Plextek has been providing design services to address these frequency bands for a number of years and has recently seen a surge in demand for them. Typical applications include high data rate line of sight links and short-range high data rate wireless links for WLAN and WPAN applications.
Liam Devlin, Director of RFIC & MMIC at Plextek said: “The price of test equipment operating at E-band is currently much higher than the more conventional microwave line of sight bands below 40GHz and therefore can add significant cost to development activity. As frequency increases the associated test equipment costs increase.
“However, the attraction of the wide spectrum allocation at E-band, which allows for very high data rates, and a ‘light licence’ approach will help to drive on development activities and process will fall over time. The new equipment we have purchased is the start of our move to extend our test capability to higher frequencies at V-band and E-band.”
Plextek already has test equipment extending to 50GHz. E-band spectrum at 71-76GHz and 81-86GHz offers worldwide availability of a large amount of spectrum under a light licence basis. This scheme currently operates in the US, the UK and many other countries and allows licences to be obtained quickly and cheaply whilst retaining the benefits of interference protection.