Microwave Journal
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Around The Circuit

May 1, 2010

Industry News

Wireless Telecom Group Inc. announced the execution of a definitive agreement to sell substantially all of the operating assets of its wholly owned subsidiary Willtek Communications GmbH and affiliates to Aeroflex Inc., a Delaware corporation, in exchange for $2,750,000 in cash and the assumption of certain liabilities. The closing of the sale is subject to certain customary closing conditions. The cash purchase price is subject to a post-closing adjustment if the adjusted net assets sold at the date of closing are less than the adjusted net assets target set forth in the purchase agreement. As part of the sale, all current employees of Willtek Communications GmbH and its affiliates will be assumed by Aeroflex.


SemiGen Inc., a modern outsource for die packaging, hybrid assembly, and automated PCB manufacturing and test, announced the acquisition of Alternative Microwave Resources (AMR) of Amherst, NH. AMR is a privately held contract manufacturer specializing in hybrid assembly, engineering, and testing of RF and microwave modules up to 20 GHz. The company also troubleshoots and repairs various units such as amplifiers, VCOs, limiters, and other military subsystems and modules that need repair down to the component level.

PPC® announced that it has agreed in principle to acquire Evolution Broadband, a supplier of home distribution and subscriber drop systems for the North American cable and telecommunications market. PPC will leverage the sales and new product development strengths of both companies to deliver innovative solutions from both product lines and to continue providing responsive sales and service across its newly expanded customer base.

Capella Intelligent Subsystems Inc. and Innovative Micro Technology Inc. announced the formation of a strategic foundry relationship. The collaboration combines Capella's vision and expertise in next-generation high performance Wavelength Selective Switches (WSS) with IMT's ability to develop and manufacture sophisticated optical micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS) devices to enable the products.

EB (Elektrobit), a developer of embedded technology solutions for wireless and automotive industries, and ETS-Lindgren, a provider of electromagnetic measurement solutions, announced their partnership on MIMO Over-the-Air (OTA) testing. EB and ETS-Lindgren now provide customers with a simple, unified solution for complex MIMO OTA testing. The new solution combines the EB Propsim F8 MIMO OTA emulator with ETS-Lindgren's AMS-8700 MIMO OTA test system that enables systematic and repeatable performance measurement of MIMO devices from 700 MHz to 6 GHz. Following extensive testing of the prototype system at ETS-Lindgren's CTIA authorized wireless test lab in Cedar Park, TX, the solution is now available for immediate delivery.

TECOM Industries Inc., a Smiths Interconnect business, announced the opening of a new manufacturing facility dedicated to commercial SATCOM antenna systems. The new facility is located at 951 Lawrence Drive, Newbury Park, CA 91320, six miles from the company's main facility in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., a supplier of high performance RF CMOS and mixed-signal communications integrated circuits (IC), announced the expansion of its European design and manufacturing operations and the opening of a new facility located in Aix-en-Provence, France. Peregrine Semiconductor Europe (PSE) operations include RF integrated circuit (RFIC) design and engineering at its design center in Aix-en-Provence, France; IC wafer manufacturing from wafer foundry Sapphicon in Australia and UMC in Taiwan; assembly and packaging from Hybritech Composants Microelectroniques (HCM) in France; and back-end testing at partner Rood Microtec in Germany.

AR/RF Microwave Instrumentation has the distinction of having the only commercially available pulsed E-field probe that is approved by name in the new FORD-EMC-CS-2009 specification. The new specification, which addresses the pulse E-field probe method calibration for ALSE method bands 6 & 7, singles out AR Model PL7004 (800 MHz to 3.6 GHz/80 to 800 V/m) as the only commercial pulsed E-field probe capable of accurately measuring the high-field strengths needed to conduct the tests.

TowerJazz, a specialty foundry leader, announced it has joined the IPL Alliance, an organization chartered with establishing an interoperable custom design ecosystem. The IPL Alliance, comprised of major EDA and foundry companies, has devised the first open standard for interoperable Process Design Kits (iPDK) for analog/mixed-signal designs. The iPDK is based on the OpenAccess database and uses standard languages and unified architecture that ensure interoperability among all EDA vendor tools.

The ZigBee® Alliance and the Wi-Fi Alliance® announced an agreement to collaborate on wireless home area networks (HAN) for Smart Grid applications. The initial focus of the collaboration will be ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0, which is the next-generation energy management protocol for Smart Grid-enabled homes based on today's successful ZigBee Smart Energy Profile. The ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 is expected to operate over Wi-Fi technology as a result of the collaboration. The two organizations will identify opportunities to use ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0, capitalizing on the unique strengths and capabilities of their respective technologies. This will expand the utility of the HAN in the management of energy consuming or producing devices, a crucial part of Smart Grid efforts now underway. ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 was selected last year by the US Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an initial interoperable standard for HAN devices.

TriQuint Semiconductor Inc., an RF front-end product manufacturer and foundry services provider, announced it has received ZTE Corp.'s "Supplier of the Year" award. A leading Chinese manufacturer of wireless communication system equipment, ZTE annually recognizes top suppliers with superior cost, quality, delivery and service performance. TriQuint has achieved top supplier recognition for the third consecutive year, while experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 70 percent with ZTE.

RF Micro Devices Inc. (RFMD), a leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance radio frequency components and compound semiconductor technologies, announced that RFMD has surpassed 100 million units in cumulative shipments of its RF71xx family of 2G dual-band and quad-band transmit modules. RFMD achieved the 100 million milestone in less than one year of production shipments, positioning the RF71xx product family among RFMD's all-time most successful product launches.

Rogers Corp. and its Advanced Circuit Materials (ACM) Division earned a distinguished DesignCon Paper Award at the recent DesignCon 2010 Conference and Exhibition in Santa Clara, CA. The paper, Effect of Conductor Profile on the Insertion Loss, Phase Constant, and Dispersion in Thin High-Frequency Transmission Lines, was co-authored by Allen F. Horn III, John Reynolds and Patricia LaFrance of Rogers Corp., and James Rautio, President of Syracuse, NY-based Sonnet Software. It offers insights and solutions on issues that have long plagued designers of thin printed-circuit boards (PCB), issues specifically related to the effects of conductor surface roughness on PCB performance.

Teledyne Ltd. announced that it has been granted AS9100 status effective from 31st March 2010. AS9100 is the Quality Management System recognised by the aerospace industry, fully incorporating ISO9000, adding additional quality and safety requirements particular to the aerospace market. Teledyne Reynolds' position as a major supplier of cable assemblies to Tier One and Tier Two customers in both the aerospace and military markets was the driver in the decision to achieve compliance with AS9100.

Contracts

Miami-Dade County, FL, has selected Harris Corp., an international communications and information technology company, to upgrade the county's public safety and public service communications system as part of an overall communications project for the county. The project will provide the county with a new Harris P25IP (Project 25 to the power of Internet Protocol) 800 MHz radio communications system, and also includes radio terminals for the county to comply with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s rebanding mandate (FCC 04-168). The new standards-based system will bring the county greater functionality on a flexible system platform.

KOR Electronics announced that it has received a prime contract from the government for $44.4 M to supply advanced Digital RF Memory (DRFM) jammers for the US Navy and Air Force. The contract is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity time-and-material award from the United States Navy.

Comtech Telecommunications Corp. announced that Comtech Systems Inc., its Florida-based subsidiary, received a $35.4 M contract from a domestic prime contractor to provide system design and telecommunications transmission equipment for use in a North African government's communications network.

Herley Industries Inc. announced that its Herley-CTI subsidiary located in Whippany, NJ, has received an award valued at approximately $5 M from a major US prime contractor to manufacture an integrated microwave assembly (IMA) for a US Navy electronic attack aircraft.

Auriga Microwave announced it received its fourth Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) award. The company starts a two-year contract with the Navy's Naval Space Warfare Command (SPAWAR) to build a shipboard LNA assembly under SBIR N07-194. The award, part of the SBIR program, is one of four Phase II awards granted to Auriga since early 2009. Auriga anticipates moving forward an additional Phase II contract in the next few months.

Personnel

Sabritec, a Smiths Interconnect business and a highly integrated engineering and manufacturing company providing special interconnect solutions for military, aerospace, telecom, space, test and measurement, and commercial applications, announced the appointment of Scott Pianalto as President. Pianalto brings over 20 years experience in the connector industry and most recently served as the Director of Marketing and Operations for a major connector manufacturer within the military aerospace market. In this new role, Pianalto will focus on implementing an accelerated growth strategy for Sabritec to strengthen and expand its position in the market place.

Compex Corp. announced the hiring of a new Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Wendell Hautaniemi. Hautaniemi will fulfill the role of Vice President of Sales and Marketing by expanding the Compex field representative network and managing the marketing efforts. He has 28 years of experience in the RF/microwave market selling and marketing high frequency single layer capacitors and thin film circuits.

Exalt Communications announced that it has named Perry Constantine Executive Vice President of Business Development. Constantine will immediately focus on building the company's markets in the Asia-Pacific region as well as other international markets. Constantine has over 30 years of experience as a successful entrepreneur in a variety of high tech Silicon Valley based companies.

RFMW Ltd. announced the promotion of Russ Dahl to the newly created position Director of North American Sales. Dahl has been with RFMW since April 2006 and in that time has earned the respect of customers, suppliers and the RFMW team. He has over 20 years of diversified experience in technology and management roles within RF sales, marketing and specialty distribution.

Nitronex announced the addition of a key sales director and strategic partnerships with three premier sales representative firms. These recent sales additions are part of Nitronex's overall strategy to expand sales and customer support in North America. Nitronex has recruited Diane DuVall as Director of North American Sales. Recently, DuVall set up sales, marketing and operations across the US and Canada at Navman Wireless. Nitronex has also partnered with TAI Corp., Tri-Tech Electronics and Thom Luke Sales, three major sales representative organizations in North America, to assist DuVall in accelerating sales and customer support activities.

Laser Services Inc., an ISO and AS-9100 registered precision laser cutting, drilling, scribing, etching and welding job shop, has announced the promotions of two internal employees, Melida Aizupura and Paul Iria in January of 2010. Aizupura began working with the company in 1992 as a Production Manager, and has moved to sales after 18 years on the shop floor. Her new tasks will include developing and overseeing new customers while maintaining the long-term relationships currently held with existing customers. Iria will ensure on-time delivery and quality products to Laser Services customers, maintain that the production process continues to run efficiently at every level, and implement "lean" production techniques and quality control programs.

Rep Appointments

Technical Communities Inc. announced an exclusive government services partnership agreement with AEA Technology Inc., a manufacturer of RF and cable test equipments. The agreement authorizes Technical Communities to distribute AEA Technology products, including hand held network analyzers, SWR meters, time domain reflectometers (TDR), spectrum analyzers, frequency domain reflectometers (FDR) and pre-amplifiers.

MITEQ Inc. announced the appointment of Spartech-South as the company's exclusive sales representative in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. Spartech-South will represent MITEQ's Component division of products that includes amplifiers, mixers, frequency multipliers, passive power components, switches, attenuators, limiters, phase shifters, IF signal processing components, oscillators, synthesizers, integrated multifunction assemblies and fiber optic products. Spartech-South can be contacted at (321) 727-8045 or e-mail jim@spartech-south.com.

PMI and Amplitech announced that Lorill Electronic Sales has entered into an exclusive sales representation agreement for Southern California. In related news, PMI and Amplitech announced that TeraComm has entered into an exclusive sales representation agreement for Maryland, Washington, DC and Virginia. Also, Camponil Electronics is a worldwide distributor of electronic components and will be its exclusive worldwide distributor of both companies' products to bring to market a complete array of RF components since it is their ability to stock and distribute within a short period of time.

Eclipse Microwave Inc., a manufacturer of RF and microwave mixers, detectors, limiters, and amplitude equalizers for the commercial and military industry, announced the appointment of ASPEN Electronics Ltd. to distribute and to expand its customer base in the United Kingdom. Based in Ruislip, Middlesex, United Kingdom, ASPEN Electronics is also a supplier of state-of-the-art test equipment and an extensive range of amplifiers, filters, oscillators and sources, frequency control products and waveguide products.

Linx Technologies Inc. announced the appointment of Embedded Works Corp. as a worldwide stocking distributor for its full product line, including RF modules, OEM products, antennas, connectors, ICs, interface modules and development systems. Linx products simplify challenging areas of electronics, such as RF, by providing solutions that can be quickly and easily applied by engineers of all skill levels. Embedded Works' strength in RF application engineering, marketing and customer-centered focus will provide Linx the opportunity to better serve customers globally.

WiSpry Inc., a leader in tunable radio frequency (RF) semiconductor products for the wireless industry, announced the addition of Takachiho Koheki Co. Ltd. (TK) as its technical distributor for Japan. TK is one of Japan's leading distributors of electronics components to consumer electronics manufacturers and mobile phone makers. With over 50 years of experience in bringing Western technology to the Japanese market, TK gives companies the vital support necessary to make their products a success.

Duplex CSA Ltd., a supplier of industry standard and custom-made RF connector solutions, shielding products and cable assemblies for the telecommunications, cable/satellite and related industries, announced the appointment of RF Connections LLC as the company's authorized sales representative for the southeastern US region, including Florida, the Dixie states and the Carolinas. Duplex CSA has also entered into agreement with RF Connections LLC to be its authorized distributor in the Americas for Duplex products. RF Connections is a woman owned small business (WOSB) focused on supplying high quality microwave components, cable assemblies and connectors.