Start-up filter design company Resonant has extended a licensing agreement with an existing customer, adding the design of a complex filter for the time division duplex (TDD) requirements of the Chinese market. Historically, this filter has been either a bulk acoustic wave (BAW) or film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) design; Resonant will design it as a lower cost surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter.

Resonant's initial license agreement with this undisclosed customer encompasses three SAW duplexer designs for high volume cellular bands..

Resonant’s "mousetrap" is a patented library of RF design tools that enables traditional FBAR, BAW or temperature compensated (TC) SAW filters to be modeled and designed with higher accuracy. Particularly for mobile bands with difficult performance requirements, Resonant says their designs require fewer foundry spins and can often use standard, low cost SAW processes. Resonant licenses its designs to customers, rather than manufacturing them, which avoids the cost of developing process technology and building manufacturing facilities.

Terry Lingren, CEO and co-Founder of Resonant said, “With a filter focused on the massive Chinese market, we believe our designs will help this customer broaden its revenue potential and accelerate growth.”

To increase design capacity, Resonant recently acquired GVR Trade SA, a Swiss company that designs and consults on SAW and BAW filters, for approximately $1.1 million. Victor Plessky, who founded GVR, is now Resonant's director of engineering.

Resonant is entering the fast growing mobile market for high performance filters, a market where they face firmly entrenched competitors such as Broadcom Ltd. and Qorvo. For the last reported fiscal quarter, which ended March 31, Resonant reported $27,000 in revenue from their two development contracts, with an additional $53,000 to complete development, forecast to be recognized in the June quarter. The company's burn rate in the March quarter was $3.1 million, leaving the company with just under $3.1 million in cash. To extend their funding horizon, in April, Resonant raised a net of $5.2 million in a private placement.