Wavelet Transform Radar Signal Processing

Historically, Fourier Transform, FT is used for radar signal processing.

With the introduction of Fast Fourier Transform, FFT and advancement of DSP in ASIC, radar technology has significantly grown.

It is well known that there is fundamental limitation to time and frequency resolution which is govern by Ambiguity function.

Wavelet Transform, WT has however better time and frequency resolution.

WT relies on octave frequencies, i.e., even harmonics and ignore odd harmonics completely.

Octave based echolocation is used by bat.

Octave based signals are fundamental to music and harmonious.

Whereas, odd harmonics are not desired at least in human audio signals.

Orca echolocation sonar utilizes symmetric waveform, which have even and odd harmonics.

Orca sounds are not harmonious and could be frightening.

Chirped or phase coded radar waveform only contains even harmonic, in other words octave-based signals content.

Therefore, for these types of waveform, WT could be utilized for DSP by radar processor.

There appear some advantages by utilizing WT when asymmetric waveform are processed.

First, odd harmonics is not processed and it could save processing time.

Second, odd harmonic distortions caused by the radar system impairments mechanism cannot be confused as a real radar target.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environment to accomplish clients’ project.

Partner ORTENGA in your next product concept, design, and development to realize that business goal.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

 

What is Startup Company 3rd Challenge?

High Tech startup companies go through many challenges before they become successful and return the investments.

If the startup companies pass first and second challenges, successfully, this 3rd challenge would be the next major hurdle which is typically decisive to their existence and for returning the investments and go clear of incurring more loss year over year and searching for more investors in the business market.

3rd yet the most challenging hurdle is scaling.  Those companies who are executing sounds plan, they would measure the new market before scaling too early.

Typical, scaling too early is when the startup company assumes their technology would have wide market acceptance without actually have any supporting artifacts or data to support their business decisions.

Time and time again startup company to satisfy their investors, forecast over blown volume which are not based on market trend.  And they spend these valuable investments on parts and components which most likely would sit in the company, without being used.

Other time, the startup deviates from their core technology and blindly driving engineering to develop components or subsystem which are readily available and the in-house development could only be justified for large volume productions.  That decision making process is driven blindly, without any business justifications and by stakeholder(s) who fully don’t appreciate engineering development challenges and associated cost for successful executions.  This hurts the startup company in 3 different ways.  First, the spent limited resources on frivolous and un-necessary project while tying the engineering means that actual work does not get done. Second, the spent scarce cash flow is wasted on un-necessary project.  Third, which could be the most important commodity that they could never replace, is spent time cannot be replaced and push the actual technology development for a product further to the right.

This 3rd challenge of startup companies sort out many mediocre business plan for sounds planning.

Scaling up too early puts many startups companies on the fund raising dry up course and forcing their management to downsize the very same engineering team who design and developed their new technology.

Every year, Apple announces a new iPhone in September.

Yet their costumers can pre-order online or at stores before getting their iPhone in October or November.

Apple collects statistical data of daily per-order and use appropriate statistical model to predict the market trend and making measured commitment every step in the execution plan.

Even, Apple a multi billion-dollar corporation with significant engineering resources is prudent before ramping to full production.  Because, they have realized that direction is more important than speed.

Partner with ORTENGA to analyze market trend and predict volume productions.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environment to accomplish clients’ project.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

 

Corporations Show Technical Leadership in Economic Down Cycle

Corporations go through many ups and downs cycle, especially if they don’t have long term vision and execution plan.

It is during the economic down cycle which they really demonstrate their market leadership by coming up with new direction in technology as engineering resources are easily accessible.

In spite of that, many corporations have to cut cost to survive and keep their market value to show their stock holders.

The number of one cost cutting, “easy” choice, is reducing engineering labor cost.  The very same part of the organization who is responsible to bring about new technical advances and lead the company out of the economic hardship.

In some of these companies, the down cycle is only for a quarter or two, so this labor cost cutting “the fat” so to speak, has that short term overhead reduction and increase their likelihood to survive the down cycle.

For some other companies, which their products are not competitive any longer in the market from both cost and technology perspective, any short-term cost cutting would not benefit them.  They have high overhead cost and a diminishing market share product.

Therefore, during the down cycle, they can cut labor cost by experienced engineering and replacing with “fresh blood”.  This approach fixes quarterly reports and appears to be cost effective, as the overhead is significantly reduced.  Yet, in practice there are two issues.  First, the new hires cannot necessarily replace the experienced engineering, especially if they are not adequately trained.  Second, the issue is the product portfolio which is too expensive and not competitive in the market.  The labor cost cutting, makes the company looks appealing for investors to buy and merge the legacy IPs into a bigger corporation, which is the best scenario.

The long-lasting technical corporations’ business plan are drastically different.  First, they are aware that soon or later their competitions would catch up with legacy products.  Consequently, they spent significantly on developing and feasibility study of new technology, annually.  Which enables them to have new product continuously. Second, they meticulously hire even during good economic up cycle, keeping “tight belt”.  The hiring approach pays off for them when there is down cycle when everyone else is cutting the labor cost.  In some rare cases, these companies even get to hire during the economic down cycle, as they are ahead of the down cycle wave and ready to launch new product into the market.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

Partner ORTENGA in your next product concept, design, and development to realize that business goal.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environment to accomplish clients’ project.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

Singular Value Decomposition, SVD Algorithm

SVD matrices are utilized in many engineering disciplines as well as finance industry.

In radio communications system, Multi Input Multi Output, MIMO architecture requires calculating inverse matrix of the channel.

The inverse matrix calculations are computationally very expensive, O (n3), and time and power consuming.

SVD matrix is utilized to diagonalize the channel matrix, therefore significantly reducing the computations for real time in mobile handset.

Finance industry use SVD to compress financial data, representing data using “less information” to save memory space.  SVD can be thought as data compression technique.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environment to accomplish clients’ project.

Partner ORTENGA in your next product concept, design, and development to realize that business goal.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

What is Startup Company 4th Challenge?

High Tech startup companies typically have high caliber engineering team from multiple disciplines who work on a single product.

The startup companies come in various sizes and number of employees, yet typically they can be categorized either less than 50 or 100 employees, from CEO down to individual contributors.

Most of the startup companies have flat organization chart.  There is a VP and number of reports.  These reports are individual contributors supposedly with specific contributions to that single product.

In the high-tech startup companies, engineering is the dominant employee numbers from those 50 or 100 employees, probably 70 – 80 %.

The leadership and direction for single product company has no room for error.  No room for error means, timeline, finance, execution, and particularly partnership.

One can see the leadership challenge and lack of clear directions, when there are multiple VP that runs Engineering, R&D, Development, IT, Network, System, etc.  Each of these VP have handful of engineering report.  Which is indicative the lack of cohesiveness and leadership.

In practice, all VP should be working and collaborating together on the execution toward the whole company single product goal.  Yet, they don’t necessarily agree on the deliverable and clear handshake between each sub engineering organization.

In the successful startup organization, there is a single point of contact for engineering that oversee all functions and making sure internal engineering are driving with his/her direction to develop and deliver.

The engineering knows who should go to if there is any ambiguity, question, or corrective action is needed which impact the whole organization.  The information decimation and processing are simple and straight forward.

That engineering VP could have handful of managers, yet s/he is the one that everyone reports to and can be held accountable.

When there are multiple VP for various functions, that single point of contact is escalated to CEO.

CEO main job is to secure financial health of organization and speak for the organization.  That is already a challenging job as it is.  Now CEO has to handle internal decision making down to individual contributor, if there are issues and disagreement between engineering functions.

Obviously, that CEO has to manage macroscopic as well as microscopic initiatives of the organization which would be too much to ask of one busy person.  Typically engineering team also realize and don’t necessarily see the CEO to report on daily issues.  Consequently, they kick the can of issues, down the road.  This slows product development process which is supposed to be the main advantage of startup company for execution comparing to a large corporations’ cumbersome engineering process.

The analogy could be a football team, there is one coach who is responsible for team performance and game plan.  While the club president is responsible for financial health of the club.  The football players answer to the coach, and the coach is accountable for the performance.  If the team does not perform the coach is changed.

In a startup company, if the company does not deliver the product, it is not the CEO issue, unless s/he is the one who made all the calls.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environment to accomplish clients’ project.

Partner ORTENGA in your next product concept, design, and development to realize that business goal.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

Electronic and Electrical Components’ Specifications

Electronic and electrical components’ specifications are number of one driver for their market traction.

No one even would inquire about the cost if the specifications do not meet the applications’ requirements.

This is even more true active devices, such ASIC.  With passive devices, one maybe able to come up with series or parallel components of different values to meet the requirements.

With the advancement ASIC and integration levels to SoC or modular design, many end user companies have reduced or even closed in house HW engineering design and development and rely on their ASIC suppliers to deliver a complete HW module with clearly defined inputs and outputs, documented performance metrics.

The modular requirements have made it easier for system designer which deliver a complete system with a specific goals and end users.  The development cost and timeline are reduced if the user can utilize an off the shelf component, COTS.

On the other hand, startups which only have ASIC that have to be designed and integrated into actual system are at disadvantages, as their product may not even be considered by end system user.

These startup ASIC companies can come up with their specifications either with direct request from their customer or end user.  This way they get exact ASIC requirements and return of the investment is known.  Second approach in getting ASIC specification is utilizing the perceived equivalent ASIC made by others.  Third approach is to enhance the perceived equivalent ASIC.  Forth approach would be deriving from conceptual product to component level specifications and arriving at ASIC requirements.

Each of the above approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

First approach is the easiest and lowest risk for the ASIC startup company as they have a customer who pays NRE but in return they cannot sale that ASIC product to anyone else besides whomever gave them the specifications.

Second approach is running risk of entering to unknown market demand and missing one or even two key requirements which are not published in the ASIC specifications by the original supplier.

Third approach runs the risk of not knowing the market for additional tightening specifications which may or may not benefit them in gaining market share.

Translating industry and market needs into ASIC requirements has to be done by qualified a product definer and is the most important part of a new design, yet it is the most overlooked part of any new product.  There are more companies with failed product not because of bad engineering but because of lack of due requirements and justifications.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environment to accomplish clients’ project.

Partner ORTENGA in your next product concept, design, and development to realize that business goal.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

What is Matched Filter and why it is used?

Matched filter is the transfer function of the impulse response of the receiver.

Matched filter is utilized in both radio communication or radar systems DSP to maximize the SNR.

In radio communication systems, the matched filter is shifted time inversed pilot (known signal by transmitter and receiver) signal.

In radar systems, the matched filter is shifted time inversed transmitted waveform.

By convolving the incoming signals with its original waveform, maximum SNR can be achieved for DSP, consequently enhancing data extractions from the incoming signals.

Once again, radio communications and radar systems show their relevance and similarity with albeit different linguistic.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environment to accomplish clients’ project.

Partner ORTENGA in your next product concept, design, and development to realize that business goal.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

Quantum Computing ties Analog and Digital

Radio Communications and even radar systems have migrated to digital waveform over the past 30 years for good reasons.  There are some key advantages to digital waveform.

These digital waveforms contain information, and analog carriers enable transmission and reception via antenna.

Prior to that, most if not all radio communications and radar systems were utilizing analog waveforms to transmit information.

Now, as quantum computing takes shape and could become reality in solving biological and chemical, pharmaceutical, or financial problems in reasonable time within the next decade, quantum mechanics relies on entanglement, interference, and superposition principles, while quantum computing utilizes these principles to expedite calculations, all of which are analog phenomenon, i.e., “signal”.  Yet, the state of particles’ energy is digital, qubit.  The qubit contains the information.

It is interesting to see humans unravel science by peeling off layer by layer while the macro and microscopic phenomena reveal similar behavior.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify the required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environments to accomplish clients’ projects.

Partner ORTENGA in your next product concept, design, and development to realize that business goal.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, and Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

Apple C1 MODEM

Apple 5G MODEM SoC is named C1.

C1 is engineering work of at least a decade and has been anticipated almost in the same number of years.

C1 is expected to be backward compatible with 4G and 3G and is advertised as the most efficient power consumption MODEM in the market.

Apple and Qualcomm have been in ASIC and mobile phone business relationships for a long time.

Their relationship has gone through many ups and downs.

In the past Apple sued Qualcomm regarding royalties, yet they were finally settled outside of the court.

On the other hand, Qualcomm has significant mobile handset critical IPs.  Some of which are expected to impact many devices.

As Apple introduces iPhone16E with C1, it would be impacting Qualcomm bottom lines.  How would Qualcomm return the over a decade favor?

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, eHealth, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications, and 6G industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

A18 Processor and C1 MODEM SoC

The Apple A18 processor is about 1.2 cm x 1.2 cm.

The processor function is to provide platforms for various applications while controlling all iPhone interactions with the 3rd parties ASIC and MODEM SoC.

Whereas C1 MODEM is about 1 cm x 1 cm.

MODEM function is to connect Apple devices to the external world.

Currently the A18 Processor and C1 MODEM are standalone SoC.

C1 MODEM design target has been low power consumption.

The data throughput performance is yet to be quantified by Apple.

By 2027 Apple plans to integrate the processor and MODEM into single SoC to further reduce the cost.

Both the processor and MODEM have been CMOS technologies and can technically be integrated into single SoC.

That integration would be challenging yet it saves one package cost.

The silicon package is a significant cost of the overall ASIC, which could be up to 1/3 of its total cost.

Another ~1/3 of the cost is the testing of packaged device and wafer probe.

Partner with ORTENGA for competitive analysis of your product.

ORTENGA is comprised of seasoned and skillful engineers who collaborate on innovative design in entrepreneurial environments to accomplish clients’ projects.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering from Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications, and 6G industries in Antenna, ASIC, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

What is Dithering and why it is used?

Dithering is a technique of reducing spurious unwanted signal which are unavoidable due to design architecture.

By modulating the unwanted spurious signal with wide band noise, the spurious signal can be reduced by several dB and in some cases suppressed below noise floor.

It is analogous to putting out fire by fire.

Dithering has applications in PLL, DSM, ADC, and DAC where spurious signals are number of one challenge for operational success.

Partner with ORTENGA for your PLL, DSM, ADC, and DAC design and development.

 

Built In Self-Test, BIST

As integration level increases, not only testing methodology becomes more challenging, but also the cost of testing vs. scrapping components becomes prohibitive for volume production.

Built in self-test, BIST allows each major block to be designed for self-test and validation during manufacturing or even operations.

BIST is proactive methodology which takes into account the production cost as well as smooth operations.

BIST is applicable to PLL, Tx chain, Rx Chain, ADC, DAC, Antenna installation versification, Fault isolation, etc.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and development for your new product BIST.

 

Artificial Intelligence, AI First Mission

Artificial Intelligence, AI will have a place in human future.

Some of these applications would help better living for human, and perhaps some would create new challenges which we have to learn how to deal with and overcome when that time comes.  That is the nature of high-tech industry, especially every time there is technological evolution.

Human is an organic system with neural and emotional complex behavior.  As such, we still have our own impairment to deal with.

AI first mission could be translating every single news and historical information into audio file as well as braille communications format so that everyone can have access to the necessary information regardless of our impairing senses.

This would have wide spread traction across regions and languages.

Product definition is the most important scoping part of any consumer electronics and comprised of Architecture, Antenna /ASIC /Algorithm of any system or application and must be designed and/or defined in such a way to meet Standards requirements as well as competitive in the market.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA unique ability is to identify appropriate application for any new high-tech innovations.

ORTENGA business model is based on Statement of Work (SoW) engagement with clients.

 

Movandi MWC 2025 Radio System Implications

Movandi has successfully advanced gNB beamforming technology within radio front ends.

Movandi has demonstrated its leadership in beamforming ASIC and radio front end.

Let’s delve into Movandi technology based on their presentation at MWC 2025.

They are relying on two  antenna arrays with 64 and 96 elements (of probably patch  antenna element).

The  antenna array gain is estimated to between 18 – 21 and 20 – 23 dBi in gNB mmW band depending on the pointing angle.

Here are what they mean.

To close the radio link, the receiving end has to have somewhere between 10 – 15 dBi of antenna array gain.  That would be put the overall antenna gain between transmitter and receiver between 30 – 40 dBi.

What can you achieve with that much of  antenna link gain at mmW band and Resource Block, RB = 800 MHz is 5.6 Gbps datarate.

Product definition is the most important scoping part of any consumer electronics and comprised of Architecture, Antenna /ASIC /Algorithm of any system or application and must be designed and/or defined in such a way to meet Standards requirements as well as competitive in the market.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

ORTENGA has technical ability to decipher, analyze and decompose public technical data into block level performance specifications for competitive analysis.

ORTENGA business model is based on Statement of Work (SoW) engagement with clients.

 

 

Fractional N PLL

Phased Lock Loop, better known as PLL are used to generate Local Oscillator, LO for radio front end or Clock for baseband circuitry.

Clock to ASIC is similar to Heart to Body which drives and organize timing responses of various organs.  Without Heart, the body cannot function, without Clock the ASIC cannot function.

Fractional N PLL aka Frac N PLL has 3 main advantages over Integer N PLL.

  1. Finer step frequency resolution relative to reference frequency
  2. One Frac N PLL can provide LO function for both Tx and Rx chain
  3. Agility to perform digitally controlled modulation

Needless to say, the above advantages do not come free, the Frac N PLL is much more complex in design and development.

In spite of that, the advantages overcome the trade off and are attractive in advanced ASIC.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop PLL ASIC.

 

PLL Requirements for Terrestrial Radio and Radar Applications

PLL phase noise requirements are driven by in band, IB and out of band, OOB drivers.

IB driver is dominated by desired channel purity requirements which has budget in overall SNR.

OOB driver is dominated by adjacent channel, typically considered undesired, which has budget in dynamic range of the system.

Dynamic Range, DR of a radio is measure of how the radio can handle both small desired signal in presence of loud unwanted signal.

SNR and DR of any system whether it is Terrestrial Radio or Radar are of significant concern and differentiators for end users.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop PLL ASIC.

 

UWB VCO

Ultra-Wide Band, UWB VCO are required in mmW and Radar applications.

Single VCO bandwidth circuitry is similar single element antenna bandwidth and can be quantified between 5 -10 % fractional bandwidth, FBW.

To increase the absolute bandwidth, the VCO frequency can be increased to 2x, 4x, or 8x of the required center frequency.

Consequently, post LO is frequency divided version of VCO.

Effectively that reduces the number of VCO for pulling full frequency range in UWB application, hence smaller ASIC die size, i.e., lower cost.

Octave or its multiple octave VCO resonance frequency helps with LO spurious free or purity of the desired spectrum.

These VCO provide mmW PLL functionality for mmW and Radar applications.

Partner with ORTENGA for frequency planning of UWB mmW and radar systems and VCO design and development.

 

Kyocera Partnership with Movandi

Since early 2023 Kyocera is planning to design and develop mmW gNB required Antenna /ASIC /Algorithm technologies in house.

The road to design autonomy is yet proven to be challenging due highly skilled and specialized ASIC expertise.

Despite already hiring many top caliber engineers for the past years since 2023 business plan initiative, Kyocera partnered with Movandi to utilize their mmW gNB portfolio for the next five years.  Kyocera realized the value of partnership and mmW gNB design and development requires longer run way starting from ASIC and partnership shorten entrance criteria into that gNB market.

Kyocera partnership with Movandi enables them access to mmW ASIC portfolio, such as PLL.

PLL is the heart beat of radio system and provides the clock for whole radio front end or even ADC/DAC.

Comprehensive radio system design is the key before successfully implementing HW, FW, and SW mmW gNB.

Almost every product market failure is due to its definition and features or lack thereof.

Without proper system definitions that can be justified along the way, ASIC designers are blind folded to trade off and appropriate decision-making process during design phase of the mmW gNB project.

ORTENGA has engineering network who works via SoW business engagement under NDA.

 

State Machine, AI, and Human

State machine is a model which describes a system behavior or its transitions by defining its state and input required for each transition.

Perhaps the simplest system is electrical light bulb where state machine is electrical switch.  There are two states, On or Off.  The electrical switch can force the state change from On to Off or vice versa.

Another yet more complicated system is 3 floors’ elevator.  There are 3 states or floors.  Depending on the state or floor level and which button is pressed, the elevator moves in certain up or down direction.

Human is the most sophisticated known system.  Our emotions are the states, e.g., angry, happy, rational, sad etc.  Our response is different depending which state of being we are in and how is that input is delivered.

Artificial Intelligence, AI is another system.  Your question (input) to AI, puts AI in a certain state depending on the programmer knowledge and definition of boundary conditions.  Therefore, the response would depend on that state and your question (input).

Given AI system and finite number of states, the response to your question is finite in numbers and may differ somewhat from time to time depending how you ask your question and initial conditions of AI.

Human state of mind or emotion can change.  Some of us are triggered by external events or words.  Therefore, our response would be different depending our state of being or emotion.

The easiest way to control our emotion can be similar to electrical switch.  Breath in and breath out could be human emotional switch.  Our state of mind would determine how we respond to others’ request.

Human with appropriate state of mind, curiosity, willingness, and calculated risk-taking initiative can discover new things or new ways of doing things, hence innovate and progress.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop state machine for your system.

 

Drones, Robots, and AI

As manufacturing jobs get automated for efficiency and cost control, Robots are gaining traction in many industries.

For instance, semiconductor industry is already utilizing robots to manufacture silicon wafer lots in fab houses.  Wafer yields are function of fabrication facility cleanness.  In fact, the best fab houses are 10000 cleaner than best hospitals’ operation room.

Human operation in the fab pollute the fabrication facility under difficult condition for human operator with bonny suites working for several hours continuously.

Robots are also used for remote operations, such as; rovers in NASA or handling hazardous materials in Smart City.

Drone is another growing technology in Smart City applications.

Both Robots and Drones require 4 fundamental features, namely;

  1. Electric Operational Power and Recharging
  2. Situational Awareness
  3. Direction Finding
  4. Execution of received or predetermined commands (program)

It is natural next step adding Artificial Intelligence, AI, the robots and drones for enhancing their performance.

These features require product definition which is comprised of; Architecture, Antenna /ASIC /Algorithm.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop robots and drones.

 

Kyocera MWC 2025

During MWC 2025, Kyocera demonstrated their proprietary gNB antenna array design.  According to Kyocera, they currently have 16, 32, 64, 384, and 512 elements antenna array.

The azimuth field of view is ± 60°, without any grating lobe above horizon, i.e., in azimuth plane.

The MWC 2025 Kyocera 384 antenna array beamforming demonstration was done using Rohde & Schwarz signal generator and analyzer.   This reveals that beamforming ASIC technology is currently not part of Kyocera product portfolio.   That is why Kyocera has recently partnered with Movandi for their gNB ASIC product portfolio.

According to Kyocera, the demonstrated EVM was about 2%.  Given Rohde & Schwarz signal generator can provide better than 1% EVM, that implies Kyocera antenna array contribute about 1% EVM to the error budget.  Active elements for generating gNB signals would have degraded errors and increase EVM to 3x or 4x fold.  That could degrade SNR between 30 to 27 dB, which is marginal for 1024 QAM for actual field trials.

MWC 2025 Kyocera demonstration reveals that Kyocera have challenges on their hands in three areas; gNB ASIC design, beam management algorithms, i.e., forming, tracking, splitting of 512 antenna array and 1024 QAM target.

Partner with ORTENGA for gNB design and development.

 

Sony LiDAR Sensor

AS-DTI Sony LiDAR sensor is the newest LiDAR in the commercial market.

It is about 1 cubic inch and weight 1 ounce with 20 m and 40 m range for outdoor and indoor, respectively.

This LiDAR can be used for many applications, from private security to golf course.

Partner with ORTENGA to find an application or customer for your product.

 

HW Design and Development

Hardware is the platform which firmware and software can be built on.

Appropriate software features require appropriate hardware and firmware feature which enables driving the that hardware.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop your new product hardware.

 

Slivus Technologies Acquired by Motorola Solutions  

Slivus Technologies has designed and developed MIMO handheld radio using SDR architecture with geolocation feature capabilities over the last 15 years.

Motorola Solutions has legacy radio technologies that used by USG, Fire Departments, and Police Departments.

Motorola has not adequately invested on Research and Development for the past 15 – 20 years.

Consequently, Motorola has fallen behind for new demands and market.

Motorola Solutions acquired Silvus Technologies for $4.4B to continue its leadership as the USG radio technologies provider.

Partner with ORTENGA for radio communications and radar systems design and development, market, and competitive analysis.

 

Qualcomm Investment on Artificial Intelligence

It is no surprise that Qualcomm’s competitors in the mobile wireless communication market have reduced Qualcomm market share significantly and continue to impact Qualcomm margins in that market.

Furthermore, Qualcomm’s customer, Apple is gaining momentum in design and development of mobile wireless MODEM for its own iPhone.

Qualcomm is in midst of the next technology break through, Artificial Intelligence, AI.

Qualcomm is partnering with Meta to design and develop AI ASIC for XR.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop your new product.

 

Smart Computer Mouse

Typical computer mouse tracks on the monitor that is planted and working.

In multi-monitors scenarios, that legacy feature appears to be inadequate as the 2nd monitor or even 3rd monitor has to be found by tracking mouse before it actually becomes useful to execute any function.  The issue is tracking the mouse from one monitor to the desired monitor.  Something which appears to be easy to do, yet in practice that too slow.

Many computers’ monitor or laptop has built-in camera.

In some of the computers even the built-in camera is used to biometrically identify the authorized user.  The same camera can be used to track the user’s eyes and use that information to land the mouse on the monitor dynamically.

Partner with ORTENGA for feature definition, design, and development of your new product.

 

Software Defined Radio, SDR

Radio Communications Systems have many applications such as; Broadcasting, BT, RFID, SATCOM, Terrestrial, and WiFi.

Furthermore, Radar Systems have many applications such as; short and long range, search and tracking radar.

Each application chooses tailored architecture which are typically requires one or two frequency conversions from RF to IF for receiver and vice versa IF to RF for transmitter chain.

The frequency conversion module is needed to convert the data from its original format to transmittable format which is in radio frequency regions.

Frequency conversion block adds significant design burden which means, it can only support one application.  Any system that can work without the frequency conversion block is highly desirable in both Radio Communication Systems and Radar Systems.

Removing the frequency conversion could be done if high datarate digitizer and waveform can be created that allows broad bandwidth.

In any architecture, ASIC plays the key role to achieve system requirements and performances.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop ASIC and SDR Communications or Radar system.

 

What is SDR and why it is used?

Software Defined Radio, SDR is an architecture which frequency conversion are removed from the radio front end.

That means, the radio front end is comprised of antenna, amplifier, and frequency selective filter components.

The objective for removing the frequency conversion block from radio front end is to alleviate the dependency of frequency conversion block on utilized desired signal waveform.

Various Radio Communications or Radar systems require dedicated waveform.

SDR allows the Radio Communications or Radar systems to become compatible to various desired signal waveforms.  Consequently, SDR is desirable architecture.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop your SDR system or ASIC.

 

Alphawave Semi Acquisition Plan by Qualcomm

Alphawave Semi is ASIC IP product portfolio.

As Qualcomm continues its preparation for AI  ASIC leadership, it is acquiring Alphawave Semi for $2.4B.

Data centers are part of AI HW architecture and Qualcomm does not have data center ASIC.

Consequently, the acquisition is another step to shore up leadership in full solutions AI market.

Partner with ORTENGA for competitor and market analysis to shore up your new product ASIC features.

 

 

Semiconductor ASIC Life Cycle

Semiconductor ASIC has 2 years life cycle.

A successful ASIC  product would return the investment within that first 2 years.  After that the ASIC would need to be enhanced either with additional features, speed, power, cost, and/or size.

By then, if this successful ASIC is not upgraded, the competition would catch up and reproduce similar or additional features to gain some of the market share.

On the other hand, if the ASIC  is not successful in the market, it would automatically become obsolete and would not return that investment.

Partner with ORTENGA for feature definitions of your new ASIC, design and development,  or evaluate competitive landscape market.

 

Kymeta Multiband SATCOM Antenna

Kymeta designs and develops Meta-surface antenna technology which are utilized for SATCOM connectivity.

Kymeta legacy technology is GEO SATCOM connectivity for mobile platform, such as; Automotive, Boat, or Yacht.

Currently, Kymeta has achieved multiband SATCOM antenna subsystem for Ku and Ka bands.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop LEO SATCOM UT.

 

GEO and LEO SATCOM UT

GEO SATCOM connectivity is a legacy technology and is comparable to 3G Terrestrial connectivity.

New SATCOM technology which is under development and taking shape for global connectivity coverage utilizes LEO satellite constellations.

LEO satellites are much closer to Earth compare to GEO satellites, therefore there is significant power saving for radio transmission.

Consequently, the LEO UT radio front end does not require bulky Block Up Converter, BUC.

For instance, GEO and LEO BUCs are in order of 20 W and 2 W, respectively, an order of magnitude different.

In addition, the waveform generation and signal detection algorithms as well as frequency selective filters are distinctly different, therefore HW/FW/SW would be different.

Multiband Antenna can support both GEO and LEO, once designed properly.

Partner with ORTENGA to design and develop LEO UT.

 

You have a product but it won’t sell, now what?

Your startup has invested million of dollars and several years investing in design and development of a product that it won’t sell the way it pays off the return of investment, ROI.

You realized or acknowledged that problem now, because it requires change of direction is needed to rectify the status quo and sell numbers don’t lie.

The challenges facing you is time, does your product have enough time before it becomes obsolete?

There may still be some opportunities or time left, if you accept responsibility and seek assistance to revive that product return of investment.

Partner with ORTENGA to revive your new product sell.

ORTENGA will enable you to find new market to add another source of revenue stream.

 

Lumotive and SolidVue Lidar Development Partnership

Lumotive has Lidar, Gen 1, based on LCD technology for steering Lidar beam.

SolidVue has Long and Mid-Range Solid State CMOS Scanning Lidar technology for generating and capturing the return signals.

The joint Lumotive and SolidVue partnership enable Lumotive traction for Autonomous Automotive market, which requires long and mid-range solid state integrated technology while can withstand harsh automotive environmental requirements.

ASIC design and development require multi-disciplines highly skilled and specialized engineering for product concept, design, bring-up, to product development phases of ASIC life cycle.  Each phase may take few to several months at most and the overall cycle could take as a couple of years, for experienced engineering team.

Therefore, it does not make sense to hire FTE for single ASIC development as the payroll cost and sustaining such a large engineering team impact any startups burn rate significantly and is not economically feasible.

SolidVue can get into U.S. market with working with Lumotive in the Lidar space.

Partner with ORTENGA to shorten new product’s time to market by leveraging engineering professionals.

 

Technical Leadership

Technical product design and development is challenging and many organizations fail to define a viable product concept which has adequate technical requirements as well as market constraints, therefore cannot return the investment.

There are 3 distinct engineering teams which are required to make successful product, namely; product concept and technical definition, engineering design, engineering development.

Engineering leadership not only has to be fully aware these teams and their contributions, but also has to maintain adequate partition and resources to make each engineering team functions and deliver to the actual end product.

This is a challenging position and require a technical leader with broad skill sets, and not many organizations don’t have that type of leader.

Only technical leadership who is mindful of the above issues should lead engineering organization specially for startups who are working on single product and their success depends on that sole product.

Partner with ORTENGA for your new product design and development.

 

Technology Investments

ORTENGA provides advises to the technology investors and leaders who plan to either configure a startup or invest in the new technology that market would need.

Clients rely on ORTENGA engineering and market expertise to justify their product, materials, or startups investment.

Materials are enabler of new family of products. That is how out of box product’s concept are formed and brought to the market by an appropriate technical feasibility study and investments.

For example, the PolyStrata material is enabler of new type of antenna and radio front-end subsystem which are low loss and weight while feasible in cost nowadays.

WavePro is another enabler of integrated antenna and radio front-end for compact size and low weight while feasible in cost.

The product definition must be defined in such a way to meet Standards requirements while being competitive in the market.

Partner with ORTENGA for your new Architecture, Antenna /ASIC /Algorithm design and development.

 

SVX Matrix Utilization by Tensor AI

Sparse Voxel Octree, SVX matrix is typically utilized by Tensor Artificial Intelligence, AI to save memory space.

Tensor is multi-dimensional matrix and AI relies large Tensors to interrelate features and corresponding data points for training AI.

The matrices have many zero elements.

To save memory space, SVX stores the non-zero elements and their indices.

SVX can be thought of as a data compression technique or algorithm.

Partner with ORTENGA for your new AI product and development.

 

Edge AI

Edge is a device located at the edge of network and has some autonomous control over connectivity and operation with cloud, data center, or hub.

All wireless Edge devices run by battery and power consumption is the prime concern and make or break for successful edge device operation.

Currently edge devices have pre-programmed operation plan, whereas AI Edge device can autonomously optimize its power vs. performance depending on the radio environment and conditions.

Partner with ORTENGA for design and development of your Edge device.

 

Design Audit

There is a 1x, 10x, 100x rule in design and development of any product.
Product concept and design are critical in product development and return of the investment, ROI.

Corporations have typically a dedicated audit team which independently validate design before implementations to ASIC/HW/FW/SW.

The audit team is composed of subject matter experts in the architecture and system.

The function of the audit team is to look beyond what is simulated and documented for any either obvious or corner overlooked case which should have been considered for the end product.

The audit team is not part of the design team and earn their values within the company to investigate and point out to the management any potential issue before development and taking the product to production.

Anything that is missed during the design phase would cost the company 10x during the development phase and 100x during production phase.  The single dollar that you spend to have the audit team look into the design saves the company 10x in development or 100x in production phase if the company does not cross check the design due diligence early on before implementations.

For example, ASIC design and development are expensive.  2nm CMOS process tape out could be $50M and each wafer could cost $50K.  Beside the cost, the time to address any issue in the re-spin of the silicon is delaying time to market, which directly impact the margin and ROI.

After ASIC, the HW re-spin is anywhere between 3 – 9 months process depending on the required fixes.

Typically, ASIC and HW changes have rippling effect in FW/SW changes.

Therefore, it is prudent to have the design audited independently apart from the actual design team to gain more confidence and minimize potential issues.

Therefore, product design needs to be independently validated by subject matter exports.

And every dollar spent by design audit team is saving the company significantly.

Partner with ORTENGA to audit your new product design to save valuable resources and time to market and make good on ROI.

 

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Courses

Artificial Intelligence, AI and Machine Learning, ML are emerging technologies.

Unit 5 Coding offers unique and effective training courses in AI and ML.

No prior AI, ML, coding, and mathematics knowledge is required before taking these courses.

You can come up to speed in matter of weeks, not months to a level which can engage with savvy professionals and execute your product design and development.

 

Large Language Model, LLM

Large Language Model, LLM is known by many different names such as; ChatGPT or Gemini, depending on the service provider.

LLM is a Machine Learning, ML platform.

ChatGPT or Gemini have algorithms to gather appropriate information online and data curated to train the LLM.

Once LLM training is done, then related question can to be addressed.

The answers have merit and based on online artifacts.

Having said that, the responses can have missed some scientific, engineering, or medical facts that impact the outcome.

In other words, LLM cannot replace a scientist, engineer, or physician in the subject matter.

But in the absence of the expertise presence, LLM can provide some useful information.

Overtime, current beta version of LLM would gain more knowledge by the feedback and learning for the current end users and their related interactions.

Partner with ORTENGA in your ASIC design and development.

 

Artificial Neural Network, ANN

Artificial Neural Network, ANN is inspired technology from Human brain nervous system and learning abilities.

Human brain accepts large amount of input or data, some useful and others little of use for the problem at hand.  Some of the data is accurate and others are not.

Given the same data to several people, their analysis and conclusion may not necessarily be the same.

Each individual takes into account his/er direct experience into his/er analysis, consequently impacts and arriving at different conclusion.

Human brain does not necessarily work fast for crunching data in comparison to a machine or computer but it can connect dots or be inspired by the nature to draw a lesson and method to approach a problem that appears to be unrelated.

Human brain can imagine which can solve new problems that require different analytical tools.

Partner with ORTENGA in your ASIC design and development.

 

Did 5G Achieve its Goals?

From users’ perspective 5G was intended for 3 use cases:

  1. massive Machine Type Communications, mMTC aka Internet of Things, IoT
  2. ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications, uRLLC aka Mission Critical Communications
  3. enhanced Mobile BroadBand, eMBB which is familiar to every smart device or phone user

Here is a related blog for the above applications, 5G Use Cases Decomposition.

What we are typically utilize and familiar with is eMBB and see some improvement between 4G and 5G networks.

mMTC or IoT is known to some extent, depending on the our house hold electronics model, vendor, recent purchase.

uRLLC is the least known 5G application and have not thoroughly materialized.

From the 5G investors’ perspective, 5G success has a clear and distinct definition, which is the Return of Investment, RoI.

The market needed additional speed or bandwidth.  In order to achieve that additional speed, the existing 4G infrastructure had two issues.

First, LTE technology could not provide any additional speed.

Second, the legacy operational expenses, OPEX was unsustainable as it would yield no margin for RoI with the additional speed or bandwidth.

Here is the related blog “The Road to 5G and Beyond”.

The 5G investors were looking for higher speed with more efficient way of achieving bit per second, bps.  These are original 5G requirements and goals before the success.

5G enabled producing higher speed with New Radio, NR architecture and back haul.

Summarizing 5G applications and its success rate, from users’ perspective not all use cases have been fully realized.

From the investors’ perspective, i.e. service provides, 5G has returned the investment while still growing.

AI applications will enhance the growth margin.

Partner with ORTENGA to specify, design and develop your new product.

 

OpenAI and AMD Partnership

OpenAI is known for its first product, ChatGPT.

AMD is known for its silicon processors and semiconductor technology design and development.

As OpenAI growing in market share and values, OpenAI is partnering with AMD for custom made AI processors for AI infrastructure and data center.

Partner with ORTENGA for Antenna, ASIC, and Algorithm design and development.

 

AST Partnership with Verizon

AST is SATCOM connectivity and service provider in L (1 – 2 GHz) and S (2 – 4 GHz) bands.

Verizon is Terrestrial connectivity and service provider and coverage over U.S.

The terrestrial connectivity coverage base stations, aka as eNB or gNB, or simply cellular sites.

Many rural areas do not have adequate coverage and there are some gaps.

AST partnership with Verizon provide call and data services over U.S.

Partner with ORTENGA in designing the architecture and systems of LEO SATCOM products.

 

How to verify an electrical component usefulness for your application?

Choosing electrical components, such as Antenna, Filter, ASIC, etc., requires meticulous investigation before down-selecting for your application.

The down-selecting process is time consuming and requires many resources, such as engineering, test equipment, and laboratory.

Therefore, in order to spend that valuable resources for any advertised device, the following steps are recommended.

Vendors whom support their products, they have artifacts that shows their due diligence before shipping any component.

They should have datasheet which at least has typical or nominal performance.

Here’s what should be requested from the vendor:

  1. Ask for datasheet
    2. Ask for collected/measured data
    3. if items 1 & 2 are consistence with what you are looking for
    4. Ask for evaluation kit to independently evaluate item 1 & 2 for your product
    5. if items 1 & 2 & 3 are aligned with what you are looking for
    6. Ask for Gerber file of the “evaluation kit”

if they don’t have the above artifacts, then they are not investing on their own product.

Partner with ORTENGA to down-select appropriate electrical components for your new product.

 

When first silicon is not successful?

ASIC design and development is lengthy process and expensive.

Most companies without the experience of silicon design and development, if not all, underestimate the challenges.

Therefore, they fail to have the first silicon meet the market needs, which in turn not only increase the development cost but also the slipping away from the window of opportunity.

Here are the main reasons for not being successful at the first silicon article.

  1. Lack of clear use cases definition
    2. Lack of design specifications locked down at the beginning of design phase
    3. Lack of designing to the specifications
    4. Lack of independent design audit

Incidentally, the above reasons apply to other electrical component design, such as Antenna.

Partner with ORTENGA for ASIC design and development.

 

There are 2 types of New Products

First is the product that is to fulfill a market needs. The new product design and development was based on business requirements from the market.  This product would sell and return of the investment, ROI.

The second product is based on new technology and perceived future market. This second product does not necessarily address all new market requirements.  The second product is not necessarily a sellable product which can return the investment, ROI.  In order to capitalize on ROI, the second product must meet the following conditions.

  1. The product meets all new market requirements.
  2. The product is first to the market compare to its competitors.
  3. The product is manufacturable. i.e. the tolerances and design margins can be maintained while meeting all its specifications.
  4. The product is priced with adequate margin, ROI, yet it is not beyond the end users’ reach or budget.

Many new products are fall within the second product category and do not meet all of the above 4 requirements, consequently fail to capitalize on ROI.

Here are the signs that your new product has selling in the market.

  1. The product has been in the market for few years or more, yet there is no ROI.
  2. The product features are being tweaked to fit the market.
  3. The product manufacturability is prime engineering concern at all levels and consumes most of the engineering time and budget.

Partner with ORTENGA for your Antenna, ASIC, or Algorithm product design and development.

 

Why I/Q Signal Processing?

In phase and Quadrature, I/Q decomposes the signal into two orthogonal signal components at half speed.

Therefore, the required bandwidth is halved for downstream processing of each component.

As a result, lowering speed relieves ADC sampling rate for each signal component.

It is also well known that ADC power consumption increases as the sampling rate increases, vice versa ADC power consumption decreases as the sampling rate decreases.

In general, any signal can be represented with their amplitude, frequency, and phase.

Once, the Signal of Interest, SoI is down-converted to baseband, the frequency component or carrier frequency is removed, and the information is within amplitude and phase.

I/Q signal has both amplitude and phase information of the SoI and is the natural way to represent and model any signal.

The I/Q signal processing is easier since each component of the signal can be processed in the same manner.

Partner with ORTENGA in your ASIC design and development.

 

Enabler of AI into the Rural Areas

It is well known that rural areas do not experience the same wireless connectivity coverage in comparison to the urban areas.

The prime factor has been due to the lack of adequate wireless connectivity coverage via Terrestrial technology, eNB or gNB for examples.

Artificial Intelligence, AI is based on connectivity to world wide web or internet.

With advancement of LEO SATCOM and its penetration into commercial market, the wireless connectivity imbalance between rural and urban areas would diminish.

This is due to the LEO SATCOM global reach.

As the internet availability becomes less expensive and readily more available to every corner of the Earth, the AI  would consequently penetrate into the rural areas.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.

 

Reason Behind Testing

When a device is tested for certain criteria, the test results could only provide health of the device for that criterion.

Whether the device passes or fails the criterion does not change because of the testing.

The execution of that test could only reveal the health of the device; it could not fix or mitigate any design issue.

One test cannot reveal all issues.

Multiple tests may be required to validate the design criteria.

To declare a passing device, careful test plan should be defined based on the device design goals and potential issues seen via prior data or simulations.

Test procedure is derived from test plan to ensure the validity of the collected data.

Testing is expensive and many startups underestimate the test cost and its implications until late in the product development.

Partner with ORTENGA to validate the design or existence of a feature for patent services.

 

Project Risk Management

Every technical project faces some risks.

Especially when the project is to achieve technical goals beyond existing technological advancements.

Every risk can be linked to an associated reward.

Therefore, managing the risks has benefit that can be harvested.

Identifying the risks in the project in advance and plan for mitigations are critical for successful project execution and return of investment.

Partner with ORTENGA for design and development of your Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, or Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications product.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering in Antenna, ASIC, Algorithm, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.

 

Justifiable Design Specifications

Any system should be designed to the required specifications.

The required specifications should be justifiable based on the business goals for returning of investment.

Every parameter in a system has impact on other portion of the system.

Arbitrarily requirements setting for any metric in the system has adverse effect.

Arbitrary requirements derail appropriate decision-making process and sacrificing other parameters which could end up be driver for the return of investment of the end product.

Justifiable design specifications enable designers to make appropriate trade off between competing parameters.

Lack of adequate design justifications is number one reason for many product failures.

Successful new products in the market have balanced constraints and design target that are not only achievable but also making engineering sense.

Partner with ORTENGA for design and development and risk management of your challenging project.

ORTENGA has expertise in Autonomous Automotive, SATCOM, radar, Smart City, WiFi, or Mobile Terrestrial Radio Communications market.

ORTENGA has seasoned engineering in Antenna, ASIC, Algorithm, HW, FW, and SW engineering disciplines.