In Memory of...
Microwave Journal's co-founder and first editor, Ted Saad passed away January 25th, 2011. In addition to putting his stamp on this magazine, Saad had a long and influential career that touched many in the industry and microwave technical society. Saad worked at MIT Radlab between 1942 and 1945, studying low pressure, high power waveguide components for the war effort. After the war, he and others, including Dr. Henry Riblet, formed the Microwave Development Lab (MDL) as well as Sage Labs in 1955. In 1958, he and William Bazzy launched Microwave Journal, and later Artech House. Saad was one of the organizers and first chairman of the Boston chapter of the PGMTT and the editor of The Transactions publications. Saad was a life fellow of the IEEE MTT-S. Look for the Microwave Journal remembrance of Ted Saad, coming in March.
Industry News
Raytheon Co. announced that it has signed a definitive acquisition agreement with Applied Signal Technology Inc., a leader in the collection and processing of communications signals to support tactical and strategic intelligence missions. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies. Under the terms of the agreement, Raytheon will commence a tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of Applied Signal Technology Inc. common stock at a price of $38.00 per share in cash for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $490 M, net of cash acquired. Pending the successful completion of the tender offer, the transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011 subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. The transaction is not expected to have a material effect on Raytheon's earnings.
Mercury Computer Systems Inc., a trusted ISR subsystems provider, announced that it has completed the acquisition of LNX Corp. Based in Salem, NH, LNX designs and builds next generation RF receivers for signals intelligence, communications intelligence as well as electronic attack applications. Under the terms of a stock purchase agreement, Mercury acquired LNX for an all-cash purchase price of $31.0 M plus an earn-out of up to $5.0 M payable upon the achievement of financial targets in calendar years 2011 and 2012. The acquisition was funded with cash on hand, and is expected to be neutral to modestly accretive within the first year.
Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., a provider of high performance radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits (IC), and Soitec (Euronext Paris), a supplier of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and advanced solutions for the electronics and energy industries, announced the joint development and ramp in production of a new bonded silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) substrate that has been qualified for use in manufacturing Peregrine's next-generation STeP5 UltraCMOS™ RF IC semiconductors.
RFMW Ltd. announced the opening of direct sales and distribution offices in Europe. RFMW is a specialized distributor that uniquely provides customers and suppliers with focused distribution of RF/microwave components as well as customer specific component engineering support.
The Power Distribution Systems (PDS) Division of Rogers Corp. has been awarded International Railway Industry Standard (IRIS) certification for its laminated busbar manufacturing facility located in the Suzhou Industrial Park in Jiangsu Province, China. The Rogers PDS-China manufacturing facility is the first laminated busbar manufacturer in China to obtain IRIS certification. The IRIS certification, developed by the Association of the European Railway Industry (UNIFE), has been modeled on similar quality standards already in place in the aerospace and automotive industries. It complements the internationally recognized ISO 9001 quality standard for rail specific requirements.
Anritsu Co. announced that it has received a prestigious 4GWE Wireless LTE Visionary Award from Technology Marketing Corp. (TMC), a global media company, and Crossfire Media. Anritsu was the only award winner that was recognized for multiple LTE products, as its MT8820C Radio Communications Analyzer, ME7873L LTE RF Conformance Test System and MT8221B BTS Master Handheld Base Station Analyzer were acknowledged as three of the leading LTE test solutions.
Agilent Technologies Inc. announced its Infiniium 90000 X-Series oscilloscopes was named Test Product of the Year at Elektra 2010, the European Electronics Industry Awards. The Elektra awards are decided by an independent panel of judges focused on 16 award categories. The event, considered an annual highpoint within the electronics industry, recognizes the achievements of individuals and companies across Europe. The awards are designed to promote best practices in key areas such as innovation, sales growth and employee motivation.
Contracts
Giga-tronics Inc. announced that it has received orders in excess of $4.8 M to supply microwave test equipment for the automation of production at contract manufacturers in China. The products supplied are part of Giga-tronics' microwave signal switching family. These orders are expected to ship this fiscal year.
Canada's rural population will keep in step with—and perhaps a little in front of—the rest of the country thanks to an aggressive 4G rollout timetable being implemented by Barrett Xplore Inc. The network will be powered by DragonWave Inc.'s Horizon Compact and Horizon Quantum wireless backhaul technology. The two companies have signed a multimillion-dollar contract that will help Barrett Xplore—already rural Canada's leading broadband service provider—into a 4G broadband services offering, by delivering three to ten times the capacity of today's High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) service.
Wireless Telecom Group Inc. (WTG) announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Boonton Electronics, has been awarded a contract with the Department of the United States Navy to supply Boonton's 4500B RF Peak Power Meter in support of a Naval Sea Systems Command project. The total value of the contract is approximately $1.5 M and a considerable portion of the order is expected to be realized over the next two years.
Herley Industries Inc. announced that its Herley Lancaster division has received an award valued at approximately $1.3 M from a major US defense contractor. The Lancaster, PA, division will manufacture complex microwave hardware for an electronic attack aircraft for the US Navy. In related news, Herley announced that Herley Lancaster has recently been awarded an order for more than $1 M by the Japanese Ministry of Defense. This award is for the supply of high performance antennas to be installed in reconnaissance fighter aircraft operated by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF).
TriQuint Semiconductor Inc., an RF front-end product manufacturer and foundry services provider, announced that handset manufacturer, Samsung, selected TriQuint for its complete 3G RF front-end for its new Samsung Galaxy Tab. This is in addition to Samsung choosing TriQuint's total 3G RF front-end solution for its flagship smartphone series, Galaxy S.
VTI Instruments Corp. announced that it has been selected to deliver the dynamic signal analysis (DSA) instrumentation solution for NASA Plum Brook's Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility (RATF). RATF houses the world's largest Space Environment Simulation Chamber and will use VTI's VT1432B high performance digitizer plus DSP, along with integrated arbitrary waveform generation (ARB) capability, as part of m+p international's Digital Acoustic Control System (DACS). The DACS will be used to configure and control servo-hydraulic and electromagnetic modulators, and acquire data from up to 24 individual microphones.
RF Micro Devices Inc. (RFMD) announced that Samsung has selected three highly integrated RFMD® components to deliver superior WiFi connectivity in the recently-introduced GALAXY Tab™ Android tablet.
New Market Entries
A.T. Wall Co., a supplier of superior precision tubing and fabricated metal components, announced that it provides flexible waveguide and waveguide components to the international market. Products include seamless flexible waveguide, flexible twistable waveguide, flexible waveguide and semi flexible waveguide. In addition to tubing, the company now offers components for all these flexible waveguide types.
Richardson Electronics Ltd. announced that it has once again teamed with Scintera® Inc. to bring the newly enhanced SC1887-03 Adaptive RF Power Amplifier Linearizer (RFPAL) to the UHF broadcast TV transmitter market. This fully adaptive, "RF-in, RF-out" amplifier pre-distortion solution operates directly at the carrier frequency, and requires only the addition of a few standard RF components to implement.
Personnel
Georgia Tech Executive Vice President for Research Stephen Cross has named Battelle Memorial Institute's Robert T. McGrath the new Director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and Georgia Tech Vice President. McGrath, currently a consultant on National Laboratory/University Partnerships, STEM Education, and Race to the Top initiatives for Battelle Memorial, has begun his new responsibilities as of February 1, 2011. He succeeds Cross, who served as GTRI Director from 2003 to 2010 before being named Georgia Tech's Executive Vice President for Research (EVPR) in May 2010.
Anatech Electronics announced the appointment of Gareth Llewellyn as Director of US sales. He will manage all of the company's sales activities throughout North America, including developing and implementing sales strategies and programs and managing sales representatives. Llewellyn has more than 20 years of experience in the RF and microwave industry, and has served in sales, business development and operations management capacities. He has held various management positions at Micro Networks, Device Technology, Emcore Corp. and several other leading microwave companies. He received his BSc degree from Cardiff University in the UK and is a member of the IEEE.
TRM Microwave announced that Ken Greenwood has joined the company as Director of Engineering. Greenwood brings over 25 years of extensive experience in engineering management, systems engineering, product development and customer relations to TRM, and he has co-authored multiple patents as a registered Electrical PE (Professional Engineering) in New Hampshire and California. His background includes the design and development of terrestrial, air-to-ground communications systems and Electronic Support Measures (ESM) systems, with Hughes Aircraft Co., Lockheed, Sanders and various commercial start-ups involved in telecommunications and optical infrastructures.
M/A-COM Technology Solutions Inc., a supplier of semiconductors, active and passive components and subassemblies for RF, microwave and millimeter-wave applications, announced that Jack Kennedy is the new Director of Global Distribution, reporting to Bob Donahue, Chief Strategy Officer. He will oversee the strategic development of the company's global distribution channels to ensure they are all working toward the overall success of the company. Kennedy has a long history with the company in roles such as Strategic Account Lead, Global Account Director, as well as roles in sales management.
Rep Appointments
Tektronix Inc., a manufacturer of oscilloscopes, announced an expanded agreement with Newark, a multi-channel electronics distributor in the Americas. This follows distribution agreements announced in November with Allied Electronics, Entest and Test Equity. US customers now have the choice of working with four leading electronic component and test instrumentation distributors who offer the full line of Tektronix test instrumentation. Newark now joins these distribution partners that together will provide an additional 500+ sales engineers, who will now be authorized to offer Tektronix higher performance oscilloscopes, signal generators, spectrum analyzers, logic analyzers and bit error rate testers.
TRU Corp. has announced the appointment of Zerimar Sales as its new Southern California sales representative. Zerimar has over 30 years of electronic industry experience and technical sales expertise in solving critical customer design challenges. TRU Corp. is a premier supplier of custom designed, high quality interconnect products and cable assemblies for demanding applications in defense, commercial wireless, medical, energy and high power industrial equipment.
Carlisle Interconnect Technologies announced the appointment of Microwave Marketing Ltd. as technical sales agents and representatives for Carlisle Interconnect Technologies' comprehensive range of RF and microwave connectors, cables and components within Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Valpey Fisher Corp. announced it is adding Pillar Marketing Group LLC to its sales force. Pillar Marketing will be the authorized sales representative for all Valpey Fisher Corp. product lines in Colorado and Utah.
Website
Endwave Corp., a provider of high frequency RF MMICs and integrated transmit/receive modules, has announced a redesign of the company's website, www.endwave.com, which includes an e-commerce MMIC store for sample and volume purchases up to 999 pieces.