Introduction Numerous thermal management techniques exist depending on the system, application, and power level. For airborne electronic systems, the most direct approach to thermal management would be to use ambient air or chilled air, provided by the aircraft, routed to and blown across the electronics. However, in some applications potential contaminants in the cooling air, … [Read more...]
Critical Cooling Issues in High Power Radio Frequency Transmitter Amplifiers
Introduction While emerging methodologies correctly insist that thermal engineers should be involved right from the early conceptual stages of electronics product design [1], many situations still require thermal analysis well after the introduction of the product to its intended application. Military transmitters installed in the 1980's and 1990's and still in operation today … [Read more...]
Challenges In Thermal Control Of Military Electronics Systems
Thermal design engineers working in defense electronics are facing many challenges, some of which have been around for a long time and some that are more recent. Worldwide climatic extreme temperatures are reasonably constant and there are many military electronic systems that function in these extremes. As a result, there is significant design history available for … [Read more...]
Packaging And Temperature Control Considerations For Planar Waveguide Circuits
Optical Networking The all-optical network has been emerging as a solution to provide higher bandwidth, lower cost systems for handling high capacity network traffic. Due to the inherent limits of copper wire and the high cost-per-bit of electrical systems, service providers will replace electrical components with fiber optic counterparts wherever possible as the cost of the … [Read more...]
Temperature and reliability in electronics systems – the missing link
To introduce the reliability requirements we face for the future, we focus on telecommunication as an example. Personal telecommunication is becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives. However, we cannot take full advantage of the technology unless the telecommunication system is as dependable as a car. Just as turning the ignition key should produce the right engine … [Read more...]