For the April meeting of the Stanford Amateur Radio Club, we will have an invited talk by Mike Lavelle K6ML about 122 GHz radios. Please see below for details. Apologies for the late notice!
What: Building and Operating 122 GHz Radios
When: Tue April 12, 7:30 PM PDT
Password: 561227
Overview
I will give a brief overview of the microwave spectrum and who's using it, then will describe radar sensor MMIC technology and how we repurposed it as a ham radio transceiver. Next, the radio system budget (SNR = system gain - path loss) and how better antennas lead to greater range. Finally, a discussion of the contributors to path loss and how path (and weather) selection led to a new distance record for this band. Along the way, we'll learn about several radios based on the radar MMICs, including the very popular VK3CV design (about 500 units shipped to hams world wide) and the 122 GHz beacon at the W6YX site.
About the Speaker
Mike Lavelle (K6ML) started out on HF and 2m as WN2ZHL in high school, and then studied microwave semiconductor design in college. As a co-op student at COMSAT Labs he built 7 and 14 GHz propagation beacons for early communications satellites. At some point, he was mesmerized by the new 8 bit microprocessors and switched to designing computer display terminals in Silicon Valley, eventually becoming a 3-D graphics hardware architect at Sun Microsystems and later pushing some more pixels around at Silicon Image. Now that he's retired, he's reverted to tinkering with ham radio, HF thru mm waves.