Around the Circuit

INDUSTRY NEWS

RF Micro Devices Inc. has agreed to acquire RF Nitro Communications Inc. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

REMEC Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ADC Mersum Oy (Solitra) in Oulu, Finland, from ADC Telecommunications Inc. REMEC has agreed to purchase 100 percent of the shares of Solitra for $50.1 M in cash.

Vytek Wireless has acquired Microknowledge , a 14-year-old IT training company based in Albany, NY. The acquisition will provide Vytek Wireless customers with advanced training options for wireless products and applications.

GD Rectifiers and Testime Technology are merging their operations to form a new company which will trade as GD Testime Ltd. The new organization will provide customers in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications and industrial sectors with a convenient single source of supply for a wide range of specialist semiconductor devices, associated accessories and custom built subassemblies.

Instem Electronics has changed its name to Instem Technologies . The name change more accurately reflects the nature of the company's manufacturing operations and business development strategy.

MCE Technologies Inc. has opened an Engineering Design Center to support the specialized research and design requirements of its business units, and wireless infrastructure and customers. The design center is located in a new 52,000 square foot facility in Germantown, MD.

M. Lader Co. has opened a new sales office in Huntsville, AL.

SaRonix has opened a new Eastern Development Center (EDC) in State College, PA, within the Innovation Park at Pennsylvania State University. The EDC will focus upon the creation of value-added frequency and timing control products catering to the requirements of next-generation broadband communications and optical transmission applications.

Scientific software developer COMSOL Ltd. announced the launch of its UK operations with the opening of a sales office in the Oxford Science Park.

Gowanda Electronics recently held a grand opening of its new 40,000 square foot facility in Gowanda, NY. This new facility houses the company's worldwide headquarters as well as manufacturing, engineering, sales, product development and administration.

di/dt Inc. has completed its 65,000 square foot corporate headquarters in Carlsbad, CA. The company's manufacturing operation, which began production in temporary facilities in March 2001, has been relocated to the new site.

GaAs-based MMIC manufacturer United Monolithic Semiconductors (UMS) and Global Communication Devices Inc. , a venture funded fabless semiconductor company, announced a teaming initiative to develop highly integrated chip sets for the communications market. In related news, UMS and Multilink Technology Corp. have teamed up with the University of Ulm to create a joint research and development group operated in public-private partnership named "Competence Center on Integrated Circuits in Communications."

Stratos Lightwave Inc. has opened a new Northwest Technology Center. Located just outside of Seattle, the center's mission is the exploration and the development of advanced technologies, subsystems and products for high end fiber-optic communications.

EMS Technologies Inc. has signed a technology license agreement with the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (APL) . Under the agreement, APL has granted EMS the opportunity to obtain exclusive rights to develop and market deep space microwave signal amplifiers and potentially other dual-use high technologies. In related news, EMS delivered a spare high gain antenna for the International Space Station (ISS). The space-to-ground antenna, capable of data rates of up to 75 Mbps, is used for all high data transmissions and receptions to the ISS.

Agilent Technologies Inc. and Corning Cable Systems announced an agreement to provide the communications industry with a high volume supply of new parallel-optics solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Agilent and Corning will collaborate to advance the acceptance and adoption of parallel-optics technology in the marketplace. In related news, Agilent announced that Frontier Electronics Systems Corp. has joined Agilent's Premier Solution Partner Program to provide customers with a broad range of high quality commercial and military applications in aerospace and defense.

Integrated Engineering Software has reached an agreement with Simulation Research to market, co-develop and support the electrical drives and power electronics simulation software tool CASPOC.

Incentia Design Systems Inc. has signed a distribution agreement with Marubeni Solutions Corp. (MSOL) . MSOL will be Incentia's distributor in Japan.

Sony has partnered with Atheros Communications to use the company's 802.11a wireless LAN technology to enable next-generation wireless connectivity in PC and consumer electronics products. As the first step in the collaboration between the two companies, Sony has integrated the Atheros AR5000 chipset into new 5 GHz wireless LAN PC card and access point products for Sony's popular VAIO line of computing products.

Anaren Microwave has received patents for two inventions in the microwave component arena. Jeff Merrill , a design engineer, earned patent number US6292070 for his "Balun formed from symmetrical couplers" and the manufacturing process required for making the part. In partnership with Merrill, product manager Hans Peter Ostergaard earned patent number US6294965 for a "Stripline balun."

International Crystal Manufacturing has met the standards required for ISO 9002 certification and has received its registration number.

HiTek Power Corp. announced that its Santee facility near San Diego, CA, has achieved ISO 9001:200 certification.

Temex has received ISO 9001-2000 certification for all of its plants and field offices. The new certification covers its five industrial sites, located in France, Portugal and Switzerland.

WIN Semiconductors Corp. has obtained QS-9000 and ISO 9001 quality management system certification.

Palomar Technologies has designed and integrated a complete automated line for the production of optoelectronic packages. Depending on the package design and requirements, the line integrates the company's wire bonders and new In-Situ UV Component Assembly Cell, which avoids the problems inherent with "snap cure" methods such as out gassing, very small batch sizes and short work times.

Newark Electronics announced the launch of its first ever global, end-to-end eProcurement solution for BAE Systems . This new system allows BAE Systems buyers to access 110,000 Newark items online through Exostar, the aerospace and defense on-line trading exchange founded by the blue chip consortium of BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Rolls-Royce.

Spirent Communications announced the first customer shipment of its CDMA Position Location Test System (PLTS). PLTS is the first commercially available single-source solution for automated testing of handset-based wireless position location technologies.

PACE Inc. has been awarded the distinguished 2001 Market Engineering Customer Service Leadership Award.

HRH The Princess Royal visited the mid-Wales headquarters of Labtech to present the company the Queen's Award for Enterprise 2001. The Queen's Award is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a UK company.

Peregrine Semiconductor has won the San Diego Chapter of the American Engineering Association High Tech Award for Semiconductors.

FINANCIAL NEWS

Andrew Corp. reports sales of $281.2 M for the fourth quarter ended September 30, compared to $287.8 M for the same period last year. Net income was $20.3 M (25¢/diluted share) compared to $24.6 M (30¢/diluted share) for the fourth quarter of 2000.

Cree Inc. reports sales of $43.1 M for the first quarter ended September 23, compared to $37.6 M for the same period last year. Net income was $8.06 M (11¢/diluted share) compared to $12.66 M (17¢/diluted share) for the first quarter of FY 2001.

Ansoft Corp. reports sales of $11.2 M for the third quarter ended July 31, compared to $8.7 M for the same period last year. Net income was $916 K (7¢/diluted share) compared to $324 K (3¢/diluted share) for the third quarter of 2000.

Superconductor Technologies Inc. reports sales of $1.7 M for the third quarter ended September 29, compared to $1.6 M for the same period last year. Net loss was $4.8 M (30¢/diluted share) compared to $9.3 M (53¢/diluted share) for the third quarter of 2000.

Global Communications Devices announced the close of $15.6 M in Series B funding to finance significant expansion, including a move to new headquarters in North Andover, MA. The funds will also be used to conclude development and initiate production of the company's general-purpose highly integrated transceiver chips for local area, wide area and personal area networks.

CONTRACTS

TestMart has been awarded a contract with an estimated value of $600 M by the Department of Defense Naval Inventory and Control Point. Under terms of the five-year agreement, TestMart will develop and operate a private e-commerce marketplace for the General Purpose Electronic Test Equipment division.

Allgon has signed a $13 M general agreement with a global mobile operator to provide basestation antennas for use in GSM networks in North America. This order is expected to allow the company to increase its market share in North America.

AR/Kalmus has been awarded a contract from the Department of the Army for the purchase of 49 of the company's model M512-20 RF power amplifiers. The amplifiers are valued at $396 K.

Valence Semiconductor has received a design contract from Sony Electronics Inc. for its recently announced VS7001 GPS receiver chip. Sony plans to design in the VS7001 GPS radio receiver and its family of VS7000 GPS solutions for applications within its GPS modules and multi-chip modules.

Intersil Corp. 's PRISM WLAN technology has been incorporated into the new NetVision® wireless telephony devices from Symbol Technologies, which deliver wireless voice and data communications by combining Voice over Internet Protocol and Wi-Fi wireless LAN technology.

PERSONNEL

DMC Stratex Networks announced the retirement of president and chief executive officer Sam Smookler . The company's chairman, Chuck Kissner , will assume the additional role of CEO.

Brian Mellitt , chairman of the Building Research Establishment plc and chairman of Metro-Consulting Ltd., has taken office as president of the IEE. With close to 140,000 members worldwide, the IEE is the largest professional engineering society in Europe.

Palomar Technologies Inc. has promoted Kevin Conlon to president. Since joining the company in 1997, Conlon has held the positions of VP, sales and marketing, and chief operating officer.

TRAK Commu-nications Inc. has appointed Michael Branca VP and chief financial officer. Branca will focus on financial accounting and reporting, tax planning and compliance, budgeting, investor relations, mergers and acquisitions, risk management and real estate. Most recently, Branca was chief financial officer at Reptron Electronics.

Gel-Pak has named Ron Leckie to its board of directors. Leckie is currently CEO of Infrastructure, an independent analyst and consulting group based in Saratoga, CA.

Atheros Communications has appointed Anita Wallgren to the company's Advisory Board. Wallgren, of Gold Spike Consulting, is a consultant to communications technology companies in the Bay Area.

EMS Technologies Inc. has appointed Linda S. Cook as VP and director of AEHF (Advanced Extremely High Frequency) Projects within the company's Space & Technology Group/Atlanta. AEHF is the US Department of Defense next-generation defense communications satellite constellation, which is supposed to be deployed in mid-2006.

Micrel Semiconductor has named Mark Lunsford VP of worldwide sales. He replaces George Anderl , who is retiring after a 32-year sales career in the semiconductor industry. Previously, Lunsford was director of marketing and business development for Broadcom Corp. in the RF and Advanced Mixed Signal group.

Global Communication Devices (GCD) has added Stan Reible as VP of systems and architecture. Reible brings 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry to the company.

Racal Instruments has made a series of personnel appointments. Terry Smith has been named VP of the Military-Aerospace Test Group based in San Antonio, TX. Smith brings over 14 years experience developing and managing technical programs to the company. Racal also promoted Tim Ostrosky to director of sales. Ostrosky possesses over 20 years engineering and sales experience with both Hughes Aircraft and Racal Instruments. In related news, the company appointed John Rosenwald business development manager of the company's Military-Aerospace Test Group. Key elements of Rosenwald's duties include working with the Air Force, Navy, Department of Defense and Mil-Primes, as well as strategic partners such as Agilent and National Instruments.

CTS Corp. has named James K.C. Chen VP, Taiwan business development. Chen will have total responsibility for all CTS business in Taiwan, including the company's resistor/electrocomponents manufacturing operation, which Chen previously managed.

Park Electrochemical Corp. announced that Kent Frazer has joined the company as senior director global marketing and sales RF/microwave materials. Frazer will be responsible for global marketing and sales of RF/microwave printed circuit materials manufactured by Neltec Inc. and Neltec SA, Park's high technology circuitry material business units located in Tempe, AZ, and Lannemezan, France.

Thermshield LLC has named Christopher A. Soule engineering director. Soule will provide technical support for customers, coordinate technical marketing efforts and advise on both long range and near term industry trends.

M. Lader Co. has added David Drake to its sales team. Drake will support customers in the Alabama, Mississippi and western Tennessee territories.

REP APPOINTMENTS

AMCOM Communications has appointed Youngewirth and Olenick Associates to be the company's exclusive representatives for Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico. The company has also named Gamma Opt Sales , Plano, TX, to be the exclusive representatives for the state of Texas.

Micro Lambda Wireless Inc. , Fremont, CA, has made several new rep appointments. M-RF Co. Ltd. will handle the company's commercial and military markets in Japan; K & A Technical Sales will handle all the company's products in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. RF Partner AB has been appointed to handle all products in Norway, while Cain-Sweet Co. has been named to handle products throughout Canada.

Elcom Technologies Inc. , Rockleigh, NJ, has signed exclusive sales representation agreements with several representatives in Europe: Celti in France, Sematron Italia in Italy and Spantech in Spain and Portugal.

WEB SITES

Test engineers can now download a free program from the Giga-tronics Inc. Web site, www.gigatronics.com, that will automatically evaluate the power measurement accuracy of the company's power meters and sensors under a full range of test conditions.

Vari-L offers a Web site, www.vari-l.com, that provides design engineers datasheets and application notes for the company's catalog Commercial Signal Source, Hi-Rel Signal Source and RF Passive Component product lines. The site also offers recent press releases, company information and career opportunities.

TestMart announced that the e-commerce marketplace at www.navicpmart.com is now live and electronically processing General Purpose Electronic Test Equipment orders for the Department of Defense Naval Inventory Control Point. Authorized buyers are now able to purchase from a catalog of high demand products from more than 30 key test and measurement suppliers at a savings of up to 60 percent off of list price.

Mifa has introduced an interactive e-business solution called "The Waveguide Shop." This feature offers visitors to the site, www.mifa.nl, the ability to view company catalogs, order products on-line and track existing orders.

Zetex has launched an all new Web site that features multi-level search facilities that greatly simplify analog semiconductor device solution. Located at www.zetex.com, the site covers the company's entire range of integrated, discrete and combination products. Furthermore, application notes, data sheets and design notes are available as downloadable documents.