Bob Witte

Spectrum analyzers let you see how distortion can affect transmitted RF signals.

Average and peak power measurement require that you use a broadband or narrowband configuration.

An amplifier design from 1936 gets a revival by reducing power consumption in cellular radios.

RF power amplifiers consume lots of energy, which is a concern associated with 5G. Envelope tracking helps reduce power consumption but has tradeoffs.

5G brings higher data rates and a need for more efficient power amplifiers. Understand and calculate a PA’s efficiency. Radio communication systems steadily improve data rates and overall system performance. With that higher performance comes increasing pressure on power consumption. A recent industry report [Ref 1] concluded that power consumed by a typical 5G base…

Learn how to use patch antennas and phase shifting to create a phased-array antenna to steer RF signals.

MIMO and beamforming provide increased data rates than you can get using single, omnidirectional signals. Antennas convert between radio waves propagating through space and electric currents moving in a metal conductor. In early communication system, antennas were often quite simple, perhaps just a half-wave dipole constructed of wire. We usually just had one antenna per…

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access increases the efficiency of a crowded Wi-Fi channel. The access point is in control, managing who gets bandwidth and when.

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing has become the standard modulation format for 5G New Radio. Lean how OFDM works and how it’s used. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is an efficient modulation format used in modern wireless communication systems including 5G. OFDM combines the benefits of Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) to produce…

In Digital modulation basics, part 1 we examined the concept of quadrature modulation and signal generation. We showed a common block diagram for generating a quadrature signal (Figure 1). There is a corresponding receiver block diagram to extract the Inphase (I) and Quadrature (Q) components of the signal (Figure 2). The signal is converted to…