This article is part of the TechXchanges: Chip Shortages and Counterfeits, Defense Electronics, and Automotive Radar.
What you’ll learn:
The supply-chain issues that affected many industries in recent years have also had a significant impact on the RF and microwave industry. The shortage of semiconductors and other components led to production delays, increased prices, and reduced innovation. Despite the challenges, the industry will continue to grow in the coming years, driven by greater use of RF and microwave technologies in applications ranging from 5G and IoT to satellite communications and defense systems.
Nonetheless, the industry hasn't been immune to disruption. As a distributor of RF and microwave components and subsystems, RFMW has a wide-angle perspective of the broader RF/MW market and its myriad of customers because it serves not just itself, but the dozens of companies whose products it sells. From this vantage point, RFMW has seen and continues to see the consequences of what’s occurred since 2020.
It hasn't been easy. First came the pandemic in early 2020 that caused factories in China and other countries to shut down or reduce production, after which the U.S. imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, including electronics components. Then, around September 2020, the demand for all types of components surged, driven by people working from home or school. And to make matters worse, severe winter storms in Texas damaged factories, and a drought followed in Taiwan.
The result of all this has been a frantic back and forth between supply and demand, with prices increasing, then decreasing, then increasing again, and so forth. It’s also caused companies to place orders for large numbers of devices to ensure supply, only to decide later that they don’t need them for some reason. This further contributes to issues that disrupt the supply chain and needlessly prolong the problem.
All of this has occurred as the wireless industry tries to deploy 5G infrastructure, the satellite broadband industry continues to launch more satellites, and vehicles become wirelessly connected. The defense industry is faced with trying to supply Ukraine with electronic warfare, electronic countermeasures, radar, and air defense and communications systems while attempting to replenish resources at home.
Such systems rely on RF and microwave components from passives to discrete semiconductors and MMICs, integrated microwave assemblies, and multifunctional solutions driven by software-defined radios that combine analog and digital devices in a single package.
The defense industry has been hit rather hard by the shortage of RF and microwave components because they’re foundational components of so many platforms (Fig. 1). The shortage has led to production delays, increased costs, and even shortages of some critical military equipment. In several cases, the Department of Defense was forced to delay or cancel projects.
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