At Knowles Precision Devices (KPD), we handle the specialty components that go in the systems that can’t quit. We have the extensive resources and subject matter knowledge to innovate around the technical and environmental challenges facing high-impact industries including military, aerospace, and beyond.

As countries around the world tighten emissions standards, the demand for fully electric vehicles (EVs) is increasing. However, for EVs to see mainstream adoption, manufacturers must address the primary consumer concerns: longer driving ranges and faster charging. To address these concerns, EV manufacturers are beginning to redesign their vehicles to switch from the 400V battery systems widely used today to 800V battery systems, which can offer twice the voltage and 2.7 times the power density compared to a 400V system.

The quality factor (Q) of a resonator is expressed as the ratio of stored versus lost energy per oscillation cycle. Overall losses through a resonator increase as Q factor drops and will increase more rapidly with frequency for lower values of resonator Q. However, truly understanding how Q factor is determined is a bit more intricate. Let’s take a closer look.

The Knowles Precision Devices DLI brand of microstrip bandpass filters offers innovative filter topologies yielding excellent performance in a small footprint when fabricated on high DK temp stable ceramic substrate materials. Since our customers use our surface-mount filters in a wide range of applications, we’ve designed our devices so they can be used on most RF PCB materials. To ensure our customers achieve optimal performance and are successful with our filters, we have compiled a number of best practices and resources, which are outlined below.

Knowles Precision Devices will be at the upcoming Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference, the largest global conference and exhibition for optical communications and networking professionals, March 10-12 in San Diego. For over 40 years, OFC has drawn attendees from all corners of the globe to meet and greet, teach and learn, make connections and move the industry forward.

At the show, Knowles will demonstrate broad bandwidth optical networking solutions using our latest high-performance microelectronic components.

Many microwave applications, such as repeaters, and electronic warfare equipment, require increased spectral resolution. This means these devices only need to look at a narrow slice of a given band. Filters that are optimized for the whole band, such us our planar microstrip devices, are too broadband for these applications. Likewise, traditional high Q filters, such as waveguide devices, are often too large to consider using in these types of applications.

With more than 2,000 satellites currently orbiting the Earth, and that number expected to quintuple in the next 10 years, the demand for space-ready components is exponentially increasing (Figure 1). At the same time, the technology needed to control and transmit satellite data has changed from mechanically controlled parabolic or dish technology to active electronically steered arrays (AESAs).

At Knowles Precision Devices, we support a wide variety of industries and applications with unique needs; the product catalog is constantly evolving to accommodate. We are often asked which frequencies we support. While our microwave products excel at higher frequencies, the catalog spans a wide range.

Today, surface-mount multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) are used in incredibly harsh applications, resulting in increased concern from end users over the likelihood of reliability issues such as mechanical cracking. Thus, at Knowles Precision Devices our engineers are often asked if our capacitors offer flexible termination that increases the mechanical strength of our components, which helps mitigate these potential issues. Our customers can rest assured that not only do we offer flexible termination in our capacitors, we were actually the creators of the first flexible termination technology for MLCCs.

An Ideal Filter

The Ideal Filter would have unit gain (0dB) in its pass band and a gain of zero (-infinity dB) in its stop band. Between pass band and stop band there would be no indecision and would transition from 0dB to -infinity dB asymptotically. It would pass only the required frequencies without adding or subtracting anything from the signal and like a very discrete and fastidious butler we would not see it - just its perfect management of the frequencies in its care.