On-Campus Interviews
^ Circuit Design and Fabrication
IMJUim ’SR Company specializing in
SEMICONDUCTOR telecommunication products
TriQuint designs, manufactures, and markets a broad range of high performance RF, analog,
and mixed signal integrated circuits. The Company utilizes Gallium Arsenide (GaAs)
semiconductor fabrication technology to produce a variety of high performance solutions for
cellular, terrestrial, and satellite communication systems.
We have two RF design and GaAs fabrication facilities: one located in Hillsboro, Oregon, the
other in Dallas, TX. TriQuint has just over 1000 employees and is growing in revenue on
average over 35% per year for the past 10 years.
Opportunities for B.S, M.S, Ph.D. Engineering candidates at both plants include:
0 RF Circuit Design
0 Process Engineering
OR&D
0 Applications Engineering 0 Product Engineering
0 Reliability 0 Software
0 Financial Analysts
Sign up on our Pre-Select Schedules (Open 16 January) at the Career Center
ON-CAMPUS INTERVIEWS IN KOLDUS: Tuesday 20 February
MANDATORY INFORMATIONAL MEETING (CASUAL): Monday 19 February
www. triquint, com
PERFORMANCE TONIGHT
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Fafie 10
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Thursday, January 25,21)01
THE BATTALION
Cellular Biology
By Stuart Hutson
The Battalion
As dozens of students lined up to
purchase their textbooks at a local
bookstore last week, the low murmur
of complaints about class schedules
and overinflated prices was shattered
by a digital Vendition of “Ode to Joy.”
Immediately, more than half the
students made a simultaneous mo
tion to check a piece of electronic
equipment that, in the Bryan-College
Station community, has become as
common a sight as a used textbook:
the cellular phone.
From the breadbox-size car
phones in the ’80s to the sleek, cred-
it-card-size phones of today, cellular
technology continues to offer the
ability to communicate with the
world. Costas Georghiades, Texas
A&M professor of electrical engi
neering and a cellular technology ex
pert, said the full potential of that
ability has yet to be reached.
How it works
lular phones. This station sends the
call through the appropriate base sta
tion. The call may also be broadcast
by several base stations covering the
particular cellular phone’s usage area.
Digital us. analog
Those shopping for a new cellular
phone may notice that cellular phones
not boasting the catch word “digital"
are in small supply. Phone suppliers
claim that digital service is clearer and
more dependable and will oitei
more options. Georghiades agrees.
Georghiades said cellular phones
work with a network of base sta
tions, large antennas that transmit
signals to and receive signals from
the phone. The area in which a
phone can interact with a station i
is called a cell.
“The cell ranges of these sta- 1
tions depend upon the strength of m
the signal and the geography of M
the landscape,” he said. “When m
you are moving out of a cell, the m
base station will either hand m
you over to another station or, m
if there isn 't another station, it f
will cut you off and give you | I
People dre finding
more wags to carrg with
them ail the toots of the
home computer, and
then some."
— Peine Catala
telecommunications expert
m
Ott - ~|T
the same way that the code is com
pressed by a personal computer before
being stored in a zip file.
This compressed format is benefi
cial to cellular phone companies be
cause it allows several cellular phone
users to carry on conversations in the
place of one.
When this digital format is re
ceived, it is converted back into ana
log signals that are carried to the
speaker of the receiving phone. The
resulting sound can be much
clearer because additional noise
is filtered out during the con
version process.
“With the analog signal,
any interference caused by the
atmosphere during transmis
sion will show up in the
product because what you are
sending is what you are goingto
hear,” Georghiades said. 1
with digital signals, the signal
only has to be clear enough forthe
computer to recognize a si
meaning one or a signal meaning
zero. It then interprets those signal:
and reconstructs what you hear."
Georghiades said another benefi;
of digital technology is that it allows
information to be passed easily be
tween cellular phones and computer
“They are both speaking the same
language, so it is easy for them it
talk,” he said. “This is probably one
of the most exciting aspects forte
future of digital cellular phones.”
Th«
1
an ‘out of range’ or some
other message.”
The base stations con
stantly emit a radio signal
that indicates their pres
ence. When a cellular
phone user turns on the
phone within range of a
station, the phone re
ceives this signal and
then returns a signal of its
own, basically telling the
station that "it is ready to re
ceive and send calls. This signal car
ries a signature or number that iden
tifies the phone.
At this point, the reception indi
cator on the phone (usually a bar sim
ilar to the battery indicator) shows
the strength of reception.
Georghiades said that, when a
call is made from a cellular phone,
the base station receives the signal
from the phone and then sends the
call through the normal “wired”
phone system.
If the call is to another cellular
phone, the call may be routed from
the wired system to a main comput
er station that monitors the connec
tions between base stations and cel-
A digital future
The digital connection betweer
cellular phones and computers
allows wireless connections to thete
temet and email, but Georghiades sot
he expects new applications as boi
the phones and the services improve
“You have a computer chip in you
phone that allows it to act as aconv
i
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The reason for this better service,
he said, lies in the very difference be
tween analog and digital signals.
All cellular phone signals are ra
dio waves, like the ones used by ra
dios and television broadcasts. Ana
log signals use these waves to carry
sound patterns exactly as they are
produced when sound enters the
phone’s microphone. Digital phones,
however, use a computer chip to con
vert those sound patterns into the bi
nary code of ones and zeros. This is
the same code computers use.
Before sending this information, the
computer compresses the binary code,
puter,” he said. “A major hindranci
now is the screen not being ableli
display the information that the ph®
caii receive. But the ability to havet
hologram or something like itonyw ^ ’
phone is not science fiction anymor: ' lllLS
it is a science possibility.”
As for the next few years, Pa
Catala, a telecommunications exp. j
said research is being donetoiittf
prove the rate at which cellular
phones can transfer information.Tte
fastest laboratory speed is 144 kilo
bits per second, or fast enough to tele
conference. The fastest phone-lit
modem for a personal computer is 5f j
kilobits per second.
Catala said the researchers hopete
achieve a speed of 384 kilobits per®:
ond in the next few years. He said!
speed is comparable to a cable mode:
“There is some fascinating stiij
coming,” Catala said. “People c
finding more ways to carry withtk
all the tools of the home compule:
and then some.”
TAMU
career center
don't miss outJ
Last year 1,266 employers came
through the Career Center to meet and
interview Aggies.
V
Hi
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o
tial e
If the
learn
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cal p;
boost
of vo
rent d
future
umbrt
give s
thoug
U
This year they could be
looking for you.
Register with the career Center by January 30,2001
to be ready for
ON-CAMPUS INTERVIEWS
and
YOUR NAME WILL BE ADDED TO A DRAWING FOR $500!
TAMU Career Center 845-5139
209 Koldus http://careercenter.tamu.edu
A place to meet your next employer
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