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White LEDs offer radio-free wireless option

White LEDs offer radio-free wireless option A photonic alternative to WLAN has been shown to exceed 100 Mbit/s and could provide bandwidth in a currently unlicensed area of the spectrum, if it can conform to general illumination standards. Thanks to white LEDs, overhead lighting could soon be used to transmit data over a RF-free wireless connection. That's according to Joachim Walewski from Siemens Corporate Technology, who has modulated the light emission from white LEDs in order to make a 101 Mbit/s wireless link with a PiN diode photodetector. “With this, you can have interference-free communication,” Walewski pointed out, adding that the visible spectrum is currently free of any requirements for communication licenses. Siemens is currently exploring the technology in order to keep pace with a competing Japanese collaboration that expects to bring similar technology to market by 2011, Walewski says. His Munich-based team claims to be the first to have boosted ...
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Freescale selling GaAs business to Skyworks

Freescale selling GaAs business to Skyworks The semiconductor giant has entered into an agreement to sell its RF power amplifier business to Skyworks, leaving a question mark hanging over the future of its "CS1" GaAs fab. Freescale Semiconductor has agreed to sell its GaAs power amplifier (PA) business to fellow RFIC manufacturer Skyworks Solutions. A spokesman for Freescale, which was acquired by a private equity consortium led by The Blackstone Group and The Carlyle Group in December 2006, confirmed that the deal had been struck, saying that it "represented good value for both companies". The agreement includes GaAs PA designs, intellectual property, inventory and product lines, although it does not include Freescale's "CS1" wafer fab, located in Tempe, Arizona, and the site for the company’s GaAs device production. As a result, a question mark now hangs over the future of that fab. Freescale says that it is looking at a number of potent...
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GaN brings weather radar into digital age

Weather radar is one of the few areas in which electron tubes still dominate solid-state electronics, but this is set to change thanks to a system from Toshiba. The world's first weather radar that uses a high-power semiconductor module, based on GaN, has been installed at Japan’s Nagoya University. Toshiba Corporation says that its GaN field effect transistors (FETs) allow it to manufacture systems without the electron tubes that have previously been used in weather radar transmitter modules. 21st century weather radar The initial 9 GHz radar has been made for Nagoya's Hydrospheric Atmospheric Research Center using Toshiba’s existing X-band GaN FET technology, and came into operation on November 28. The conglomerate will produce further individual X-band GaN radars to order and will also use its C-band FETs to make radars that operate in the 5 GHz range. A Toshiba spokesperson said that the development of semiconductor weather radar was made possible by its GaN products, becau...
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