{"id":203997,"date":"2025-01-18T02:28:44","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T08:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/a-seed-sized-signal-amplifier-chip-could-boost-space-communications"},"modified":"2025-01-18T02:28:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T08:28:44","slug":"a-seed-sized-signal-amplifier-chip-could-boost-space-communications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/a-seed-sized-signal-amplifier-chip-could-boost-space-communications","title":{"rendered":"A seed-sized signal amplifier chip could boost space communications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-seed-sized-signal-amplifier-chip-could-boost-space-communications2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Smaller than a strawberry seed, this tiny signal amplifier was produced by the European Space Agency to fill a missing link in current technology, helping to make future radar-observing and telecommunications space missions feasible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis integrated circuit is a low noise amplifier, measuring just 1.8 by 0.9 mm across,\u201d explains ESA microwave engineer David Cuadrado-Calle. \u201cDelivering state of the art performance, the low noise amplifier\u2019s task is to boost very faint signals to usable levels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It could in the future be employed for both radar-based missions\u2014where the faint signals are the radar echoes received by the instrument after they bounce off Earth\u2019s surface and travel back to the satellite\u2014and telecommunications <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/missions\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">missions <\/a>\u2014where the communication signals coming from Earth are amplified by the satellite and sent back to Earth for broadband access or broadcasting services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smaller than a strawberry seed, this tiny signal amplifier was produced by the European Space Agency to fill a missing link in current technology, helping to make future radar-observing and telecommunications space missions feasible. \u201cThis integrated circuit is a low noise amplifier, measuring just 1.8 by 0.9 mm across,\u201d explains ESA microwave engineer David Cuadrado-Calle. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}