-field analyser’ (made by Hybrid Instruments, based at the university) to separate ...
CesiumAstro has announced a credit-card-sized software-defined radio for use in space for commercial, government and defence applications. Called the SDR-1001 (cover removed right), and tested to NASA GEVS standards, it has four transmit and four receive channels tunable from 300MHz to 6GHz. Bandwidth is 100MHz per channel. At the heart is an FPGA “with 70% resources available for custom designs”, according to the company. By ...
PMM has introduced a CISPR 16-1-1 compliant EMI receiver for conducted or radiated emission test measurements from 9kHz to 3GHz. “Its use of gapless FFT technology allows rapid troubleshooting since a fully compliant scan can take as little as two seconds in frequency band B [250 – 500MHz] and only one minute in bands C and D [500MHz to 2GHz], according ...
Researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used atoms to decode digital signals encoded by phase modulation. The atoms, cesium in this case, are ‘Rydberg atoms’ – atoms that have been wound up into a high energy state that is extremely sensitive to electric and magnetic fields. In this case the atoms were in a vapour cell, pushed ...
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a plasmonic receiver that can convert millimetre waves directly into light for an optical fibre. “Our modulator is completely independent of external power supplies and, on top of that, extremely small so that it can, in principle, be mounted on any lamppost. From there, it can then receive data via microwave signals from individual ...
IBM Zurich has demonstrated a novel optical receiver that can achieve an aggregate bandwidth of 160Gbit/s through four optical fibres. “This is not only the fastest data transmission speed to date, but the optical receiver also features power-on/off functionality and can wake-up and achieve phase-lock in 8ns, the shortest switch time in record,” said the organisers of the Optical Networking ...
Attempting to cut receiver power consumption in IoT sensor nodes, the University of Twente in The Netherlands is proposing a novel technique – effectively moving the Rx local oscillator to the transmitter. Not only that, but its team has found an interesting way to foil front-end amplifier saturation at the same time. Its engineers argue that, while super-heterodyne receivers are ...
Cambridge Consultants has developed antenna technology for medical implants. Unlike magnetically-coupled antennas, these communicate without a receiver against the skin.
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