Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007 - (Page 10)

10 NEWS By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe IN BRIEF Anadigics gets Fairchild’s RF design team In a move to strengthen its R&D group, Anadigics has acquired Fairchild Semiconductor’s RF team, ﬁxed assets, certain leases, software, and licenses to intellectual property in connection with Fairchild’s exiting of its RF Group business in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. The acquisition, for 2.3 million USD (1.69 million EUR), includes the hiring of 23 highly experienced RF design and engineering professionals, and will further accelerate the company’s design and development of RF active semiconductor devices for the 3G Cellular, WiFi and WiMAX markets. “Highly specialized RF talent is rare in the semiconductor industry and is a differentiating factor in our fast growing markets,” said Dr. Bami Bastani, President and CEO of Anadigics, Inc. www.anadigics.com GPS module adds gyroscope in dead reckoning reference design from u-blox Swiss GPS specialist u-blox has improved its groundbreaking GPS dead reckoning system by integrating a gyroscope sensor from Epson Toyocom, a leader in the design and manufacture of crystal-based electronic products, into the reference design for the product. The reference design is designed to shorten time-to-market and reduce the risk of GPS integration for applications that require accurate, uninterrupted positioning regardless of GPS signal conditions. The dead reckoning solution from u-blox, powered by the LEA-4R dead reckoning GPS module, is ideal for applications that require continuous positioning such as vehicle navigation, ﬂeet management and toll systems. An odometer calculates distance traveled and a gyroscope determines turn rate. This data supplements the GPS data to provide continuous positioning in tunnels, indoor parking facilities, urban canyons and other environments in which it may be difﬁcult to obtain a reliable GPS satellite signal or there is no signal at all. Epson’s XV-8000-CB gyroscope offers improved temperature, shock and vibration stability so that the GPS module can deliver 100 percent road coverage. The compact LEA-4R module provides engineers with a high performance solution that will signiﬁcantly speed up their design cycle and ease GPS integration. www.u-blox.com Samsung makes strategic D-round investment in picoChip Privately held picoChip has announced that Samsung has made a strategic investment in the company. The amount of the investment is undisclosed, and forms part of the $27 million of new investment D-round announced in July by picoChip which was led by Highland Capital Partners. The round has brought the total company funding to $70.5 million. Samsung manufactures 3G base transceiver stations and basestation controllers, as well as basestations for WiMAX. It is one of the suppliers for Sprint’s $3bn nationwide mobile WiMAX network rollout in the USA to deploy in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Providence, R.I., and recently won the contract for New York. “Samsung is a world leader in wireless infrastructure, and it is a testament to picoChip’s prominence as a silicon vendor for this market that Samsung has chosen to invest in us,” said Guillaume d’Eyssautier, president and CEO of picoChip. www.picochip.com First mobile WiMAX Wave 2 basestation Sequans Communications, a leading WiMAX chipmaker, and WiNetworks, a WiMAX systems provider, announced the availability of the WiNetworks’ WiN7000 Compact Base Station based on Sequans’ latest SQN2130 Mobile WiMAX base station ASIC. Sequans claims to be the ﬁrst WiMAX chipmaker to develop a single MAC and PHY chip optimized for Mobile WiMAX base stations, and WiNetworks is the ﬁrst to use it to bring a Mobile WiMAX base station to market. www.sequans.com Speech recognition technology comes to Bluetooth applications CSR has expanded its portfolio of software enhancements for the BlueCore5-Multimedia platform with the addition of Sensory’s speech recognition software to CSR’s eXtension Partner Programme. The FluentSoft Bluetooth Suite from Sensory will allow CSR’s customers to integrate speech control and command functions into Bluetooth mono and stereo headsets and hands-free car kits. FluentSoft is the ﬁrst speech recognition software to be integrated into the BlueCore5-Multimedia silicon and represents a Bluetooth industry ﬁrst as well as being a big step towards a fully hands-free approach to communication. Manufacturers of Bluetooth headsets and hands-free kits can now implement a vast array of voiceactivated operations, many not practical or user friendly with button pushes, including call control and dialing, battery level and connection checks, pairing, audio settings adjustment, and playback and control of music. To further enhance device user friendliness, Sensory’s SX speech synthesis is included, enabling professional high quality real time voice prompts and conﬁrmations, answers to status queries such as battery check. www.csr.com Nemerix raises $22 million in Series C-round Nemerix, a fabless semiconductor company developing global positioning system chipsets, has raised $22 million in a Series C funding round that brings to nearly $65 million the total raised by the Lugano, Switzerland based company since it was formed in 2002. The company said the extra funds would be used to expand development of GPS solutions focused on personal navigation and mobile handset applications. www.nemerix.com Microwave Engineering Europe ● October 2007 ● www.mwee.com 010_MWEE.indd 10 21/09/07 14:23:35 http://www.u-blox.com http://www.anadigics.com http://www.picochip.com http://www.sequans.com http://www.nemerix.com http://www.csr.com http://www.mwee.com

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Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007 Contents Comment News CMOS RF: Si-On-Sapphire Goes Mainstream Cover Feature: New Data Protection Concept for UHF RFID Tags CMOS RF: RF Design Team Touts CMOS Spin for 3G PAs Wireless HID – Are You Following the Standard to Another “Average” Product Development? Phase Optimisation of the RF Front-End Direct Synthesis of UWB-WiMedia Signal Generation 4G Chips to Target 700 MHz Applications Femtocells Mobilize to Fight Wi-Fi in the Home Products Product Feature: AXIEM Pioneers the Future of EM Technology Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007

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