What will the RF industry look like in ten years?

From smart phones to satellite services and GPS  RF technology is a feature of modern life. It is so ubiquitous that many of us take it for granted.

RF engineering continues to drive world development in many applications in the public and private sectors. But technological progress is so fast that it is sometimes difficult to predict what the world will look like in a few years. As early as 2000, how many people inside and outside the industry would guess that they would watch streaming video on their cell phones in 10 years?

Surprisingly, we have made such great progress in such a short time, and there is no sign of slowing down in the demand for advanced RF technology. Private companies, governments and armies around the world are competing to have the latest RF innovations.

In this article, we will answer the following questions: what will the RF industry look like in ten years? What are the current and future trends and how do we stay ahead? How do we find suppliers who see the text on the wall and know how things are going?

Upcoming RF industry trends and the future of RF Technology.   If you have been paying attention to the development in the RF field, you may know that the upcoming 5g revolution is one of the biggest changes on the horizon. By 2027, it is certain that we can expect that 5g network has been started and running for some time, and consumers’ expectations for mobile speed and performance will be much higher than now. As more and more people around the world use smart phones, the demand for data will continue to rise, and the traditional bandwidth range below 6GHz is simply not enough to meet this challenge. One of the first public tests of 5g produced an amazing speed of 10 GB per second at up to 73 GHz. There is no doubt that 5g will provide lightning fast coverage on frequencies previously used only for military and satellite applications.

5g network will play an indispensable role in accelerating wireless communication, improving virtual reality and connecting millions of devices we use today. It will become the key to open the IoT. Countless household products, handheld electronics, wearable devices, robots, sensors, and autopilot cars will be linked through the unheard of network speed.

This is part of what Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of alphabet, Inc, meant when he claimed that the Internet as we know it would “disappear”; It will become so ubiquitous and integrated into all the devices we use that we can hardly distinguish it from “real life”. The progress of RF technology is the magic that makes all this happen.

Military, aerospace and satellite applications:

In a world of rapid technological progress and political uncertainty, the need to maintain military superiority is stronger than ever before. In the near future, the global electronic warfare (EW) expenditure is expected to exceed US $9.3 billion by 2022, and the demand for military RF and microwave technology progress will only increase.

Great leap forward in “electronic warfare” technology

Electronic warfare is “using electromagnetic (EM) and directional energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum or attack the enemy”.   (mwrf) major defense contractors will integrate more and more electronic warfare technologies into their products in the next decade. For example, Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 fighter has complex electronic warfare capabilities, which can interfere with enemy frequencies and suppress radar.

Many of these new EW systems use gallium nitride (GAN) devices to help meet their demanding power requirements, as well as low noise amplifiers (LNAs). In addition, the use of unmanned vehicles on land, in the air and at sea will also increase, and complex RF solutions are required to communicate and control these machines on the security network.

In the military and commercial fields, the demand for advanced satellite communication (SATCOM) RF solutions will also increase. SpaceX’s global WiFi project is a particularly ambitious project that requires advanced RF engineering. The project will require more than 4000 in orbit satellites to transmit wireless Internet to people all over the world at Ku and Ka using 10-30 GHz frequency – band range – this is just a company!