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The market demand for increased functionality, higher reliability and performance within ever shrinking form factors has placed new demands on designers of high performance designs. The convergence of RF, analog and digital systems within the same design and package now requires engineers to consider coupling effects that were heretofore negligible. This article will highlight the new challenges today’s designers encounter and present new solutions using case studies from collaborations with the world’s leading technology companies.

One trend that has become absolute is the convergence of RF, analog and digital systems in the same design and package. An example of such a device is the SCH-B570 phone introduced by Samsung Electronics. The Samsung phone has an 8 GB hard drive capable of recording 16 movies, picture-in-picture functionality, a 2 Mp camera, GPS functionality and an MP3 player capable of storing 1600 files.