Proper PA development, validation, and characterization are important because a PA often accounts for a significant portion of a transmitting device’s power consumption.
How mmWaves affect cables, connectors, and PCB traces
Millimeter-wave signals used in 5G networks provide wide bandwidth and high data rates. Signal losses, both over the air and through interconnects, bring design challenges.
How do 5G eMBB and FWA data services compare?
Fixed-wireless access is a special use case of enhanced mobile broadband, one of the three use cases specified for 5G. FWA brings different challenges for deployment than eMBB.
Choose a 5G base station’s PA bias control circuit
Bias control of PAs is crucial to ensure optimum radio performance under all conditions. Current sensing and temperature sensing provide the feedback needed to control the PA bias. The choice of sensing and biasing circuits brings design trade-offs. 5G base station power amplifiers (PAs) need biasing using a separate bias controller to maintain optimum performance…
mmWaves bring interconnect challenges to 5G and 6G
Signals in the mmWave range require extra care and more expensive components than at sub-6 GHz frequencies.
Build a 5G Open RAN test lab with open-source software tools
Open-source software provides network components that you can use to simulate 5G network functions from the network core to the radio. Developing and deploying a laboratory infrastructure to support testing 5G and open radio-access network (Open RAN) systems can present a daunting and complex task. Prior to Open RAN, this task was only possible by…
Flexible PTP profiles ease the transition to 5G
5G brought architecture changes that require synchronization. Depending on the location and network site, those timing requirements require different PTP profiles and PTP capacity.
6G could add sensing to cellular networks
Integrated communications and sensing at mmWave and sub-THz frequencies could add location detection that helps avoid accidents among pedestrians, bicycles, and vehicles.
10BASE-T1S brings a single pair of wires to the network edge
The 802.3cg Ethernet standard uses a single pair of wires, and it manages data flow without switches, making it suitable for industrial networks at a lower cost than traditional Ethernet. Industrial plants have long used digital data to monitor and control their production facilities. Networks in factories, data centers, and commercial buildings push the edges…
Active baluns bridge the microwave and digital worlds
To achieve the datasheet performance of ultra-high-speed data converters, now clocking to 64 GS/sec, the handoff to and from the microwave domain must be near perfect. To preserve the data converters’ spurious-free dynamic range, a new category of component has been developed that converts between the differential and single-ended signal domains while amplifying and filtering out-of-band signals.