Industrial, medical, and military demand for high quality, high-voltage multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) has been hit hard by a shift in production by MLCC manufacturers who are focusing on a seemingly insatiable demand for smaller, lower voltage – and in some way – lower performance MLCCs.

For the next generation of low-cost, battery operated, wireless IoT products, the design goal is to provide RF signal range and stability, while also reducing power consumption, in a miniaturised package. As a result, RF chipset manufacturers are increasingly fine-tuning and improving their products. Johanson Technology has released a chipset specific integrated passive device designed to do just this.

Integrated Passive Components (IPCs) are attracting increasing interest due to the miniaturisation of wireless devices, as well as the need to increase reliability of signal conditioning in RF circuits such as filtering, impedance matching, differential to single ended conversion and coupling. IPCs are essentially electronic sub-systems that combine multiple discrete passive components into a single surface mounted device.

  For many high power RF applications, the ‘Q factor’ of embedded capacitors is one of the most important characteristics in the design of circuits. This includes products such as cellular/telecomm equipment, MRI coils, plasma generators, lasers and other medical, military and industrial electronics.