Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2009 - (Page 6)

6 NEWS IN BRIEF Antenova licenses HDA antenna technology to Sony Ericssons Antenova has announced that Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (Sony Ericsson) has licensed its patented High Dielectric Antenna (HDA®) technology for their popular series of high performance multi-band handsets. Antenova’s multi-band HDA antennas offer GSM, UMTS, EGSM and CDMA capability all in the same antenna with minimum space requirement. The superior detuning characteristics of HDA technology offers over 50 percent average terminal radiation efﬁciency over the cellular bands, making it an ideal solution for high volume platform handset development for the global market. www.mwee.com/216200039 RF chips to fare better in 2009, according to analyst Projections for the overall semiconductor industry in 2009 are dire, but favorable trends in the handset market should keep the market for RF chips from crashing this year and ready to bounce back more quickly than many industry segments, an analyst said Monday (March 2). Analysts are now forecasting overall chip industry contraction on the order of 20 percent or more. But indications are that the RF semiconductor industry may contract closer to 1 percent in 2009 and bounce back with double digit growth in 2010 and beyond, according to Tom Hackenburg, an analyst at IMS Research (Austin, Texas). Hackenburg contends that the RF chip market will beneﬁt from lower resistance to reduced consumer purchasing power in the mobile handset market, advancements in 3G and 4G technologies and consumer demand for more advanced smartphones. Overall, high-performance semiconductors such as 32- and 64-bit processors and 32- and 64bit core-based ASIC, ASSP and FPGA products are likely to see less than 5 percent contraction for 2009, while many applications will actually see slight growth, Hackenburg said. While its clearly going to be a challenging year for semiconductors, the brunt of the damage will be done in commodity segments such as memory, which could see a 30 to 40 percent decrease in unit shipments in 2009, Hackenburg said. “Speciﬁc applications segments will be more resilient in response to the economic contraction,” Hackenburg said through a statement. Economic contraction is likely to push the trend for higher integration to decrease bill-ofmaterial costs in the handset industry, according to Hackenburg. He said interesting solutions are likely to merge in the RF front-end using single PAs in front-end modules that cover multiple bands as well as a large growth in integrated multi-mode solutions. In the digital baseband segment, Hackenburg said he expects to see more digital solutions to RF processes to the point of single chip solutions and other highly integrated cores. Low power processors to perform energy management will also rise in prominence, he said. High-performance modules for voice enhancements, data connectivity, videography, multimedia and alternative displays will be needed to support a distinct trend toward smartphones and advanced feature phones, Hackenburg said. www.mwee.com/215800641 RFID expected to see continued growth Having reached a high degree of maturity, RFID technology will continue its growth over the years to come — not despite but because of the crisis, says German industry association Bitkom. According to Bitkom research, currently 50 percent of the companies that already have introduced RFID technology plan to expand the deployment. Among the group of RFID non-users, 15 percent plan to implement RFID-based solutions over the next two years. Bitkom resembles the German information and communications industry. The group believes that in the current economic crisis, processes and costs within the enterprises are increasing. For this reason, many will tap the cost reduction and process optimization potential inherent to the RFID technology, Bitkom says. Also the increasing pressure to reduce CO2 emissions will urge users to optimize their logistics chains which in turn would call for RFIDbased solutions. www.mwee.com/215800947 Peaking EDGE to lead 2009 basestation deployments, says In-Stat The EDGE standard (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), sometimes identiﬁed as part of the 2.5 generation of cellular communications, will take over 40 percent of basestation deployments in 2009, according to market analyst InStat (Scottsdale, Ariz.). The slowdown in the global economy is having an effect as operators push out deployments. As a result there will be a slight decline in EDGE basestation deployments from 2008 to 2009, resulting in 2008 being the zenith of EDGE deployments. However, 2009 will see a sharp rise in the number of TD-SCDMA basestations shipped. After a strong 2007 for worldwide base station shipments, results for 2008 were weak. In 2007, many new 3G networks were rolled out around the world, and GSM subscriber growth was occurring at a fast clip, driven by millions ● of additional subscribers in India, Africa, and China. However, those trends were not sustained and total worldwide basestation shipments dropped sharply in 2008 compared to 2007, according to the ﬁrm. “EDGE will still lead new basestation deployments for some time,” said Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. “However, HSUPA is on the horizon. Strong deployments in the Asia Paciﬁc, Western Europe and North America promise to make the cross over point from EDGE to HSUPA in new deployments occur in 2011.” In-Stat said that HSUPA already leads basestation deployments in Western Europe; however, the levels of deployments will follow a bi-modal distribution with peaks in 2007 and 2012. www.mwee.com/215801468 Microwave Engineering Europe ● April 2009 www.mwee.com http://www.mwee.com/216200039 http://www.mwee.com/215800641 http://www.mwee.com/215800947 http://www.mwee.com/215801468 http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2009

Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2009 News Contents Comment MMICs/RFICs: MMICs for Broadband Receiver Applications Antennas: Mutual Coupling Reduction in Compact Arrays for Wireless Sensors via a Pre-fractal Defected Ground Structure Repeatable Characterization of Distortion Caused by Nonlinearities in Wideband Communication Systems Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - April 2009

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