## Technological limitations (cont.)

### Power consumption #### The power consumption/performance trade-off is almost always a consideration for engineers, especially if the equipment is to be battery powered. Using the same example of cellular handset power amplifiers, the problem is not only to achieve linearity in the amplifier, but to do so with sensible power efficiency. At present, approximately half of the power drawn from the battery in a handset is wasted in heat in the RF amplifier.

### Component size #### Sizes of electronic components are of course diminishing, but so is the space into which engineers are expected to squeeze very complex circuitry. Complete wireless data modems are beginning to appear conforming to the now familiar PCMCIA 'credit card' format for computer peripherals. Here, the problem is not only how to fit radio frequency and digital processing into such a small space, but also how to accommodate a decent aerial! |