The 5 Biggest Industry Trends From IMS2013
By Jim Pomager, Executive Editor
One of the things I love about the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium is the annual opportunity it affords us to reflect on the current state of the RF/microwave design industry. By attending a combination of keynote addresses, panel sessions, and technical presentations, and by speaking to as many exhibitors and attendees as possible, one can piece together a reasonably good mosaic of the major trends and issues shaping the industry. Following are some observations about five such storylines, gleaned from my experiences at IMS2013.
Priority #1: Satisfying The World’s Mobile Data Appetite
As I wrote about in my introduction to our Live From IMS 2013 – Day 2 newsletter, the most prevalent industry issue underlying many of the sessions and press briefings I attended and conversations I had was: keeping up with the explosive current and future demand for wireless data (driven by things like social media, video consumption, etc.).
This challenge was the focus of a panel session (technically part of the 2013 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium, held in conjunction with IMS2013) called Cellular vs. Wi-Fi: Future Convergence or an Utter Divergence? There’s not enough spectrum to go around on the cellular side of the argument, the panelists all agreed, and the Wi-Fi side is too unregulated and (often) unreliable in terms of performance. So, the solution must come from some form of convergence, along with continued progress on both sides. I plan to cover this topic in more detail in a future article, but for now, the next section of this article covers an important contribution the RF design community is making to solve the mobile data problem today.
PA Architecture (R)evolution — Beyond The Doherty
As I wrote in my IMS technical program preview, power amplifier (PA) design is such a hot topic in the industry that the IMS2013 Technical Paper Review Committee (TPRC) had to create two subcommittees to handle all the PA-related paper submissions. IMS attendees definitely validated the hype — sessions presenting new approaches to PA device and circuit design were among the most popular I attended.
One particularly interesting example was a panel session entitled Dominant PA Architectures for Tomorrow’s High Speed Cellular Networks, featuring industry luminaries Steve Cripps and Raymond Pengelly, along with several other distinguished experts. The panelists discussed what they think the future holds for the Doherty amplifier (the current architecture du jour) and several emerging competitive/complimentary architectures, such as envelope tracking (ET), envelope elimination and restoration (EER), switch-mode, and outphasing (Chireix). The general consensus of the panel was that the Doherty amplifier won’t be going away any time soon — if ever — thanks to its simplicity, low cost, and proven performance, but many agreed that a “digital intrusion” of the digital-to-analog converter (DAC) into the RFPA itself is inevitable.
Defense Market: The Sky Is Definitely Not Falling
Given the recent economic struggles of many world military powers — most conspicuously the United States and its looming sequester-related Department of Defense (DoD) budget cuts — I was certain that the military suppliers I met at IMS would be preparing for the worst and bemoaning their bad luck. As I mentioned in the intro to our Live From IMS 2013 - Day 3 newsletter, I was way off the mark with that prediction. Instead, I would characterize their mindset as surprisingly calm, even upbeat.
There are several reasons for their level-headedness in these trying times. For one, the expected DoD budget cuts are not unprecedented, and in fact, they are quite common throughout U.S. history following the ramp-down of significant overseas conflicts, which we are now seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, as RF Globalnet columnist and Strategy Analytics analyst Asif Anwar explained to me at IMS — and many military suppliers reiterated — there are still great areas of opportunity for RF/microwave technologies out there in radar (namely phased array radar), electronic warfare (EW), and SATCOM (particularly small satellite) platforms. Finally, while defense spending may be on the decline in places like the U.S. and Europe, it’s on the upswing elsewhere in the world (e.g. Southeast Asia), which brings me to my next point…
U.S. No Longer The Center Of The Microwave Universe
There was a time when the U.S. captivated the RF/microwave design industry, but that is no longer the case. While the U.S. is still an important hub of design and application activity, attention gradually has been shifting elsewhere over time, and the “international” side of the International Microwave Symposium has never been more pronounced, especially when it comes to Asia. On the exhibit floor, dozens of Asian vendors exhibited their designs, and non-Asian vendors showcased products targeted specifically at Asian markets — in fact, some vendors focused almost exclusively on China with the technologies on display (case in point: Freescale and its TD-LTE transistors).
The IMS2013 plenary keynote speaker, Dr. Patrick Ennis of Intellectual Ventures, shared an interesting observation related to this trend during his talk about the dearth of “invention capital” in the world today. When he entered the PhD program in physics back in 1985, his (Yale) and other major U.S. universities drew the best and brightest technical minds from China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries. Not so today. Thanks to economic and socio-cultural changes, young science and technology stars are instead heading to those countries to study, or they’re earning a U.S. diploma and leaving soon after graduation. As a result, innovation is, as often as not, happening outside the U.S.
GaAs Is Still The King... For Now
Truth be told, I was really looking forward to the The Death of GaAs? panel session. With a provocative title like that — and representatives from competing GaAs (gallium arsenide), CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), SiGe (silicon germanium), and GaN (gallium nitride) chipmakers on the panel — I thought there was sure to be some spirited and educational debate. Sadly, the proceedings were (mostly) civil, with each panelist basically saying his organization’s technology was best (with the exception of the two analysts).
But while the session may have disappointed on the controversy front (and even, to some degree, in its depth of content), it did provide a reasonable barometer on where the different semiconductor technologies stand in high-volume markets (like wireless handsets). To paraphrase: GaAs, with $5.3 billion in revenue in 2012, should retain its throne for the foreseeable future, given its current market foothold, performance, and (low) cost. And, in all likelihood, GaAs still has some innovation left in it. However, the challengers are starting to encroach upon GaAs’ kingdom, particularly RF CMOS, with its small footprint, its rapidly improving performance, and the weight of a giant like Qualcomm behind it.
Don’t overlook GaN as a future contender. RFMD, Microsemi, Northrop Grumman, M/A-COM, Cree, TriQuint, and many others chipmakers launched new GaN products for a growing number of military and commercial applications during the event. And GaN-focused technical sessions across a range of application areas were some of the best-attended of the week.
What trends are you seeing in your corner of the industry? If you went to IMS2013, what trends did you hear about there? Please share your thoughts below.