The BBox from TMYTEK lets you control a signal’s amplitude and phase under software control. Use it to test antennas, phones, small cells, and measure material properties when subjected to mmWave signals.
Digital modulation basics, part 2: QAM and EVM
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…
X60 Modem aggregates mmWave and sub-6 GHz carriers
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X60 5G modem builds on its two 5G predecessors—the X50 and X55—by adding sub-6 GHz and mmWave carrier aggregation, plus other features. According to Qualcomm, the 5 nm process used to fabricate the X60 provides higher power efficiency into a smaller footprint. Additional features include: 5G frequency-division duplex (FDD) and time-division duplex (TDD)…
Samsung Patent Talk Reveals Smartphone Designs on Rollable
Samsung watchers are buzzing around over a discovered patent filing with the World Intellectual Property Office. Topic in hand: a design for some kind of rollable device. Never mind that the Galaxy Fold was postponed; Samsung is not abandoning new ideas for smartphones. Digital Trends and other tech-watching sites got busy reporting that rollable phones have been discussed…
Making the ‘Human-Body Internet’ More Effective
Wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have made remote connectivity easier, and as electronics become smaller and faster, the adoption of “wearables” has increased. From smart watches to implantables, these devices interact with the human body in ways that are very different from those of a computer. However, they both use the same protocols…
Earthquake Tests New Wireless Network in Far-Flung Alaska
The police chief of Alaska’s largest city hurried out of the department’s glass building after the ground began to shake. Phone lines jammed and even police radios were spotty after a major earthquake, but his cellphone was recently equipped with a national wireless network dedicated to first responders. Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll was able…
NASA Prepares to Launch Twin Satellites to Study Signal Disruption From Space
NASA’s twin E-TBEx CubeSats — short for Enhanced Tandem Beacon Experiment — are scheduled to launch in June 2019 aboard the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program-2 launch. The launch includes a total of 24 satellites from government and research institutions. They will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space…
New Application Can Detect Twitter Bots in Any Language
Thanks to fruitful collaboration between language scholars and machine learning specialists, a new application developed by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland and Linnaeus University in Sweden can detect Twitter bots independent of the language used. In recent years, big data from various social media applications have turned the web into a user-generated repository of information…
Eliminating Infamous Security Threats
Speculative memory side-channel attacks are security vulnerabilities in computers for which no efficient solutions have been found. Existing solutions only address specific security threats without solving the underlying issue. Speculative side-channel attacks exploit a fundamental functionality in microprocessors to expose security vulnerabilities. The first such security threats, Meltdown and Spectre, were announced last year, but…
New Energy-Efficient Algorithm Keeps UAV Swarms Helping Longer
A new energy-efficient data routing algorithm developed by an international team could keep unmanned aerial vehicle swarms flying — and helping — longer, report an international team of researchers this month in the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing. UAV swarms are cooperative, intercommunicating groups of UAVs used for a wide and growing variety of civilian and…