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posted by on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the argus dept.

Hiroshima University and Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited (MIFS) today announced the development of a low-power millimeter-wave amplifier that feeds on 0.5 V power supply and covers the frequency range from 80 GHz to 106 GHz. It was fabricated using MIFS's Deeply Depleted Channel (DDC) technology. This is the first W-band (75−110 GHz) amplifier that can operate even with such a low power-supply voltage. Details of the technology will be presented at the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC) 2017, running from June 4th to 6th in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The W-band covers the frequencies used by automotive radars. Sophisticated driver-assistance and self-driving will require radars with millimeter-wave beam scanning capability that can "see" in day and night conditions and even in adverse weather conditions. Such a phased array will consist of up to hundreds of transmitters and receivers. As battery-powered cars become more common, it is imperative that these circuits be low power. Lowering the power-supply voltage is the most effective means of accomplishing that. However, transistor performance drops with voltage and no W-band amplifier has so far operated at as low as 0.5 V . The team of researchers successfully demonstrated a W-band amplifier at 0.5 V by bringing together MIFS's DDC technology and design techniques developed by Hiroshima University. The DDC technology offers high-performance silicon MOS transistors even at low voltages and is currently available from MIFS as a 55-nm CMOS process. The design techniques further improve transistor and circuit performance at millimeter-wave frequencies.

"Now that seriously low-power W-band circuits really seem possible, we should think about what we can do with them. Applications aren't limited to automotive radars and high-speed communications between base stations. What if you have a radar on your smartphone? Today's smartphones can already sense things like acceleration, audible sound, visible light, and Earth's magnetic field. But the only active probing device is that tiny LED (light-emitting diode) that can illuminate at most a few meters. Add a millimeter-wave radar on a smartphone, and it doesn't have to be a so-called primary radar, which only detects waves reflected back. Your smartphone could respond to waves from your friend's radar and send some signal back. A whole lot of new applications could be created, including games," said Professor Minoru Fujishima, Graduate School of Advanced Sciences of Matter, Hiroshima University.


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:09PM (11 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:09PM (#521474)

    I have SMD gear. Honestly, I can't imagine what you'd do with wire-bond gear that would actually be useful, as a hobbyist. I guess the fact that I don't give two shits about ham radio (if I want to talk to people, I'll meet them in person; if I want to communicate over a long distance, I'll use the Internet) might have something to do with that. SMD gear is really useful, since you can make all kinds of custom circuits with it, and you're only missing out on BGA stuff, which you only need for very dense or cutting-edge stuff (like very high-end ARM microcontrollers, or extremely dense circuitry that shouldn't be necessary for hobbyist stuff). BGA gets you into more cutting-edge technology, but it's questionable why you'd need that; even most industrial stuff is fine with regular SMD. But wire-bond? What do you need that for?

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:51PM (5 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:51PM (#521600)

    But wire-bond? What do you need that for?

    If you're doing RF stuff roughly above the resonant freq of a SMA connector (what 19 GHz or so) then the world is all about wire bond and bare dies.

    Something to do with reproducible wiring and stuff.

    You can't buy COTS MMICs that work in the 47 GHz band in any package because all the packages resonate by that frequency but you can buy bare dies and then you get to wire bond them.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:58PM (4 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:58PM (#521934)

      Yeah, I understand that part. My question is more basic than that: what hobbyist application would you want that for? That seems to be something only really useful for radars and certain radios, for instance. Even cellular radios don't go that high, so you wouldn't need this even for making your own cellular radio or modem.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:06PM (3 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:06PM (#522064)

        General ham radio screwing around, mostly. Just a much more exotic frequency band than, say, 20 meters band. Can I hear my transmitter sending morse code across the workbench... ok now how about across a field ... now from hilltop to hilltop some miles maybe?

        Its very much like mountain climbing, its all the mountains fault for being there...

        • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:52PM (2 children)

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:52PM (#522126)

          So just what I suspected: there's zero practical application to this stuff (wire-bonding equipment), it's to support an entirely esoteric hobby. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just don't expect many other people to understand or care about it if they aren't already interested in the exact same hobby. Not all hobbies are like this: gardening, for example, produces food which most people like to eat (and frequently home-gardened food is much higher-quality than store-bought produce). Woodworking, for example, produces fine furniture, which most people like to have in their homes for various utilitarian purposes like holding their clothes or sitting at to eat, and like gardening, hand-made furniture can frequently be much higher-quality than typical store-bought IKEA crap. Some people like to make their own wine or beer. So when you have one of these hobbies, you can tell other people about it and though they may not want to spend their time doing it themselves, they'll appreciate the output of it and might be able to appreciate the difference between your hobbyist product and some mass-produced version. For esoteric hobbies, this just isn't the case; no one outside the hobby will understand it at all, even people who understand the underlying technology. This kinda reminds me of a coworker who spends a lot of time and money on his boat and fishing gear so he can go fish from the nearby (highly-polluted) river, and has to go out at odd hours to do so. It'd be a lot cheaper and easier to just buy a fish from the supermarket. But at least here, I think a lot of people could at least appreciate the idea of being in a boat, outdoors, on the open water (as long as the weather's nice); not many people would appreciate the idea of sitting in a little room and talking into a radio. But whatever floats your boat...

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:09PM (1 child)

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:09PM (#522216)

            I wouldn't disagree in general.

            I would say ham radio is very much like model railroading in your description. Its actually very much like the textile arts, if you want a sweater the least economically effective way to get one is to spend 50 hours knitting one by hand, but some people find that activity fun, its cheap to regulate knitting needles, and almost impossible to force the hobbyists to stop if you wanted to try and stop them anyway.

            Its a lot like programming or sysadmining recreationally at home. You get that rush of "holy crap, it works!" for an affordable price. It don't do much, but it don't cost much, or hurt anything, so why not?

            Most people think watching TV or sportsball is a hobby. In that way its surely a more useful hobby in the sense that any positive number is larger than zero.

            If you're ever bored you can check out FCC part 97.1 which lays out why bigbrother keeps ham radio around. At least officially in theory hams can do emergency communications stuff however unlikely in the modern world, letting the hams screw around, most of whom are EE equivalents, has historically advanced the EE art which has been true and remains true to the current day, the existence of the hobby results in the overall population being microscopically less stupid WRT electronics which should be a net gain to the general population, and there is some minimal international goodwill under the same mentality that penpals are inherently a good idea. Basically something that costs the government roughly nothing results in an extremely small, yet positive, net return to big brother.

            I'm a 3rd generation ham and I've read decades of stories about some hams get into the hobby because there was some miracle flash of inspiration, but for me it was much calmer more pragmatic, like its fun to play with electronics, its fun to play with RF, and ham radio is a way to play with RF, legally. Play is an operative word here. The word choice is definitely play time.

            As for play time I think its huge fun, you might not, oh well, your loss. For play time I also like hyper-modded minecraft and I'm well aware about 99% of the population reacts to that with a resounding WTF, so whatever, as long as I'm having fun I don't have to give a F. None the less, if you're ever bored or looking for something new to conqueror, assuming you got what it takes of course, google for ARRL or wander over to arrl.org ...

            • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:44PM

              by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:44PM (#522237)

              I have to disagree about your comparisons. (Obviously, we're getting into a rather academic conversation here...)

              I wouldn't compare ham radio to model railroading at all. While model railroading doesn't produce "output" which you can give as a gift to your friends or relatives, like you can with woodworking or home wine-making or gardening, it is something that a fair number of people enjoy going and looking at, partly because it's visual, and partly I think because of feelings of nostalgia (the same reason Kinkade paintings are popular). My mom lives near a little town where there's some old-time hardware store that has a huge model railroad display; it's apparently pretty popular. Most people probably have little interest in doing this themselves, but they like to occasionally go look at the more spectacular examples, just as they might with the really crazy LEGO creations. You just can't do this with ham radio; there's nothing to "show off" to bystanders. "Ooh look, I can dial in this frequency and talk to some guy in Mongolia!"; don't expect a lot of people to ooh and aah over that. But set up an elaborate model railroad display taking up a whole room and you'll have people's attention for at least a little while.

              The textile arts again are not similar. A typical sweater-wearer probably has zero interest in making a sweater, but if someone made a really nice one for them, they'd probably be happy to have and use it. Again, this is just like my examples of gardening and woodworking. Most people aren't dedicated or interested enough to take up these hobbies themselves, but they might be very happy to have the output of it. (They might also wish they could do them, but can't because of time or resource restrictions--gardening takes some land outside, so apartment dwellers generally can't do it for instance; woodworking requires a bunch of tools and a place to use them.)

              I think your examples of programming and sysadminning at home are far closer though. Someone doing hobby/OSS programming on some obscure library, for instance, probably will bore a random person to death trying to tell them about their hobby. But at least with programming it's possible the hobbyist might make something pretty interesting, like a game, which regular people could actually be entertained by. But a lot of hobbyist programmers don't produce anything that regular people would have any interest in spending 2 seconds looking at, so I think that comparison is a lot closer. And sysadminning is probably pretty close. You're not going to get much interest showing your uncle your custom Linux distro.

  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:32AM (4 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:32AM (#521811) Journal

    To me, the whole idea of HAM radio is you can communicate around the world - without having anyone else involved.

    Just you and the guy you are talking to.

    Just the ticket for the doomsday scenario.... complete collapse of the telecom system brought on by either power grid failures or political ( martial law ) confiscation.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:54PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:54PM (#521930)

      So basically it's highly attractive to right-wing nutcases who think the Rapture is just around the corner?

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:16PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:16PM (#522070)

        Naw thats AM broadcast radio.

        More seriously there's corners of 20 meters and 80 meter sideband that are basically CB for all intents and purposes filled with nuts, but I don't hang out there (I escaped LOL).

        Ham radio is big, really big, so anyone who tells you its all about HF contesting or VHF public service is just not telling the whole picture.

        Also a lot of hams go thru phases. I spent the 80s/90s playing packet radio sort of a weird X.25 variant along with some very slow TCPIP and that was a blast. Then in the 00s I got into strange HF digital modulation technologies for awhile, still do that occasionally. From the mid 00s to mid 10s I got into VHF contesting and talked thousands of miles occasionally on 6M and 2M sideband. And I've been fooling around building my own gear and microwave gear on and off since the 80s or so, thats fun stuff.

        I know a couple people into driving around during VHF contests. Why spend thousands of dollars on a 100 foot tower when you can just drive your car up a 2000 foot hill for free more or less? I know a lot of guys with a collector problem they gotta talk to every country or every USA county or whatever even if its mostly just "hi, bye" just to collect them all. I have a lot of VHF/UHF/Microwave grid squares (same idea) but I'm not into collecting that much. Speaking of collecting some folks are into collecting, restoring, and using antique gear which is mildly interesting. And I'm sure theres more stuff too.

    • (Score: 1) by terryk30 on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:51PM

      by terryk30 (1753) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:51PM (#522053)

      Or left-wing nutcases who think the Rupture is just around the corner?

      (Couldn't resist - FWIW I don't think believing the latter makes you the former...)

    • (Score: 1) by terryk30 on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:01PM

      by terryk30 (1753) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:01PM (#522062)

      ...but more seriously, if telecom systems are being confiscated, I suppose you may have to get creative with where you put that shortwave antenna. (I'm reminded of a movie of the Nazi era where they had a truck w. rotating directional antenna driving around a neighbourhood trying to find a transmitter.)