Qmax Systems designs RF and microwave hardware across the span that most design houses split between two companies: kilowatt-class power generation at one end, and low-noise receive chains recovering signals near the thermal floor at the other. Our engineers take a system from link budget and RF architecture through RFFE topology, antenna design and matching, full-wave electromagnetic simulation, controlled-impedance layout, shielding and thermal integration, pre-compliance scanning and conformance validation, to a production release with RF test coverage designed in.
Above a few hundred megahertz the board stops being interconnect and becomes part of the circuit. Trace geometry sets impedance, copper roughness sets conductor loss, a via stub becomes a quarter-wave resonator, and the enclosure becomes either a shield or an antenna depending on how it was designed. We resolve that in simulation before the first trace is routed, because an RF re-spin costs $5,000 to $50,000 in fabrication, assembly and re-test — plus weeks of schedule.
The work runs from LF and HF industrial RF generation at 13.56 MHz, through sub-GHz LPWAN, 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi and BLE, and up to 24, 60 and 77 GHz millimeter-wave sensing. Every program is owned by senior engineers from architecture through manufacturing handover, and you own 100% of the resulting intellectual property at every milestone.
Band plan, link budget, range estimation, noise figure and cascade analysis
LNA, PA, mixer and filter chains with gain, linearity and IP3 budgeting
PCB, FPC, chip and external antennas with Smith-chart L, Pi and T matching
3D electromagnetic solving of trace geometry, transitions and radiators
Controlled impedance on low-loss laminate, microstrip, stripline and CPW
Board-level cans, chassis shielding and heat paths for high-power stages
In-house RE and CE scanning, S-parameters, EVM and conformance testing
Impedance coupons, RF functional test coverage and DFM release package
Complete receive and transmit chains designed against a link budget, with gain, noise figure and linearity allocated stage by stage.
Kilowatt-class industrial RF, from the LDMOS power stage through the matching network to the protection logic that keeps it alive.
Multi-radio products where the hard problem is not any single link but keeping several radios working in the same enclosure.
Radiators designed for the product they sit in, then tuned on a VNA against measured S11 rather than assumed performance.
Millimeter-wave measurement where trace tolerance becomes the dominant error term and the substrate choice decides the link.
The layout is the circuit above a few hundred megahertz, so the stackup and the geometry are engineering decisions, not drafting ones.
| Domain | Silicon & Devices | Bands, Interfaces & Materials |
|---|---|---|
| SDR & Wideband Transceivers | Analog Devices AD936x family; Intel Altera Arria 10 FPGA; Cypress FX3 USB bridge | 70 MHz to 6 GHz tuning range, 2×2 and 4×4 MIMO, JESD204B, baseband to FPGA fabric |
| Wireless Platforms | Qualcomm IPQ8078A, QCN5054, QCN5024; MediaTek MT7986AV; Nordic nRF; TI SimpleLink | 802.11ax and 802.11be, tri-band 2.4 / 5 / 6 GHz, BLE 5.4, LoRaWAN, Sigfox, LTE and 5G NR sub-6 |
| High-Power RF | Ampleon ART2K0FE LDMOS; GaN-on-SiC devices | LF, HF 1.8–30 MHz, 13.56 MHz ISM, kilowatt-class stages, directional couplers, autotuners |
| mmWave & Radar | 24 GHz, 60 GHz and 77 GHz FMCW radar platforms | Ranging, presence, velocity, level and moisture measurement; sub-mil etch tolerance |
| Substrates & Laminates | Rogers 4350B and 4003C; Panasonic Megtron 6; Taconic; Isola Tachyon 100G | 50 Ω single-ended, 100 Ω differential; microstrip, stripline and CPW; hybrid stackups; HVLP copper |
| Test & Validation | Rohde & Schwarz CMW500; vector network analyzers; spectrum analyzers; high-bandwidth oscilloscopes | S-parameters, VSWR, EVM, TRP, phase noise, near-field probing, RE and CE pre-scans |
This is a fanless, outdoor-rated Wi-Fi 6 Access Point built around the Qualcomm IPQ8078 SoC, delivering tri-band 802.11ax with 4×4 MU-MIMO across three bands through 12 antennas. It supports LTE/5G, 10G SFP+ fibre, and PoE backhaul, with GPS, BLE, and optional AI/camera expansion on OpenWRT, built for extreme outdoor conditions.
View case studyThis is a compact, wall-mountable cybersecurity gateway built around the MediaTek MT7986AV SoC, delivering tri-band Wi-Fi 6E with 4×4 MU-MIMO via a fully internal 12-antenna array. It runs OpenWRT with an AI-powered security engine — DNS blocking, reputation filtering, IoT monitoring — backed by 4GB DDR4/32GB eMMC, managed via iOS/Android apps.
View case studyThis is a high-performance software-defined radio compute platform built around an Intel NUC8 computing element paired with an Arria 10 FPGA and an AD9375 RF transceiver, interconnected via an embedded controller and Cypress FX3 USB bridge. It integrates Ethernet, mini PCIe, M.2/SATA, GPS, and display interfaces for flexible wireless signal processing.
Radiated emission failures are almost always unintended radiators — an unshielded cable acting as a monopole, a trace that was never bypassed, a slot in an enclosure resonating at a harmonic, a return path that had to detour around a plane split. Conducted emission failures usually trace back to switching converters coupling onto the supply.
Compliance is an architecture constraint, not a test event. Analog, digital, power and RF domains are partitioned before layout, reference planes are kept continuous under every high-speed and RF net, and shielding and filtering are specified rather than added after the first failed scan.
We find and fix emissions in our own lab, before an accredited test house does it at ten times the cost and with a schedule attached. Near-field probing localizes the source to a specific trace, cable or aperture; spectrum analysis quantifies it against the limit line.
Getting the regime right matters as much as passing it. A product tested against the wrong part of the rules can pass its scan and still be unsellable. Industrial RF generators are a common trap: a 13.56 MHz plasma generator is not a Part 15 intentional radiator, and treating it as one produces a compliant-looking report against the wrong limit.
| Product Class | United States | European Union | India |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intentional radiator — Wi-Fi, BLE, cellular | FCC Part 15 Subpart C | Radio Equipment Directive, EN 300 328 / EN 301 893 | WPC ETA; TEC MTCTE where the product is a notified telecom category |
| Industrial, scientific and medical RF — plasma generators | FCC Part 18 — Class A | EN 55011 / CISPR 11, Group 2 Class A | CISPR 11 as adopted in the Indian Standard series. Outside the WPC ETA regime — industrial RF equipment is not a radiocommunication transmitter |
| Unintentional radiator — digital host, controller | FCC Part 15 Subpart B | EN 55032 / CISPR 32 | BIS registration under the Compulsory Registration Scheme, where the product falls in a notified category |
| Automotive electronics | — | CISPR 25 | AIS-004 (Part 3), the Indian automotive EMC standard, applied alongside CISPR 25 |
| Medical electrical equipment | — | IEC / EN 60601-1-2 | CDSCO licensing under the Medical Devices Rules, 2017, with IEC 60601-1-2 as the EMC basis |
| Immunity, all classes | — | IEC 61000-4 series — ESD, surge, EFT, dips | IEC 61000-4 series, adopted as IS 14700 series |
Qmax-designed products have completed formal certification to FCC Part 15 Class A and Class B emissions, FCC Part 18 Class A for industrial RF equipment, SAR for RF human exposure, CE marking, and UL safety listing. Two of those are worth drawing out. Class B is the harder of the two FCC emission classes — the residential limits are tighter than the industrial ones, so a product that clears Class B clears Class A with margin to spare. And SAR is the credential most design houses never acquire, because it only becomes relevant once a transmitter is used close to the body. Passing it means the RF exposure budget was designed in from the antenna placement onward, not discovered at the test house. Qmax Systems works to United States, European Union and Indian regulation, and establishes which regime applies during architecture rather than at the end of the program. Our 13.56 MHz plasma generator is certified as a Class A device under FCC Part 18 — the industrial, scientific and medical rules — not under the Part 15 limits that govern communication radios.
Full-wave 3D electromagnetic simulation runs before the first trace is routed, not after the first board fails. Trace geometry, matching networks, launches, transitions and antenna structures are solved and turned into exact width, gap and length constraints, so the first build meets its VSWR and signal-integrity targets rather than starting an iteration cycle.
Most RF houses do high power or high sensitivity. We do both, and the overlap is where the value is: the same engineers who designed a kilowatt LDMOS power stage and its matching network also design low-noise receive chains, which is precisely the combination a plasma generator or an SDR platform needs.
Twelve antennas and three concurrent bands in one enclosure is a coexistence problem before it is a throughput problem. We plan frequencies so harmonics and spurs from one radio fall outside another's receive band, then enforce it with high-rejection filtering, deliberate spatial separation and per-section shielding.
Designs are measured in our own lab on a Rohde & Schwarz CMW500, vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers and high-bandwidth oscilloscopes. S-parameters, VSWR, EVM, phase noise and emission spectra are verified on real hardware before anything goes to an accredited test house.
Our recent plasma generator went from a blank sheet to a shipping product inside Qmax — RF power stage, control loop, shielding, enclosure, compliance and production. That full-lifecycle ownership is why difficult RE and CE problems get solved rather than escalated between vendors who each believe the fault is upstream.
RF problems are expensive to find late and hard to reproduce in the field. Qmax operates ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 certified quality systems, with defined internal process steps and review gates built to catch mistakes before fabrication.
A one-hour session with a Qmax Systems Senior Hardware Architect. Bring a link that will not close, an emission you cannot locate, a radio that desenses another, or a matching network that will not hold across the band. Practical and engineering-driven — no sales pitch. We can sign an NDA beforehand.
