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We have provided many different consulting services for our clients. Below is an archive of some of the hardware designs and projects we have worked on. This information is enclosed to provide you with a sampling of our broad base of experience and capabilities, but does not include all our capabilities. If you have any questions, please contact us and let us discuss how we can help you and your company.
Great News! R. A. Wood Associates has received approval by Lockheed Martin for ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System (2nd Party survey), and Electrostatic Discharge Control (ESD). This puts us in a better position to deliver the highest quality products to our customers. Thanks to everyone involved who helped to make this become a reality! Bob Wood
| We keep improving and adding to our lineup of available equalizer products. We currently have over 155 low loss equalizers designs with more to come. Each design is unique with a range of choices of various slopes, along with a mixture of different frequency bands from 5 kHz to 20 GHz. We can provide a selection of male and female combinations of connectors on the inputs and outputs. We'll keep updating the equalizer main page as we get more designs completed, so feel free to stop by again, or ask us if we don't have what you are looking for. |  |
We have officially released a new line of SimpleCycle crystal oscillators. These are temperature compenstated crystal osciillators in a very small package with +5 Volt DC in, and an SMA output connector. The key features include:
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We will be working to supply these with very quick turnarounds. For more information see our SimpleCycle Oscillator page, or contact us.
We haven't posted in a while. It's because we've been crazy busy. Our newest product, the RCT0017 WB Tuner and Quad Converter, has been under development over the past 2 years, and is now available. We've designed this from the ground up to meet state of the art high input compression point, low phase noise, fast tuning speed, wide dynamic range, and wide instantaneous bandwidth requirements. A quick overview of the specifications:
A brief data sheet can be downloaded from this link |  |
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We designed and built for production a 4 channel Quad Converter.
Our Quad Converter design features:
This is a very complex design with very high density surface mount
assemblies. Surface mount assemblies are built using pick and
place machines at a contract manufacturer. Automated RF test rack,
fixtures and software has been designed at R. A. Wood Associates.
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| A LB RF Receiver Simulator was designed to simulate the RF front end of a submarine periscope subsystem. The noise figure, gains, and dynamic ranges were designed to simulate the actual subsystem. The amplifiers were custom designed and equalized by R. A. Wood Associates to cover a wide bandwidth from ~DC to 3 GHz. A variable attenuator allowed the output noise floor to be adjusted in 1 dB steps. |
We designed and built a 2nd (different) Automated RF Test Station
for NAVSEA NSWC, which was delivered to Crane, Indiana. This Test
Station contains many state of the art features and equipment,
including:
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We've released some new equalizer designs in the past few months:
For more information and test results, visit or "Equalizers on Demand" WWW page. If you don't see a design that fits your needs, please call us and we'll try to develop a design that meets your requirements. Thanks for all your support, equalizer users! |  |
We delivered a Test Station to NAVSEA Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Crane, Indiana. The Test Station contains many state of the art features, including:
This was a very exciting project, and we really enjoyed working with our customer on this program. The complete project was delivered within 7 months of the order being placed. Great job everybody! |  |
One of our customers had a need for a mmW equalizer to help offset
a 7 dB negative slope across a 26.0 to 40.0 GHz band. We looked
far and wide to see if there were any available components out
there in the industry that we could buy as an off-the-shelf part,
or have someone develop for us.
We could not find any available parts. So we took on the task
ourselves to design a mmW equalizer with a 7 dB positive gain
slope. This is just another example of how we can break new ground
to come up with designs that are needed by our customers when they
are not otherwise available.
The equalizer was installed in the system, and the 7 dB negative
slope was flattened out. See before and after pictures below.
Another exciting success story!
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| System RF Path Gain before equalization (26-40 GHz): | System RF Path Gain after equalization (26-40 GHz): |
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Our 10th and 11th LB RF modules, containing our Extreme BW RF amplifiers, have been built, and tested, ready for delivery to our customer. These modules will be used in our customer's systems, which will be installed on board Navy vessels. |  |
We've delivered the third Electronics Support Switching Uint (ESSU) for one of our customers (ahead of schedule!). This was another set of hardware slated to to be installed on a Navy Vessel. The ESSU is shown here with the cover removed, looking from the back. All RF components are mounted on both sides of a center RF plate. Shown are RF amplfiers, equalizers, attenuators, RF switches, cabling, FPGA card, and rear connectors (21 RF connectors, 12 video/75 ohm connectors, Audio, Power). For additional information, please visit our ESSU information page. | 
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R. A. Wood Associates has been awarded a contract from Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division. The contract involves designing and delivering an automated test rack consisting of:
We are fortunate to be able to work with Viewpoint Systems on this contract. This contract was won on a competitive bid, and our solution was selected out of many other submissions. We are very excited about the opportunity to work with NSWC Crane Division! | 
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JBU RF Plate SN3 was delivered to our customer (ahead of
schedule!). The RF Module was designed to provide wideband gain,
equalization, and Built-in-test (BIT) injection between two very
long RF cable runs (between an Antenna Assembly and below decks
receivers). The gain and equalization was needed to preserve the
RF path noise figure and dynamic range performance through the
long cable run.
All RF test data (gain, slope, flatness, return loss, input 1 dB
compression point, and noise figure) was collected using our in
house test equipment and our in house automated RF test software
(Painless Extraction, Painless Extraction Noise Figure, and
RFSpecTest). Mechanical parts were fabricated externally from our
SolidWorks created mechanical drawings, and chem-film treated with
Iridite (MIL-C-5541E Class 3) to prevent corrosion.
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We've delivered our fourth RF Receiver Simulator, and our 6th of a
family of Receiver Simulator products. The simulators are designed
to represent the RF front end (noise figure, gain compression point,
and intercept point) of a complex EW system, to allow testing,
verification and validation of the EW system back end, without
requiring the expensive front end components. If you have a need for one of these types of products, please contact us. |
We've extended the frequency range of our extreme BW RF Amplifier from 5 KHz to the upper end of 3 GHz. We customized the input equalizer to create a very flat gain response across the entire band. This amplfier was used for a direct laser modulation application. The measured performance was:
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More information is available from our Extreme BW RF Amplifier page. Let us know if you are interested in this product line! Bob Wood.
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We've delivered another RF Receiver simulator to one of our
customers. This unit simulates the RF front end characterisitcs
(noise figure, gain, dynamic range) of an EW system, so the customer
can connect it to their back end system and validate full system end
to end performance (system sensitivity, etc), without requiring the
expensive front end components. Frequency coverage goes from 10 MHz
to 40 GHz on this unit. If you have a need for one of these types of products, please contact us. |  |
We've been very busy this past year. Over the last 8 months, our super qualified staff have accomplished the following:
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Using our Extreme BW RF amplifiers, we designed, built, and tested
7 LB RF amplifier modules for one of our customers. Our customer's
original vendor failed to deliver their amplifier products and
meet the requirements. So we stepped in and helped them meet their
delivery schedules. These modules were made to "drop in" to our
customer's modules.
These modules will be used in our customer's systems, which will be installed on board Navy vessels. A full set of test data was provided for each LB RF Amplifier Module delivered. Our automated RF test software (RFSpecTest and Painless Extraction) helped to quickly capture the test results and create the test reports. |  |
Another great effort resulting in a great potential product!
R. A. Wood Associates designed and built a Direction Finding (DF) Antenna Assembly for one of our customers. The Assembly was designed, built, tested, and delivered in less than 6 months. The requirement was to develop an antenna assembly that could be used as a front end in front of a pair of COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) receiver boards. The DF Antenna Assembly provided the capability to supply Direction Finding (DF) for incoming signals or emitters. The DF Antenna Assembly included:
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Hello Everybody
We've enhanced our portfolio of equalizer designs with new high frequency equalizers, with low losses all the way up to 18 GHz!
We also now have a smaller package design (M02 package).
We can now offer low loss, high linearity equalizers over the following frequency bands:
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R. A. Wood Associates designed, built, tested, and delivered 2 Electronics Support Switching Units (ESSU) to one of our customers. This was another set of hardware slated to to be installed on a Navy Vessel. The ESSU was designed to be installed between the front end (Antennas, RF amplification switching, filtering) and back end (RF processing) of a complex RF/Microwave system. The purpose of the ESSU was to allow a second front end (RF Subsystem 2) to be switched into the same back end, to make use of the RF signal processing in the back end. Some of the major components in the ESSU are as follows:
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We've taken a challenge and come out on top again! We've developed an Extreme BW RF Amplifier, providing ~22 dB gain, and high dynamic range (~36 dBm Third Order Output Intercept Point) over the frequency band of 5 KHz to 2 GHz. An integrated RF package of 1.9" L X 1.3" W X 0.4" H was developed for the Extreme BW RF Amplifier and also included:
The input Equalizer and output Power Divider can be "zeroed out" if not needed. The input Equalizer can be used to compensate for the amplifier slope and/or passive loss slopes. We can provide a variety of RF slopes in the input Equalizer. More information is available from our Extreme BW RF Amplifier page. Let us know if you are interested in this product line! Bob Wood. |  |
R. A. Wood Associates designed, built and tested and delivered 2
"JBU RF PLate" Assemblies. These RF assemblies were used to
provide wideband gain, equalization, and Built-in-test (BIT)
injection between two very long RF cable runs (between an Antenna
Assembly and below decks receivers). The gain and equalization was
needed to preserve the RF path noise figure and dynamic range
performance through the long cable run.
The exciting part for us is that this design will actually be
deployed on a US Naval vessel. This is our first of several LRU's
that were designed to be used on a US Naval vessel.
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Greetings! We've been very busy working on creating a new series of RF/microwave products: "Equalizers on Demand". "Equalizers on Demand" are wideband, low loss frequency equalizers made to provide a positive gain slope from the lower frequency to the upper frequency. These equalizers are designed to flatten out slope caused by long cables or other passive losses, or amplifier negative gain slopes. We have developed a wide series of equalizers with various slopes covering the following frequency bands:
Equalizers are very important to help your system obtain the best dynamic range performance. You can use them to flatten out a negative gain slope to reduce gain tolerances/differences before going into high dynamic range amplifiers.
We're hoping this series of products create a new paradigm in RF performance. We can provide these very quickly to help correct slope in an RF path, "Equalizers on Demand" can trim RF path slopes almost as easily as attenuators can be used to adjust nominal gains.
These products were developed internally to fill a void in the RF industry. It's very difficult to quickly order a fixed slope equalizer to correct an excessive sloped RF path without waiting 10-12 weeks for delivery. Our losses at the high frequency are the lowest available in the industry. We've searched far and wide to find products with the characteristics of our products, but could not find vendors to supply them. So we bit the bullet (many bullets) and worked on these designs ourselves.
We've worked very hard to make these products easily producible. We can deliver these very quickly (typically 2-4 weeks). If you pre-order an equalizer in a certain frequency band, and then let us know what slope you need, we can most likely incorporate the slope and deliver a tested equalizer within 1-2 weeks.
For more information for the current products and designs available, please visit our "Equalizers on Demand" product page.
We hope we can help improve your RF/Microwave system performance with these products! Bob Wood
Hello Everybody
We just delivered our latest product: a multi-channel RF/Microwave Receiver Simulator. This device simulates the RF front end of an ESM (Electronic Support Measures) system. The simulator matched the noise figure, gain and dynamic range of the RF front end. The simulator contained 9 channels of RF bands covering from 10 MHz all the way up to 40 GHz.
Some pictures of the RF Receiver Simulator are shown below. The RF Receiver Simulator is a 3U rack-mounted assembly mounted in a protective roll-away cart for ease of transportability.
'We just delivered an EW Receiver Simulator to one of our customers. The simulator provided the simulated RF and microwave front end performance of an EW (Early Warning) Receiver subsystem. Our simulator allows the EW Receiver/Processor to be evaluated without requiring the actual front end system. The simulator was designed to match the system front end noise figure, gain, and dynamic range. This also represents a new modular and mechanical design for us.
A block diagram of one channel of the EW Receiver Simulator is shown below:
On September 15 2006, R. A. Wood Associates delivered the first two of 15 complete Integrated RF Test Racks. The Integrated RF Test Rack provided a complete solution for complete automated testing of 7 RF/Digital modules. All equipment was controlled through GPIB interfaces. All automated test software was written in National Instruments LabVIEW by R. A. Wood Associates. RFSpecTest was used in "script" mode to perform most of the RF measurements. The rack consisted of:
The full rack was designed to be a comfortable testing environment, as well as easy to maintain. Equipment is easy to remove if needed with minimal interference to other equipment.
More information about the Integrated RF Test Rack is available from this link.
We designed and developed a Computer Automated RF Test Station for one of our customers. The Computer Automated RF Test Station is capable of testing 7 different RF and RF/digital modules, but is flexible enough to test many possible RF modules. The Test Stations were built and tested at R. A. Wood Associates. Computer automated test software was also developed to test the 7 different modules using LabVIEW. RFSpecTest was used in a "scripted" mode to perform all RF tests. More information about the Computer Automated RF Test Station is available at this link.
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