When November comes around in Cambridge that means it’s time for the annual RF and Microwave Design Seminar. The event has been running for eight years and is now a firm feature of the microwave industry calendar. It’s organised and funded by Interlligent UK with free attendance offered to all delegates. It features eight high quality technical presentations from leading industry experts and a small commercial exhibition. Coffee breaks and lunch, also provided free of charge courtesy of Interlligent UK, offer an excellent opportunity to meet new industry contacts as well as established friends and colleagues.
In recent years the seminar has taken place at the Møller Institute at Churchill College and is scheduled to return there in 2026. The 2025 seminar opened with a presentation from Rob Smith, product line director with CML Micro. Smith described the HFET technology that CML Micro uses to realise amplifiers for communications and radar applications where IP3 and AM-PM performance is critical. He contrasted the device level performance of the HFET transistors to other semiconductor technologies, highlighting its performance advantages. The realisation and performance of HFET amplifier MMICs was then described showing the IP3 performance advantage that the HFET could offer compared to PHEMT.
Like CML Mico, Filtronic is a growing U.K. company developing cutting edge engineering solutions. Filtronic recently opened a Cambridge office and Amin Amiri is a higher senior RF engineer based at Cambridge facility who presented details of technology developed by Filtronic for low earth orbit and medium earth orbit satellite communications. This included an impressive 400 W power amplifier covering V-Band (47.2 to 52.4 GHz). Amin described how 128 separate GaN PA MMICs were combined within the module to develop with level of RF output power.
Staying with the space theme, Darren Cadam, business and bid development manager with Space Forge described the company’s plans to grow semiconductor materials in space for terrestrial applications. The microgravity found in space allows the manufacture of incredibly pure semiconductor materials. Cadam explained how Space Forge intends to use the space grown semiconductors as foundational materials for terrestrial semiconductor substrate manufacturing operations.
Rob Sloan spent many years at Manchester University where he is still a visiting orofessor of mmWave electronics. In 2014 he founded Microwave Inspection Technologies Limited where he serves as CEO. Sloan’s seminar presentation was on Industry Trends and Challenges for mmWave MMIC Design. He described the very high (> 100 GHz) frequencies likely to be used for future communications systems and discussed the challenges and work underway to address them. He also showed extender heads operating to an impressive 250 GHz, which he personally helped to develop.
MEMS can be used to realise low loss switches operating to mmWave frequencies. Sofant Technologies has developed MEMS technology that can be used to implement very low loss amplitude and phase control at K-Band. Andrew Christie, vice president of engineering with Sofant, explained how this allows Sofant to adopt a novel architecture for the realisation of highly compact and energy-efficient electronically scanned arrays for applications such as satellite terminal.
The U.K. space industry is an important and growing part of the U.K. economy. It includes home grown companies such as European Engineering & Consultancy Limited (EECL) which has extensive experience in both defence and space industries. Ben Kieniewicz, founder and CEO, presented details of some of the development work that EECL has undertaken including a 30 GHz Switch Matrix, with 100 dB port-to-port isolation, a Ka-Band 16-channel beamformer and W-Band (71 to 86 GHz) frequency converter. The breadth, complexity and performance of these modules was impressive.
The final presenter for the day was made by Rob Davis, CTO of Octric Semiconductors, which was founded in September 2024 when the U.K. MOD made the strategic acquisition of a semiconductor fab from Coherent Corp. The aim is to provide the U.K. with secure domestic production of GaAs and GaN ICs. Whilst the MOD’s purchase was aimed at providing a secure domestic production of ICs for its military systems, Octric has also made a commitment to support and expand its capabilities and to provide a foundry service. Rob presented an overview of the history of the foundry followed by details of its two existing PHEMT processes and the plans to add to these including the development of GaN on SiC processes. Octric represents an exciting opportunity for the U.K.’s IC companies – a chance to develop leading edge RF and microwave ICs that are manufactured in the U.K.
This concluded an excellent day of presentations and Oren Hagai, founder and owner of Intelligent UK, formally closed the seminar thanking all of the presenters and the team who organised the seminar.