On July 25, Amazon released its first smartphone, and it didn’t take long for the internal components of the device to get leaked.  Continue Reading..

Perhaps most famously portrayed in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959), the idea of the “future soldier” has been around for decades. As rehashed in countless science fiction films and video games, the stereotypical future soldier is equipped with a protective exoskeleton, enhanced sensory equipment, seamless communication systems, and advanced weaponry. While the concept once seemed implausible, there are many...  Continue Reading..

At the 2014 IEEE MTT International Microwave Symposium earlier this month, I had the opportunity to speak with the event’s general chair, Dr. Larry Dunleavy, about the state of the RF and microwave design industry. While he acknowledged that it is a time of relative uncertainty — due in large part to constrained military budgets and conservative fiscal forecasts for 2014 — he also pointed out that there are plenty of emerging...  Continue Reading..

Paul Chang, former principal engineer, project manager, and RF chip lead at Broadcom, recently migrated to Apple, further substantiating rumors that Apple plans on designing and building baseband processors in-house. Chang worked at Broadcom for over 11 years, helping develop a “series of cellular mobile communications CMOS semiconductor products,” including a number of 65 nm quadband single -chip transceivers.   Continue Reading..