Rugged terrain is a landscape characteristic that has complex and often contradictory impacts on the size, geographic distribution, and economic vitality of locations. The USDA ERS’s Area and Road Ruggedness Scales provide two different types of information on the relative topographic variation of 2010 census tracts. These data characterize both the overall landscape and land where people travel. However, researchers frequently conduct analyses at larger geographic scales, such as counties. In this paper, we describe how the Area and Road Ruggedness Scales data were created and suggest several methods of aggregating the data to the county level. We use correlations and regressions of natural amenities on net migration to compare the suitability of our suggested county-level area ruggedness measures to the topography measure from the Natural Amenities Scale. We find that, despite data loss due to aggregation, county-level area ruggedness measures can serve as reasonable proxies for topographical amenities. However, they do not capture certain landscape features that positively influence migration.

The silicon vertical MOSFET RF power amplifier described in this paper is the industry’s first to utilize high-voltage vertical technology. Operating under pulse conditions of 200 µs pulse width and 10% duty cycle, it delivers more than 100 W of peak power. Operating in Class AB with only 50 mA of bias current the device achieves more than 20 dB of gain and 47% power added efficiency at P1dB compression across 200 MHz of bandwidth at L-band from 1.2 to 1.4 GHz. The DC characteristics include a BVdss of 95 V enabling high-voltage operation with a 48 V power supply. The device is inherently rugged and withstands mismatch tolerances of 20:1 voltage standing wave ratio over all phase angles at full rated power and with 3 dB of input power over-drive and 10% greater than nominal voltage.