RF power semiconductors for wireless infrastructure over $1 billion for 2018, GaN grabs more share
RF power semiconductors for wireless infrastructure (for < 4 GHz and > 3 W) constitute more than a $1 billion business for 2018, according to ABI Research. The segment is essentially revenue flat, but gallium nitride (GaN) continues to make inroads into this segment.
“Gallium nitride should continue to gain share over the next few years,” noted ABI Research director Lance Wilson. “It bridges the gap between two older technologies, exhibiting the high-frequency performance of gallium arsenide combined with the power-handling capabilities of silicon LDMOS. It is now a mainstream technology which has achieved measurable market share and, in the future, will capture a significant part of the market.”
The wireless infrastructure sub-segment, while representing about two-thirds of total RF power device sales, has been anemic recently but is still holding its own.
The eventual deployment of 5G also offers an upside for the wireless Infrastructure segment. The main issue is one of timing on a large-scale rollout. Wilson also added, “The business environment for the RF power semiconductor device business has become more complex with potential trade tariffs, merger and acquisition troubles, and other similar issues clouding the market”.
GOEPEL electronic appoints new managing director
On Aug. 15, Alice Göpel took over the managing director position of GOEPEL electronic. She replaces her father, Holger Göpel, who has been managing the company since 1991. He is retiring but will still be available to the company as a consultant.
Alice Göpel studied business administration and has been with the company since 2008. As international sales manager, she was responsible for worldwide sales of inspection systems. In January 2017, the first generational change took place in the management of GOEPEL electronic as Manfred Schneider, co-founder of the company, longtime managing partner, and head of the Automotive Test Solutions department, passed his duties to his son Jörg. Thomas Wenzel, also a managing director, remains as the head of the Embedded JTAG Solutions division.
Holger Göpel founded the company in May 1991 with former employees of the test and measurement department at Carl Zeiss. Today, the headquarters in Jena, Germany, consists of four company buildings. In addition, the company has offices in the United Kingdom, United States, China, and India. GOEPEL electronic develops and manufactures test and inspection systems for electronic components and printed circuit boards as well as industrial electronics and automotive electronic systems.
Allegro MicroSystems establishes R&D center in the Czech Republic
Allegro MicroSystems, a supplier of power and sensor semiconductors, announced it has established a new research and development center in the Czech Republic. This new center is currently staffed with two dozen engineers located in Prague. These engineers will accelerate Allegro’s development of ICs for both the automotive and industrial markets. The team will initially focus on developing sensor ICs for electrified vehicles, green energy, and high-efficiency industrial motor applications.
The availability of highly skilled IC design, systems, and software engineers was a major contributor to Allegro’s decision to open this new R&D center in Prague, the company said, adding that the area provides an optimum combination of experienced engineers and recent graduates from local universities.
Qorvo certified for Zigbee Green Power v1.1
Qorvo, a provider of innovative RF solutions that connect the world, today announced it has been awarded certification for the multisensor and generic switch features of Zigbee Green Power v1.1. These new features expand the types of smart-home sensors that can be powered by energy harvesting, eliminating the need for batteries or enabling ultralong battery life.
The multi-sensor extension to the Green Power specification significantly compresses data to reduce the length of Green Power communication frames. These ultrashort, ultradense data packets result in longer battery life and enable support for multiple types of smart-home sensors in a single device. For example, the multi-sensor feature measures temperature, humidity, light levels, and air quality in a single indoor device. The extension adds support for ultralow-power door and window sensors, motion sensors, and leakage detectors.
Functions can be assigned to the various switches on a device during commissioning—in a user-friendly way—by using the generic switch extension. This enhances flexibility for the end customer and reduces the volume of part numbers (SKUs) for the product manufacturer.
Magna-Power delivers 1-MW water-cooled DC electronic load to U.S. Navy
Magna-Power Electronics announced the delivery of a 1-MW water-cooled DC electronic load to the U.S. Navy, which will use it to research, develop, test, and evaluate the operation of energy-storage modules (ESMs) in a shipboard environment. To meet this requirement, Magna-Power delivered 10 of its standard 100-kW WRx Series MagnaLOAD DC electronic loads, configured in two master-slave sets of 500 kW.
The 500-kW DC electronic load systems will be part of a real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulator, which will drive the MagnaLOADs using a high-speed analog input. A digital simulator will be used in place of the actual electric shipboard equipment to conduct model-based simulation of the shipboard electric load. The MagnaLOADs will mimic the discharge profile of the ESM, depending on the components under test and the model being simulated.
The 500-kW DC electronic load systems will be part of a real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulator, which will drive the MagnaLOADs using a high-speed analog input. A digital simulator will be used in place of the actual electric shipboard equipment to conduct model-based simulation of the shipboard electric load. The MagnaLOADs will mimic the discharge profile of the ESM, depending on the components under test and the model being simulated.
Given the nature of these tests, which can last for days, Magna-Power designed its MagnaLOAD products for continuous full-power operation at a 50°C ambient operating temperature and cooling-water temperature up to 25°C. Magna-Power designed and manufactured microchannel water-cooled heatsinks, allowing the company deliver power dissipation of 12.5 kW per 4U. In addition, Magna-Power’s new patented Active Resistance Technology combines a switched binary matrix of resistances with MOSFETs to deliver features and performance consistent with traditional electronic loads, at a fraction of the price. The product features a wide operating range, allowing full power to be achieved over the range 50% to 100% rated voltage in its high-power range. A separate low-power range enables high-current operation at lower voltages.
This contract was a proving ground for Magna-Power’s new distributed DSP digital control platform, MagnaLINK, which paves the way for the company’s future products. This new control platform, available in the MagnaLOAD product line, provides simultaneous high-speed high-reliability control and measurement aggregation of 40 modules, while operating in a high-EMI environment. Furthermore, MagnaLINK provides simultaneous master-slave firmware upgrade, with new-product configuration detection and automatic settings reconfiguration.
Air Force auditory research chamber upgraded with Eckel anechoic wedges
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Dayton, OH) is the home of the USAF’s Battlespace Acoustics Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). A broad spectrum of acoustic research takes place there, with the goal of providing operators in multiple airborne, ground-based, and cyber domains with technologies for hearing protection, communication (particularly in high-noise levels), and for precisely pinpointing the location of sound sources in three dimensions.
In order to develop these advanced technologies, researchers at AFRL have been conducting basic and applied research aimed at understanding how humans determine the location of sounds and understand speech in complex acoustic environments. Much of this work takes place in AFRL’s Auditory Localization Facility (ALF). The ALF consists of a 22-channel sound system that is fully matrixed to an array of 277 loudspeakers mounted on the surface of a 14-ft. diameter geodesic sphere, all housed within a full anechoic chamber. The original ALF anechoic chamber, constructed in 1955, is a cube-shaped room, 30 ft. in width, length, and height. The decision was made to refurbish the room.
Ball Aerospace (Fairborn, OH), prime contractor for the project, contacted Eckel Noise Control Technologies to upgrade the chamber. Eckel selected Viking Enterprises (Waterford, CT) to prepare the chamber and perform the installation of the wedges and the new cable mesh floor. To start, Viking carefully removed all the existing wedges and the old HVAC ductwork. The room was then completely cleaned and sanitized down to the bare concrete walls. Wright-Patterson replaced the original 16-channel system with a 22-channel, state-of-the-art sound-generation system, and the loudspeakers in the array were replaced. The supports for the sphere were also upgraded, providing additional stability and increasing the space available to maneuver in the chamber.
Other innovations were necessary to get the job done. According to Jeff Morse, vice president at Eckel, “We had to design a wedge door that was a combination cage and interlocking door. We also had to design nine framed openings in the cable floor to accommodate the supports for the sphere. Both of those were firsts for us.”
“The new chamber has an inside wedge-tip-to-wedge-tip dimension of 23 ft. and was designed to have a cut-off frequency of 80 Hz, but when we ran the qualification tests, we actually achieved a cut-off frequency of 63 Hz,” said Morse. The cut-off frequency is that frequency above which 99.9% of the sound energy hitting the wedges is absorbed.