Microwave Product Digest: View From the Top with Joe Svoboda

December 2022 Interview with Quantic Wenzel Vice-president and General Manager Joe Svoboda

MPD: Please describe what you consider to be your company’s most significant technological achievements in 2022.

JS: In terms of technological advancement 2022 was a landmark year for Quantic Wenzel in many respects. At Quantic Wenzel we are not only developing whisper quiet oscillators, but also ruggedized versions to be deployed in high-vibration and mission-critical environments such as fixed-wing and rotary wing aircrafts.

We spent years pioneering our new real-time vibration compensation algorithms to achieve 100x to 1000x improvement in phase noise under vibration. We released this technology at the International Microwave Symposium in Denver this year and developed our first product in the OpenVPX standard.

MPD: Many technologies are driving RF and microwave technologies today. Which ones do you feel are the most important as it concerns your company’s work?

JS: When it comes to RADAR and communications systems ultra-low phase noise performance is vitally important for achieving range, resolution, and sensitivity requirements. Modern, rapid response battlefield environments, ultrasonic weapons and cognitive defense systems are increasing the need for high-performance, low phase noise technologies.

At Quantic Wenzel we are pioneering the future of ultra-low phase noise technology by developing highly stable, spectrally pure, and low jitter frequency references having phase noise floor down to -190 dBc/Hz.

MPD: If your company serves the defense market, what are you working on (that you can talk about)?

JS: The DoD has made clear its intention to enable incremental development that enhances innovation and interoperability through open system standards. To meet this requirement our expert engineering and manufacturing teams are working diligently to expand our SOSA-aligned frequency solutions to 50 GHz for command, control, communications, computers, cyber, Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C5ISR) systems supporting airborne, surface, subsurface, and space-based applications.

As an example, our SOSA-aligned 3U/6U OpenVPX frequency source delivers ultra-low phase noise floor performance of < -162 dBc/Hz at 3GHz.

MPD: Technology appears to have advanced to the point where millimeter-wave deployment on a wide scale is possible. What is your perspective on this?

JS: From a commercial perspective, mmWave technology has grown immensely with the introduction of 5G. The mmWave spectrum has tremendous potential for increasing speed and capacity. 5G mmWave can use phase array antennas with beamforming techniques to boost transmission and reception of packets in densely populated areas for mobile use cases. The technology is still very complex and maintaining the high-performance consumer expectations will continue present big challenge for manufacturers in the foreseeable future. Having said that we have seen waves of development and deployment with new 5G bands becoming standardized.

MPD: How is your company preparing for 5G Advanced with 3GPP Release 18?

JS: We see 5G’s high data rate and 5G Advanced, pushing the technology to progress to its fullest capability in a few years with improved uplink capacity in outdoor and indoor environments, for a fully immersive user experience while on the move, exploiting full power of AI and ML algorithms to learn radio propagation environments and increase in position accuracy down to inches. These algorithms could have a huge impact in our future situation-aware intelligent oscillator products! Stay tuned for more new technologies from Quantic Wenzel.

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