ALTERNATIVE ENERGY AND THE PROPOSED GALETTA

BY MR ROBERT FARRELL

Sponsored by the Friends of the Communications Research Centre

THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2006.

IN THE CRC AUDITORIUM, BUILDING 2C

ANNUAL MEETING COMMENCING AT 1:00 PM FOLLOWED BY THIS TALK

All Friends of CRC, their spouses and friends and employees at the Shirley’s Bay site are cordially invited. As usual, we shall meet for lunch in the CRC Cafeteria at 12:00 noon. Our speaker plans to join us there.

Please note that this talk will be preceded by a short AGM. Please bring your suggestions for new topics for our 2006-2007 seminars.

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(1) Ottawa Citizen Editorial, March 22, 2006, and accompanying articles.

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FRIENDS OF CRC NEWSLETTER April 11, 2006.

Friends,

This will probably be the last newsletter until August, unless another event is arranged or something comes up that we need to inform the membership about. Thanks for your support and we always like to hear from you. We encourage you to send us letters, e-mails or phone calls to let us know how you or other members are enjoying retirement. We are still looking for more input to our Web Site. If you have suggestions on how we can improve the newsletter or other topics you would like us to include please let us know.

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Future Events:

Thursday, April 20, 2006. "The Annual Luncheon of the Friends of CRC". We have obtained the Britannia Yacht Club again this year with a price of $16.00 per person. Lunch is at 12:00 noon, and following the lunch Doris Jelly will give a "Show and Tell" on her visit to the "United Arab Emirates". If you wish to attend please contact Hazel Baskin at 828-9969.

Hope to see all of the Friends out to celebrate the coming of spring in the Ottawa Valley.

Thursday, April 27, 2006. "The Annual General Meeting" at 1:00 pm in the CRC Auditorium, Building 2C, followed by a talk, "Alternative Energy and the Proposed Galetta Wind Turbine Project" by Mr. Robert Farrell. See enclosure for more details.

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E-mails Received:

Good morning Don.

Thanks very much for the information.

The presentations scheduled and other activities are certainly of great quality.

Sorry to hear about the death of Melba. I remember her from quite a while ago. Time sure flies, I did not realize that she was 78 years old.

Congratulations to the members of the Executive and volunteers involved and please extend my best of wishes to Jim, Sam, Hazel, Hugh and others.

Raymond Provencher

Received on the FriendsofCRC e-mail:

My name is Roger Rak, I presently live in Laval Quebec & I retired about 3 years ago from CAE (flight simulator company). To make a long story short I was employed as a draftsman with RCA Victor Company (later RCA) from 1961 to 1988 (SPAR, EMS & now MDA). I was invited to give a talk about the Alouette 1, 2 & ISIS A & B programs from an drafting & engineering point of view at the Cosmodome in Laval. I was reluctant at first but reluctantly agreed since it would be only be in front of grade school kids.... feels less intimidating.

While looking for information on the internet, I googled 'ISIS satellite' & came upon your beautiful web site. I worked with John Stewart & Joe McNally & other great engineers of that era. I also saw Dr. Chapman & David Florida on various occasions when I worked at DRTE (for RCA) in the winter of 1963 or 1964 I think.... the project was Alouette 2.

Last year I did some clean up of my photographs & found treasures of the ISIS 1 program. The quality is rather poor but good enough to be scanned & put into my archives & to be given to my grandchildren when they will fully understand the importance of these great & successful space programs that these were, for Canada & the scientific community in general.

Thanks for taking the time to read this e-mail.

Comments would be greatly appreciated,

Roger Rak

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Inventions:

A book entitled "Inventing Canada, One Hundred Years of Innovation" was written by Roy Mayer and published in 1997. Two entries in the book are of particular interest to the Friends of CRC: namely, Reginald Fessendon who is credited with making the first radio broadcast and Ken Hill for his work in fibre optics. Louise Guay of CRC has asked if the Friends could help by identifying other CRC/DRTE inventions that would merit consideration by Mr. Mayer for inclusion among Canadian inventors. The Janet system has been suggested. If you have any other ideas, we'll pass them on.

Submitted by Doris Jelly

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CRC Today:

Back to the Future at CRC

Once upon a time, a long long time ago in a country to the south, two researchers called Bardeen and Brattain were tinkering around with crystals and discovered that primitive transistor action could be achieved with the elemental semiconductor germanium (Ge). As time went on it was found that silicon (Si), another elemental semiconductor, could be operated at higher temperatures and, over time, this material became the dominant semiconductor. Silicon, however, had difficulties achieving useful performance at microwave frequencies, and compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) were required because of its higher electron velocities and mobility. Thus for the last 30 years, no self respecting microwave circuit researcher has allowed themselves to utter the word "silicon" in public and, in fact, conference organizers used to invite Si people to defend themselves in lively rump sessions for a "bit of fun"!

So when the CTS satellite was launched in 1976 carrying the first commercial GaAs FET (field effect transistor) amplifier developed at CRC, a long love affair with GaAs started in Canada and today, the Integrated Microwave and Millmetrewave Circuits Project has become the champion for this material, well ….. that was until late last year!

It turns out that the Si people have been busily working away at making things smaller and smaller and have pushed their technology to the point where transistors can provide gain to over 100GHz. It also turns out that they can make the fastest transistors by adding a small amount of Ge to the Si producing the emerging SiGe technology.

We kept a close watch on the improving Si technology but didn’t decide to redirect our research program until another technology also became useful at microwave frequencies – MEMS. MicroElectroMechanical devices have been used for a number of applications such as in inkjet printers, automobile airbags and other biomedical devices but within the last few years the technology has been used to realize the lowest loss microwave switches that have ever been demonstrated.

MEMS devices consist of small conducting structures that are fabricated on integrated circuit substrates and are released from the substrate in certain areas so that they can be moved either mechanically or electrically. RF MEMS switches are commonly made of metallic cantilever beams, fixed to the substrate at one end but are able to be pulled down electrostatically at their free end to contact another metallic line. By this means, the switch can be opened or closed by d.c voltages of the order of 30 volts. They have low microwave losses because the losses can only come from the contact resistance and metal conductivity. To date, some researchers have use MEMS switches to produce phase shifters up to 50 GHz with only a few dBs insertion loss.

MEMS devices can be fabricated on any substrate and, therefore, many people view the future of microwave integrated circuits to be one of reconfigurable circuits built on Si substrates. Radios made up of these chips will consist of high frequency CMOS or SiGe transistors integrated together with RF MEMS and digital control components. These Software Defined Radios (SDR) will be tunable to different communications bands simply by downloading software that reconfigure the circuits by switching in different parts of the circuit, e.g. tuning capacitors and inductors. Furthermore, since the Si industry is very good at low cost, large quantity chip manufacturing, such chips will displace many of today’s GaAs circuit applications. At CRC, we are just starting to conduct research in the Si/MEMS area. Unfortunately RF MEMS fabrication has been very difficult to gain access to but the doors are slowly beginning to open. We have just received our first SiGe chips back from fabrication and will be measuring them shortly.

Another view of the future of microwave integrated circuits is their use in distributed sensor applications. In this future world, large numbers of low cost, miniature sensors consisting of MEMS sensor elements, digital processing circuitry, communications circuitry, a battery and an antenna will be distributed in the environment and left to organize themselves into a distributed network. They will be designed to measure parameters of interest, e.g. temperature, humidity etc. and pass this information back to a central station for analysis. In a military situation, this "Smart Dust" could be spread around remote but important locations and "sleep" until woken by the motion of an intruder, at which point they would notify the central station of the incident or even upload the information to a passing satellite! We are just about to start on a research program to develop the communications chips for environmental sensor applications and will attempt to hook them up to commercial sensors to demonstrate their potential.

So after 30 years of research into GaAs technology the future seems to be one of Si and, if we look back to the early 1980’s, some of you may remember that Space Electronics had clean rooms configured for Si fabrication – these were dismantled and replaced by GaAs equipment. What goes around, comes around!

Submitted by Malcolm Stubbs

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Useful Web Sites, Downloads and Data:

Web sites with tools for manipulation of digital photos:
flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/
Submitted by Bert Blevis

Macintosh users shouild check out http://www.stalkingwolf.net/software/cocoviewx/

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Some recent links to our website that people might find interesting:

1. The Foundations of DRTE by F.T. Davies

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Foundations.html

2. Scientific and Administrative Organization booklet, 1961

http://friendsofcrc.ca/BitsAndPieces
/DRTE%20Org%201961/Sc%26AdminOrgBooklet1961.htm

3. Information Bulletin #13 provides a list of "Radio Propagation Reports Issued During 1944-47, By Canadian Radio Wave Propagation Committee & Canadian Army Operation Research Group."

http://friendsofcrc.ca/BitsAndPieces/InfoBull13/InformationBulletin13.html

4. Ed Halyko's Electronic Ignition System

http://friendsofcrc.ca/BitsAndPieces/BitsAndPieces.html

5. Do Professors Need Keepers? by F.T. Davies

http://friendsofcrc.ca/BitsAndPieces/ProfessorsKeepers/ProfessorsKeepers.html

6. The Ionospheric Observer's Instruction Manual by J.H. Meek and C.A. McKerrow, 1951

http://friendsofcrc.ca/BitsAndPieces/IonosphInstructionManual/ThumbnailPage.html

7. The Scientific Adviser by F.T. Davies http://friendsofcrc.ca/BitsAndPieces/TheSciAdviser/TheSA.html

8. Doppler Navigation Radar

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Projects/DopplerNavigation/DopplerNav.html

9. The Microwave Fuze Project

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Projects/MicrowaveFuze.html

10. The Radio Warfare Project

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Projects/RadioWarfare.html

11. Sounding Rockets

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Projects/Sounding%20Rockets/rocket.html

12. Doppler Navigator Development by J.N. Barry

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Articles/Barry-DopplerNav/Barry-DopplerNav.html

13. THE IMPLICATIONS OF SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY FOR TELEVISION BROADCASTING IN CANADA by B.C. Blevis and M.L. Card

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Articles/Blevis-SatTechnology/ImplOfSatelliteTech.html

14. Biography of Norman F. Moody FRSC by Richard S.C. Cobbold

http://friendsofcrc.ca/Articles/Cobbold-Moody/NormanMoodyBio.html

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Deaths:

Death Notices (02/12/06)
HALL, Eric E. Peacefully, with his girls by his side, Saturday, February 11, 2006. Eric Hall, age 74. Beloved husband of Therese (nee Belanger). Loving father of Lisa. Predeceased by daughter Brenda. Son of the late Cornelius and Jeanne Hall. Dear brother of Kenneth (Doris) and predeceased by siblings Connie, Anne (the late Bill McDonald), Patsy (the late Mac MacGregor) and Jean Paul. A special thanks to the nurses and staff of A-3 and D-4 at the Queensway-Carleton Hospital for their kindness and support. Friends may pay respects at the Kelly Funeral Home, 2313 Carling Avenue (west of Carlingwood) Monday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Funeral Tuesday to St. Martin de Porres Church for Mass of Christian Funeral at 11 a.m. In Memoriam donations to the Canadian Cancer Society or to the Queensway-Carleton Hospital Foundation appreciated.

Death Notices (02/08/06)
SMITH, Ronald A. Owner of Jolly Rancher Landscaping After a courageous battle with cancer at Elisabeth Bruyere Health Centre on Monday, February 6, 2006, in his 66th year. Beloved husband of the late Beverley Taylor. Dear father of Martin (Stephanie), Edward, and stepfather of Tim Norwood (Shawna) and Nicole Stewart (Chris). Loving grandfather of Justin, Caitlin, Samantha, Taylor, Kristopher, Mallory and William. Cherished brother of Kenneth. Predeceased by brothers Frederick, Robert, Allan and Donald and sister June Merkley. He will also be sadly missed by many nieces and nephews, especially Cherryl, Bruce and his first wife Sabine. Special thanks to his many friends, neighbours, especially Donna Richardson and the staff at the Elisabeth Bruyere Health Centre for their kindness and caring attention. Friends may call at the Garden Chapel of Tubman Funeral Homes, 3440 Richmond Road (between Baseline Road and Bayshore Drive), Nepean on Monday from 12 noon until time of funeral service in the chapel at 2 p.m. Those wishing may make memorial donations to the SCO Health Services Foundation, 43 Bruyere St. K1N 5C8. Tributes, condolences or donations may be made at www.tubmanfuneralhomes.com

TRICK, Gerald. March 12, 2004 – Age 76.

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Have a happy and enjoyable Summer.

Your Newsletter Editor,

Jim Sawtell

sawtell@igs.net

613-836-8499