Topics span ‘betting your job’ to package-delivery simulation

EDI CON USA took place Sept. 11-13 in Boston, addressing topics ranging from 5G to drone package-delivery simulation. The event got underway with a plenary session featuring three speakers, with topics ranging from career advice to technologies for 5G.

Scott McMorrow, SAMTEC Inc. CTO for signal-integrity products, kicked off the event with a presentation titled “Betting your job—finding your voice and being a change agent in a corporate world.” He advised against silos and recommended a broadening of horizons. “Be a change agent, and bet your job,” he advised.

Delivering value

Following McMorrow’s address, Thomas Cameron, CTO of the communications business unit at Analog Devices Inc., delivered a presentation titled “5G five years from now—how do we get there?” His comments are summarized in our Special Report on 5G on p. 12 in this issue. Bookending Cameron’s presentation, Faride Akretch, segment marketing manager at Rohde & Schwarz, concluded the Tuesday plenary session with a talk on delivering value.

Referring back to McMorrow’s comments, Akretch said, “Scott talked about broadening horizons and being a change agent to make the impossible possible—the engineer’s mission in life. Delivering value—everybody says it but what does it mean? When we step back is it really true?

It’s important to push the state-of-the art, but small things, Akretch said, such as usability, must be taken seriously.

“On the basis of technical excellence, give engineers the freedom, space, and support to deliver value,” he concluded, advising the audience to ask, “Where can I pause in my busy life and rethink, ‘how can I add value?’”

Simulating drone delivery

Technical presentations during the event addressed topics including test and measurement, 5G advanced communications, amplifier design, broadband networks, EMC/EMI, low-power RF and IoT design, mobile front-end design, signal integrity, radar and defense, RF and microwave design, power integrity, and simulation and modeling.

Addressing this last topic, Safa Salman, an applications engineer at ANSYS, offered a presentation titled “Multiphysics Simulation of the Challenges Facing Commercial Air Package Delivery Systems.” Her talk covered both the harsh RF environment inside the warehouse, and the harsh weather and challenging city topology the drone faces outside the warehouse.

In her example, inside the simulated warehouse is a central warehouse control unit (CWCU), which employs three antennas at three frequencies (900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.8 GHz) to communicate with robots, RFID scanners, printers, and drones. Metal structures within the warehouse, including shelves, reinforced walls, and the robots themselves, may block signals or create multipath interference. Further complicating matters, a couple of humans are around, communicating via 466-MHz walkie-talkies. Tools including ANSYS HFSS, SBR+, and EMIT can help you choose optimal antenna placement, deal with EMC issues, and perhaps decide to give the humans better walkie-talkies, Salman said.

Outside the warehouse, you can use ANSYS CFD and AIM to simulate wind patterns, flow streamlines, and pressure levels to predict the location where the drone will encounter the most turbulence. The simulations can help you predict, for example, whether a delivery should be delayed until the weather improves or whether you should deploy a sturdier drone.

In another technical session, Ray Butler, vice president, wireless network engineering, CommScope, addressed critical considerations for wireless network antennas in a talk that covered base-station antenna evolution, increased integration (which increases functionality on a tower but reduces flexibility), and wireless network densification.

He concluded by saying that base-station antennas are evolving to meet the aggressive goals of 5G, with the network densification of today’s LTE networks helping to pave the way.

Eric Bogatin of the Teledyne LeCroy Signal Integrity Academy offered several presentations throughout the week. In a short course of board-level power-integrity measurement and design, he said, “The ideal power rail produces a stable DC voltage with no voltage noise and zero output impedance.” He then asked rhetorically, “How non-ideal is your power rail?” It may be hard to tell, because even the process of measuring its voltage can affect a measurement. He offered tips and tricks for effective power-rail measurements and troubleshooting.

Scopes and spectrum analyzers

On the exhibit floor, products on display included simulation software as well as time- and frequency-domain instruments, including oscilloscopes, signal generators, signal analyzers, and vector network analyzers.

Rohde & Schwarz took the opportunity to introduce its R&S FSW-B5000 option. Combined with the R&S RTO2064 digital oscilloscope as an external digitizer, the R&S FSW85 signal and spectrum analyzer equipped with the new hardware option provides equalized 5-GHz signal analysis bandwidth—required for analyzing wideband signals such as automotive radar FMCW chirp signals, IEEE 802.11ay signals, and 5G waveform candidates.