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Qualcomm Sampling "mmWave" 5G Antennas for Smartphones

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the mmWaves:-greetings-made-by-very-tiny-hands dept.

takyon writes:

Qualcomm Puts mmWave in Handsets: 5G antenna modules target smartphones

Qualcomm has started sampling 5G RF and antenna modules for smartphones, another piece of the puzzle for the cellular networks expected to start lighting up later this year. The parts suggest some of the design challenges that engineers will face packing the new capabilities into handsets.

Smartphones may use as many as four of the QTM052 antenna modules that come in versions supporting 26- to 40-GHz bands. The millimeter-wave signals enable high data rates at short ranges for urban and office networks but typically require multiple modules to provide both antenna diversity and avoid interference from a user's hand.

The modules pack a 5G radio transceiver, power management IC, RF front end, and a 1 x 4 phased antenna array that supports beam forming, tracking, and steering. The company declined to provide the price, size, or power consumption of the modules or the process technology that they are made in but promised to release performance data later.

Also at The Verge.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:30PM (5 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:30PM (#711731)

    I was at Qualcomm in the mid-90s. A friend was working on their antennas. He didn't have any kind of STEM degree, he had a PhD in something like Geology. He said they would take different alloy sheets of metal, cut them into random patterns, and see how they worked. They didn't have any kind of theory on what might work, nor why what worked did. It was all trial and error.

    This was back in the days when your cellphone had a little wire antenna you had to pull out of the body to get a signal, they were just starting to make the transition to internal antennas.

    --
    When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @03:20PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @03:20PM (#711748)

    He said they would take different alloy sheets of metal, cut them into random patterns, and see how they worked. They didn't have any kind of theory on what might work, nor why what worked did. It was all trial and error.

    Which is fine except that design considerations for antennas were already well understood and documented. Scary how many PhDs have such a restricted knowledge domain that stepping outside their specialist field makes them look like morons.

    • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday July 25 2018, @12:51AM

      by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday July 25 2018, @12:51AM (#712065)

      Which is fine except that design considerations for antennas were already well understood and documented.

      For oddly shaped chunks of metal maybe 1 square inch that needs to fit inside a phone?

      --
      When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @03:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @03:31PM (#711754)

    Geology, in your opinion, isn't a science?

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @04:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @04:58PM (#711778)

    I came to North America 12 years ago I never signed a single contract with cable companies.

    Congrats? Did you achieve citizenship yet or are you sponging?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @10:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @10:56PM (#712002)
    Oh, I think most everyone would consider geology [wikipedia.org] a real, bona fide science, making that fellow you’re talking about very much the holder of a STEM degree. Still it's a wholly irrelevant degree to RF antenna design of course. He might as well have had a PhD in English literature for all the relevance it had to the task. He probably would have done better with a job in a mineral prospecting or mining company, a petroleum exploration or extraction company, the USGS, or a construction firm, where his knowledge of geology might have been useful.