Industry News
Smiths Group announced that it is expanding its interconnect business with the acquisition of Millitech Inc. A Massachusetts-based business, Millitech specializes in the design and manufacturing of millimeter-wave components, assemblies and integrated antenna systems for satellite communications, radar, passive imaging, space and remote sensing applications. Smiths acquired the business for $33.5 M, in cash.
American Technical Ceramics Corp. (ATC), a manufacturer of high performance electronic components, announced that it has entered into an agreement to purchase from CTS Corp. certain equipment and inventory used by CTS in the manufacture of low temperature co-fired ceramic products. It is anticipated that the closing of the transaction will occur in the second quarter of fiscal year 2006. ATC intends to transfer the equipment and inventory to its facility in Jacksonville, FL, where it will be used, among other things, in the production of LTCC products and certain of ATC’s specialty multilayer capacitors. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
RF Industries Ltd. announced that it acquired, for cash and equity consideration, the assets of Worswick Industries Inc., a privately held San Diego, CA-based manufacturer and supplier of custom and standard computer cable and wire harness assemblies. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Andrew Corp. has expanded its Geometrix® mobile location system product line with the acquisition of certain assets of Nortel’s wireless location business, augmenting a worldwide offering that supports innovative location-based services for commercial, consumer and public safety uses.
Sensors Unlimited Inc. accepted the $60 M cash offer to merge with Goodrich Corp. The definitive agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of Sensors Unlimited Inc. and Goodrich Corp. and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005. The transaction is subject to approval by US regulatory agencies.
Modelithics has recently acquired a 0.3 to 6 GHz Maury Microwave noise parameter test system to expand the frequency range covered by the solid-state tuner-based noise parameter system that it currently uses for 2 to 26 GHz measurements. Modelithics also uses Maury’s ATS load/source pull equipment for development and validation of its growing nonlinear transistor model library, as well as its custom measurement and modeling services.
Anritsu Corp. president Hiromichi Toda announced the opening of a sales and marketing office in Bangalore, India. The opening of the office allows the company to expand its business in India. With the opening, Anritsu now has offices in 17 countries, including the US and Japan.
Aeroflex Inc. announced the opening of a new sales office for its test and measurement group in Taipei City, Taiwan in the Xinyi District. This new office will become the nucleus for the sales and support of Aeroflex test products and systems in Taiwan and will help facilitate the strong growth being seen currently within the wireless manufacturing industry in this country. Allen Chen has been appointed as the new country manager for Taiwan. Chen comes to the company with seven years experience in the telecom industry and eight plus years in the IT industry.
TestMart, a marketplace operator and service provider for the test and measurement industry, announced an agreement with Geotest-Marvin Test Systems Inc., a global supplier of PXI and PC-based test products, systems and solutions. The deal provides the US government and federal contractor marketplace with special pricing on select test instrumentation, instrumentation controllers and chassis, test development software and turn-key test systems.
Digital Fountain Inc., a supplier of forward error correction technology for reliable communications, announced a major licensing deal with Nokia. The agreement will allow Nokia to incorporate Digital Fountain’s advanced FEC technology in future Nokia products.
Corning Gilbert, a subsidiary of Corning Inc., announced that it has opened a new microwave customer service center in Vordingborg, Denmark. The customer service center will be operated out of Corning Gilbert’s subsidiary, Corning Cabelcon.
Elcoteq Network Corp. announced the opening of Elcoteq Engineering Service Center in Richardson, TX. The mission of the new center is to provide customers an on-going source of state-of-the-art assembly and new product introduction manufacturing support.
WJ Communications Inc. announced that the company is expanding its global presence in strategic locations such as China to provide high quality local support to meet increased customer demand around the globe. In order to better serve WJ’s growing base of customers throughout Asia, WJ has enhanced its sales and technical support capabilities at its Shenzhen office by the addition of two experienced and highly qualified individuals.
Electro Rent Corp., with operations in North America and China, is establishing a wholly-owned operation to better serve customers in the European market. ER Europe has commenced operations and has access to the resources of Electro Rent Corp. As part of its plans, ER has acquired the operations of Everest ES, a Belgium equipment rental, sales and leasing business, which has been operating in an alliance with Electro Rent for several years. As part of the acquisition, David Saeys, the owner of Everest, becomes the general manager of ER Europe.
Agilent Technologies Inc. announced the availability of its 2005 releases of Advanced Design System and RF Design Environment. Both EDA software platforms contain Agilent’s simulation technologies, announced in March, that help designers of wireless communications products get products to market faster. The new simulation technologies are fully integrated into the software and are shipping now to customers worldwide.
Comarco Wireless Test Solutions announced that high speed downlink packet access test capability is now available with its 3G scanning receiver, which comes in its three major product offerings, Seven.Five, Prizm, and OEM Scanners. This capability may be purchased as an upgrade to already purchased products or as a new system.
Applied Wave Research Inc. announced a new integrated filter synthesis solution using Nuhertz Technologies’ filter synthesis technology and is available immediately in both Microwave Office® and Analog Office™ design suites. High frequency circuit designers can now perform accurate filter synthesis quickly and easily from within the unified AWR design platform.
TDK Semiconductor Corp. announced that it has changed its name to Teridian Semiconductor Corp. The name change is effective immediately. As previously announced, Golden Gate Capital, in partnership with the US-based semiconductor management team, acquired the company from TDK-USA, a subsidiary of the Japan-based TDK Corp.
Dynaco Corp., a fabricator of high reliability rigid-flex, flex and rigid printed circuit boards and assemblies for the military/aerospace market, announced that it has successfully achieved qualification to the Department of Defense Performance Specification MIL-PRF-31032, and the associated specifications MIL-PRF-31032/1 and MIL-PRF-31032/2 for rigid constructions, plus MIL-PRF-31032/3 and MIL-PRF-31032/4 for rigid-flex constructions.
ANADIGICS Inc. announced that the company has commenced production volume shipments of 3 by 3 mm cellular band CDMA power amplifiers to Samsung Electronics for several wireless handsets.
RF Micro Devices Inc. announced that it has shipped its 10 millionth POLARIS™ cellular transceiver. The company attributes the shipment milestone to continued strong sales of its EDGE transceivers.
L-3 Communications Cincinnati Electronics (CE) Space Electronics has been nominated to receive NASA’s George M. Low award for quality and excellence. L-3 CE Space Electronics was nominated by Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the design development and production of three flight UHF transceivers that have served the Odyssey Mars Orbiter and the Mars Rovers Opportunity and Spirit.
Contracts
Symmetricom Inc. announced that it has been selected as a supplier for the Advanced Technology Atomic Frequency Standard program (ATAFS), sponsored by the Department of Defense Joint Program Office. The ATAFS program will support the development of the next-generation atomic clocks for possible deployment on the Global Positioning System (GPS-III) satellite constellation. Under the contract, awarded by the Space and Missile System Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base and valued at $3.9 M, Symmetricom will develop high performance atomic clocks based on its proprietary optically-pumped cesium beam technology.
EMS Technologies Inc. announced that its defense & space systems division is performing on a contract from Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Norden Systems business unit to provide maintenance support and upgrades for the US Air Force’s E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS). The total value to EMS is estimated at US $2.1 M over 12 months. As part of the effort, EMS is upgrading phase shifter modules and control electronics to reduce power consumption and enhance accuracy. In addition, the contract includes support services.
M/A-COM, a business unit of Tyco Electronics and a provider of wireless radio frequency, microwave and millimeter-wave components, announced that it has been chosen by the Office of Naval Research to lead a one-year, $1.5 M program, which will optimize the manufacturability of its patented high voltage multi-function self-aligned gate MMIC process.
G.T. Microwave Inc., Randolph, NJ, was awarded a $1 M firm-fixed-price contract for 500 calibrated true position vector modulators. G.T. Microwave, a designer and manufacturer of state-of-the-art microwave integrated components, proposed the accepted plan to Lockheed Martin, an advance technology systems integrator. The vector modulators will be utilized to solve an antenna test application with 0.1-degree accuracy. G.T. has delivered the first production units on time in 14 weeks and continues scheduled deliveries.
Astron Wireless Technologies was recently awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II award from the Department of Defense for development of an “Adaptive Bandwidth High Power RF Antenna.” The objective is to develop a universal approach to the design of high power broadband antennas for the non-lethal utilization of RF energy. This development and production of a prototype system is based on the Phase I development of a 10:1 bandwidth basic Log-Conical antenna. During Phase II, the program will focus on creating a truly miniature high gain, high power antenna operating within the general operating band of up to 1000 MHz.
MI Technologies announced it has received an order from the UK’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) to provide upgrades to an existing outdoor far-field antenna test and measurement system. The equipment will be used in the design, development and validation of defense related RF projects. Under terms of the agreement, MI Technologies will install the outdoor test and measurement system at DSTL’s facilities in Pershore, UK. The facility is scheduled to be operational in the winter of 2005.
GigaBeam Corp. announced that it has entered into an agreement with Epsilon Lambda Electronics Corp. pursuant to which GigaBeam will provide technology design and support for a millimeter-wave communications system for the US Navy.
Financial News
Merrimac Industries Inc. reports sales of $7.6 M for the second quarter ended July 2, 2005, compared to $7.9 M for the same period in 2004. Net income for the quarter was $332,000 ($0.10/per diluted share), compared to a net income of $444,000 ($0.14/per diluted share) for the second quarter of last year.
Applied Radar Inc. announced that it has recently been awarded an additional $1.9 M in SBIR funding from the Department of Defense. The funding includes $1.4 M in new funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop advanced digitally-controlled antenna systems, wideband digital receivers and exciters, and conformal integrated antennas for unmanned aerial vehicles.
NEC Corp. announced that it has reached a settlement with Harris Corp. in the patent infringement lawsuits filed against it on September 3, 2004, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California and the Federal Court of Canada, which claimed infringement of NEC’s Digital Microwave Radio patents by NEC Corp. As a result of the settlement, Harris has agreed to take a royalty-bearing, non-exclusive license under NEC’s Digital Microwave Radio patents. In addition, NEC agreed to dismiss all claims covered by the lawsuits filed on September 3, 2004, in the previously mentioned courts.
New Market Entry
RFIC Solutions Inc. is a new start-up fabless semiconductor company based in San Jose, CA and India. The company will specialize in RFIC and RF module design services using IC processes that include GaAs, PHEMT, SiGe, silicon, CMOS and BiCMOS. RFIC Solutions will offer reusable RF IP blocks such as LNA, PA, mixers, switches, transceiver front-end chips for WLAN, WiMAX, PCS and other RF systems. The company can be reached at US (408) 674-5045, India 91-712-2282129 or visit www.rficsolutions.com.
Personnel
Robin Southwell
Defence & Security Systems (DS), the defense pillar within EADS, has appointed Robin Southwell as chairman of DS UK, an appointment that is in addition to his current role as CEO of EADS UK. Previously, Southwell was CEO of AirTanker Ltd., a consortia of EADS, Cobham, Rolls Royce, Thales and VT Group. He has also held the position of group managing director of customer solutions and support at BAE Systems.
STMicroelectronics has made two major appointments. Reza Kazerounian, currently group vice president and general manager of the company’s Smart Card division, has been promoted to corporate vice president, North America region, while Marco Cassis, currently vice president automotive and a board member of the Japanese subsidiary, STMicroelectronics K.K., has been promoted to corporate vice president of STMicroelectronics Japan. Kazerounian has twenty years of experience in the electronics industry and industry-wide acclaim for his contribution to the development of non-volatile memory and smartcard technologies. Cassis is a well-established member of ST Japan’s senior executive team, with twelve years of experience in Japan and knowledge of the local business environment.
Ulf Meiners
Ulf Meiners has been appointed chief technical officer for UMS, which follows on from his position as joint managing director of UMS GmbH, where he took responsibility for all front-end wafer manufacturing. In his new role, Meiners will be responsible for all of the internal and external technical activities at both of the company’s sites at Ulm in Germany and Orsay in France. He will also retain his joint management responsibility for UMS GmbH, where all manufacturing activities will be under the responsibility of Jacques Bonnet.
RF Monolithics Inc. (RFM) announced the appointment of Wayne Stargardt to the position of director of marketing, Wireless Systems, and Duane Covell to the position of director of OEM sales, Wireless Systems. In these positions, Stargardt and Covell will expand RFM’s sales and marketing presence in emerging wireless systems markets. Stargardt has over 25 years of effective business experience in engineering, marketing and management. He was most recently vice president, sales and marketing at SensorLogic Inc. Covell has over 20 years of effective business experience in sales and sales management. He was most recently vice president North American sales for Plexus Corp.
Rep Appointments
Locus Microwave, a manufacturer of custom and standard RF amplifier products, announced the appointment of Tracy Alves of CMI Technical Sales, South for representation in North and South Carolina.
IMS Connector Systems, headquartered in Germany, has increased its worldwide sales and distribution network by enlisting Extreme Components as its new distribution partner in North America. The company’s complete product range will be carried, including RF connectors and cable assemblies, components and antennas for mobile devices, as well as SMBA® (FAKRA) connectors for in-car communication. Targets for these products include telecommunications infrastructure, mobile phones and wireless data communication devices, measurement equipment, the automotive industry and various technology sectors.
Reactel Inc., a manufacturer of RF and microwave filters, multiplexers, switched filter banks and subassemblies to the commercial, military, industrial and medical industries, announced the appointment of KSA Electronics as the company’s representative in southern California. For more information about KSA, please visit www.ksa.com or telephone (619) 858-0770.