Ipoh and RF Packaging

A week in Ipoh, parts of which feel like they are still in the mid 20th century

Traditional Shophouses

1930’s Architecture

Oldest Mosque in Ipoh

5 Foot Way

Quiet Day at the Barber's

River Kinta dividing old and new towns

Working on upcoming course on Radio Frequency (RF) packaging.

Difficult to think that RF has only been around about 100 years.

It all started with Maxwell in 1864 but it was a slow start

It was nearly 30 years before anything of practical use came about.

These gentlemen with bowlers were  British Post Office engineers inspecting Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy (radio) equipment, during a demonstration on Flat Holm island, in 1897. This was the world's first demonstration of the transmission of radio signals over open sea, between Lavernock Point in South Wales and Flat Holm in the Bristol Channel, a distance of 3 miles. 

I grew up in Weston-super-Mare, within sight of Flat Holm, and despite doing physics at school and later working for Marconi Research in London and Essex, had no idea of Flat Holm's significance in radio history.  Nice to know you can now stay at a Marconi resort in  Lavernock Point. 

www.lavernockpoint.com

And, of course, it was Marconi's radio which played a significant and controversial role in the sinking of the   Titanic.

Just under 100 years ago in October 1916  Lee DeForest inaugurated music broadcasts in New York using vacuum valves, the development of which transformed radio into something close to what we know today. Guess he was the first radio disc jockey. 

Photo From Wikipedia

As the New York Sun reported" “The technically inclined who wish to "listen in" should be informed that the "wave length" for hearing the music tonight will be 800 meters” (375kHz)

Which leads us right into RF Packaging! Note the wavelength and frequency: 800 meters” (375kHz)

We need to think about RF in packaging when the size  of the components is comparable with the wavelength of the signal. The usual rule of thumb is that we can treat circuit components as "lumped elements" if they are less than 1/10 the wavelength. For the 1916 music broadcast, that is 80 metres and we don't have any components that big! 

But modern computer chips and mobile phones work at GHz frequencies, about 10 000 times higher that the 1916 music broadcast.  The wavelength at 3GHz is about 10 cm so we need to be concerned at dimensions of about 1 cm, much smaller than a laptop or a phone. Life gets more complicated:

•“Wires” must be treated as transmission lines

•The skin effect increases the effective resistance of wires

•Coupling occurs between nearby components and wires

•Resistors, capacitors, inductors etc may no longer behave as lumped elements

•Wire bonds appear as series inductors

•Conducting housings may behave as enclosed cavity resonators

Watch this space for more or (plug, plug) come to one of my courses later this month in Penang and Manila.

26 & 27 September 2016 – Penang Workshop 

29 & 30 September 2016 - Manila Workshop o,

Further details from me at alastair@at-micro.com

or Atheena at atheena@lauresinternational.com

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