Agilent Technologies Inc. and Varian Inc. announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition by Agilent of Varian, a worldwide supplier of scientific instrumentation and associated consumables for life science and applied market applications. Agilent will pay $52 cash per share of common stock for Varian in a transaction that represents a premium of approximately 35 percent to Varian’s closing price on July 24, 2009. Both Agilent’s and Varian’s Board of Directors have unanimously approved the all-cash offer.
Bolstering its commitment to grow its managed network services business, Harris Stratex Networks Inc., a provider of wireless solutions that enable the evolution of next-generation fixed and mobile broadband networks, announced the commissioning of its state-of-the-art network operations center (NOC) at its Morrisville, NC-based headquarters. The NOC was inaugurated by Harris Stratex President and CEO Harald Braun. The center will centrally monitor, manage and control networks for enterprise, carrier, and state and local government customers.
Wurth Electronics Midcom has expanded into a new office suite. The California office suite increased to five times the size of the original space. The new office, located in Milpitas, CA, is base to three field application engineers and four sales managers. For more information: Wurth Electronics Midcom, 1629A South Main Street, Milpitas, CA 95035 (408) 262-4400 or Wurth Electronics Midcom (Corporate Office), 121 Airport Drive, Watertown, SD 57201 (605) 886-4385, (800) 643-2661, midcom@we-online.com, www.we-online.com.
Cadence Design Systems Inc., a leader in global electronic design innovation, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) announced a broad expansion of their collaboration to better enable mutual customers to solve the challenges of their latest custom designs, including RF, mixed-signal and custom digital.
Jazz Semiconductor®, a Tower Group company, and a leader in analog-intensive mixed-signal (AIMS) foundry solutions, and Entropic Communications Inc., a provider of silicon and software solutions to enable connected home entertainment, announced volume production of Entropic’s EN4020, the company’s new multi-mode hybrid silicon tuner. The EN4020 uses Jazz’s cost-effective 0.18-micron CMOS process (CA18QD) and its RF modeling design kit to develop small yet effective inductors essential for silicon tuner products.
BSC Filters, a leader in microwave and RF filter technology, will be celebrating its 20th anniversary by showcasing its latest products and innovations at EuMW 2009 (stand 810). The company, servicing the international defense, commercial and aerospace industries, will also have engineers available to talk face to face with existing and prospective clients about product capabilities and their diverse applications.
Nearfield Systems Inc. (NSI) recently commissioned a NSI-300V-12x12, 12' × 12' (3.7 × 3.7 m) planar near-field scanner as part of its in-house test facilities. Use of a 36" pyramidal absorber on the back wall of the chamber permits high quality measurements down to L-band. This system includes an NSI Panther-based RF subsystem that can take measurements over the 2 to 50 GHz range, and supports both pulse measurement capability and multi-port AUT PIN switching for measurement speeds up to 2 million points per second.
RFaxis, a fabless semiconductor company focused on innovative, next-generation RF solutions for the wireless and connectivity markets, announced that it has filed three patents for its wireless semiconductor solutions internationally and with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. These solutions are poised to replace the existing front-end module technologies used in devices that incorporate wireless capabilities, specifically mobile platforms (including handsets).
RF Industries Ltd. (RFI) announced that Fortune Small Business Magazine has named RFI as one of America’s 100 Fastest Growing Small Public Companies in its July/August 2009 issue. The company was ranked 80th on the publication’s list, based on its three-year annualized performance.
Contracts
Cobham has been awarded US$14.8 M by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Wireless Network after Next (WNaN) program. Under this cost plus fixed fee contract, Cobham Sensor Systems in Lowell, MA, will design, develop and demonstrate low-cost wireless network nodes that support adaptation by means of distributed network processing. A key element of the design is affordability, to allow wide deployment throughout the Armed Services. The radios will be demonstrated during follow-on field trials by the Department of Defense in 2010. The US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL/RIKD) is the contracting activity.
AML Communications Inc., a designer, manufacturer and marketer of amplifiers and integrated assemblies for the defense industry, announced it has received a $2.2 M order for integrated microwave assemblies to be deployed in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). AML has developed the assemblies exclusively for this specific UAV program and will be the sole source supplier of those components.
Teledyne Coax Switches announced its selection by Astrium Ltd., Portsmouth, UK, as the supplier for coaxial switch blocks to be used on the Alphasat I-XL satellite programme. Alphasat I-XL, one of the world’s largest telecommunications satellites, is being built by Astrium for Inmarsat to augment its Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN).
Elcom Technologies Inc. announced it has been awarded contracts totaling $1 M for the manufacture of synthesizers and oscillators used in UAV and other airborne applications. Elcom’s RS series have been integrated into ECM, ESM, SAR, FCS platforms by both foreign and domestic manufacturers.
Micronetics Inc. announced that it has received an order in excess of $750K for initial beta testing with a major retailer for its forklift mounted radio frequency identification (RFID) antenna sensor system. The forklift sensor system has recently completed a successful pre-production test phase, and will now begin beta testing with deployments over the next several months. These beta test sites represent approximately 7 percent of the retailer’s total locations. This order is a portion of a purchase agreement containing an option for full scale production roll-out upon successful completion of this phase.
Aviel Electronics, a division of RF Industries Ltd., announced it has been awarded an initial $268,000 production order for a custom designed SMB connector from Zargo Technologies, a Canadian Electro-Mechanical Distributor. The initial order of 10,000 connectors is expected to be substantially delivered in RFI’s current fiscal year ending October 31, 2009.
Broomfield electronics engineering design firm, Advantage Electronic Product Development, has recently begun the first-phase design of an instrument that will be used initially to help protect astronauts on the International Space Station and in later phases, ultimately, astronauts venturing out on deep space flights.
OEwaves Inc. has been awarded a DARPA contract to develop and demonstrate an all-optical atomic clock with drastically reduced size, weight and power (SWaP) over state-of-the-art primary time and frequency standards. OEwaves will develop the clock with support from the Aerospace Corp. The OEwaves clock will be based on the novel technology of Kerr optical frequency combs generated in a WGM crystalline micro-resonator, recently demonstrated at OEwaves, and will represent a compelling approach to fully meet the stringent performance goals of all three phases of the program. The complete program has a potential total value of approximately $8 M.
Personnel
Custom MMIC Design Services Inc. (CMDS), a designer and developer of custom monolithic microwave integrated circuits, announced David Folding has joined the company as its Vice President of Operations. Prior to joining CMDS, Folding was Product Line Manager for the Asia-Pacific GaAs/SiGe IC Product Line of M/A-COM Inc. In this capacity, he developed key strategic customer relationships that resulted in a substantial increase of market share and profitability within the commercial wireless and infrastructure components business segments. Prior to M/A-COM, Folding served as Manufacturing Manager at Hittite Microwave Corp., where he led the growth of the standard product lines from $2 M/year to $20 M/year over a four-year period.
SRC (formerly Syracuse Research Corp.) welcomes Jack LoSecco as a new Product and Service Area Director. LoSecco will oversee the management of SRC’s defense and intelligence programs focused on chemical/biological defense, counter-improvised explosive devices, cyber security, and decision support systems. In this new position, LoSecco will act as the Strategic Director for multiple business units within SRC. He will oversee technical managers, develop business plans and budgets, and assist with staff management. LoSecco will also participate in opportunity identification and qualification, proposal development, and customer relationship management for the company’s information science and engineering programs.
Integra Technologies announced that Brian Battaglia has joined the company as Sales and Marketing Manager. He comes from HVVi where he was assigned to Applications Engineering and Technical Marketing since 2007. Previously he was with Freescale Semiconductors in a multitude of technical and marketing roles.
LadyBug Technologies LLC announced the appointment of Paul Schmitz as the company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. In his new position Schmitz will hold responsibility for LadyBug’s overall sales and marketing strategies worldwide, and will oversee the company’s direct sales force. Prior to joining LadyBug he served as Senior Product/Platform Manager for Agilent Technologies’ Microwave Signal Generator business sector, Santa Rosa, CA.
Empower RF Systems, a manufacturer of solid-state power amplifiers and amplifier-based solutions, announced the addition of senior level RF talent as part of its ongoing commitment to growth and customer support. Paulo Correa will be joining the Empower RF Systems Senior Leadership Team as the Vice President of Engineering. Correa has over 30 years experience in senior leadership, executive and strategic roles, and is bringing special expertise in addressing amplifier requirements for broadband wireless, multimedia and broadcast applications.
DYMAX Corp., a manufacturer of advanced light-curable adhesives, coatings and curing equipment, announced the appointment of Charles Smart as Director of Engineering in the Curing Equipment Department. In his new position, Smart will be responsible for leading the Engineering Team to continue to support sales and marketing in the design and development of new and innovative light-curing adhesive equipment.
Rep Appointments
RF Monolithics Inc. (RFM) announced the appointment of Jay Stone & Associates as the company’s authorized sales representative in northern California and northern Nevada. The addition of Jay Stone & Associates is an action in the RFM sales strategy to penetrate key markets through top high technology sales representation firms. Jay Stone & Associates will be covering all business opportunities for all channels—OEM direct as well as through distribution.
RFMW Ltd. and Telemakus LLC announced a worldwide distribution agreement. Under terms of the agreement, RFMW will market and sell the complete line of Telemakus USB controlled RF test and measurement products. RFMW Ltd. is a specialized distributor that provides customers and suppliers with focused distribution of RF and microwave components as well as customer-specific component-engineering support. Telemakus is an RF design services company with unique insight into customer requirements.
Norden Millimeter Inc. welcomes MaxTech Marketing Ltd. as the company’s manufacturer representative for the Ohio Valley territory, including the states OH, MI, IN, KT and western PA. Located in California, Norden’s complete line of microwave and millimeter-wave products will be represented. Norden manufactures amplifiers, frequency multipliers, frequency converters, RF switches, switched filters, transceivers, VCOs, DROs and custom integrated assemblies. More information can be obtained at www.nordengroup.com.
Eclipse Microwave Inc., a manufacturer of RF and microwave mixers, detectors, limiters and equalizers for the commercial and military industry, announced the appointment of JayTech Sales as the New England sales representative. Based in Dracut, MA, JayTech Sales is also a supplier of precision microwave connectors, amplifiers, oscillators, attenuators, couplers, ferrite devices, discrete components, data connectors and specialty microwave materials. JayTech Sales has over 30 years of direct sales and engineering experience in the RF and microwave industry. Contact Rich Jerome at (617) 901-6014 or via e-mail at richjerome@comcast.net.
StratEdge announced that Omniscient Electronics Pvt. Ltd. will represent StratEdge in India. Omniscient is a semiconductor distributor in India, working with semiconductor manufacturers, OEMs and EMS providers on a local and regional basis. Omniscient will handle sales and technical support for StratEdge’s complete line of DC to 50+ GHz packages and assembly and test services. For more information, contact Omniscient Electronics Pvt. Ltd., No. 507, 9th Main, Banashankari 2nd stage, Bangalore 560070, India, Tel. 080-26718144 or e-mail: prasad@omniscientelectronics.com.