Lamhroe – a recent spinout of Queen's University Belfast’s Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) – has been contracted by OMMIC, a Paris-based III-V semiconductor foundry, to design GaAs MMIC circuits. The collaboration aims to produce GaAs MMICs for use in a range of wireless communications, space and imaging applications.

In undertaking this work, the Belfast-based start-up will have direct access to extensive research, design and prototyping resources at ECIT’s high frequency electronics (HFE) division where Lamhroe Managing Director, Mark Kelly, is Principal Engineer, and its Co-founder, Professor Vincent Fusco, is head of research.

The HFE research team based there is one of the largest groups of its kind in the UK and Ireland. It enjoys an international reputation for its work in developing novel generic solutions to advanced problems associated with wireless front-end technology. The team has a long association with OMMIC and in 2005 it was designated as one of the company’s European Centres of Excellence for MMIC amplifier design.

Kelly stated that as well as providing design services, the start-up also plans to build and sell a range of ultra high frequency, microwave and millimeter-wave modules. It aims to market these primarily through Amideon – an electronics/technology transfer company based in Limerick, Ireland, which holds shares in Lamhroe. Components will be manufactured in-house to prototype/demonstrator stage.