Knowles Blog

Electronic warfare (EW) systems are an increasingly critical component of modern warfare. They seek to control and exploit the electromagnetic spectrum to gain an advantage over adversaries while preventing them from reciprocating.

As a manufacturer of custom ceramics for thin-film circuit development for more than four decades, we are highly familiar with all the complexities involved in working with these materials to build a variety of circuits.

Product designers working on critical applications requiring electrical power must carefully select components that not only supply the appropriate amount of voltage at the right time, but also help mitigate issues such as voltage ripple, ensure system longevity, and improve component reliability.

In complex radio frequency (RF) applications, “wideband” has varying definitions depending on both the application of interest and the portion of the RF circuit you’re focused on. Wideband can be used to describe the entire spectrum shown in Figure 1 or large portions of it.

In a short period of time, artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) like ChatGTP and Claude have made leaps and bounds in terms of their size and sophistication.

Companies across the world are engaged in fusion research; some are large national and international labs while others are start-ups looking for lower-cost alternatives to traditional fusion techniques.

Electromagnetic interference degrades electronic performance and causes unintended outcomes like signal distortion, data corruption and system malfunctions.

Considering the complexities of routing and signal integrity, it’s more and more common to see multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) designs where radio frequencies (RF) or digital traces cross on different layers of the stack.

In power electronics, rectification is the conversion of alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC). After the AC signal enters a rectifier circuit consisting of power diodes, the resulting raw rectified waveform yields a series of half sine waves with significant ripple.

Supercapacitors, also known as electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), store energy electrostatically rather than via chemical reactions like traditional batteries. Their unique characteristics make them ideal for applications requiring short bursts of power and/or durability over time.

One of the fundamental roles of capacitors is charging and discharging energy predictably. Many electronics applications leverage capacitors to store energy and release it in a controlled pulse of current or voltage.

At the most basic level, high-power amplifiers (HPAs) take signals from the waveform generator and increase the signal level to a higher power.