Resonant purchased GVR Trade SA, a Swiss company that designs and consults on surface acoustic wave (SAW) and bulk acoustic wave (BAW) devices, for approximately $1.1 million in stock and cash. GVR had a single shareholder, Victor Plessky, who founded the company and will become Resonant's director of engineering. Key technical staff at GVR will also join Resonant.
Terry Lingren, CEO of Resonant, said the acquisition of GVR will expand Resonant's capacity to support additional licensing agreements and filter designs. Resonant designs filters, duplexers and quadplexers for RF front-ends and specializes in designs for difficult frequency bands and complex requirements. The company's business model is to license their designs and generate revenue through royalties.
“This acquisition of GVR is a logical extension to the existing long-term cooperation between our two companies,” said Lingren. “Our collaboration during the past eight years has resulted in the creation of some of the world’s best tools for the design and development of high performance filters, duplexers and quadplexers that currently dominate the RF front-ends of the LTE handset market. Victor and GVR have been at the forefront of acoustic wave filter design, publishing some of the most advanced works in the area for more than 30 years, with over 350 publications and over 2,000 citations.”
GVR has been engaged with Resonant since 2008 and under contract since 2012. They collaborated in the development of a component of Resonant’s Infinite Synthesized Network (ISN®) platform. Resonant believes ISN is one of the most advanced physical electro-acoustic tools and is capable of modeling today’s most sophisticated and advanced SAW processes and filter designs.
Victor Plessky said, “For GVR, this acquisition means greater access to resources and provides the possibility to concentrate our efforts on the most important areas and principal problems of SAW physics and devices. Being part of the Resonant team creates new and exciting opportunities for everyone as a combined entity.”
Plessky co-founded GVR in 1996 and purchased 100 percent of the company in 2003. He also worked as the special projects manager at Advanced SAW Products and was principal scientist and bureau manager of Thales Microsonics. Plessky served as a visiting professor at the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, and at universities in Germany, Switzerland, France and Sweden. He received his PhD from Moscow Physical & Technical Institute and Doctor of Science at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, Academy of Sciences, in Moscow.