Evaluation Engineeering - 5

NI appoints new
semiconductor leader
On July 30, automated test
and measurement solutions
provider National Instruments
announced new leadership
for its semiconductor business. The Austin, TX-based
company has appointed Ritu
Favre as senior vice president
and general manager of NI's
semiconductor business,
where she will set NI's strategic direction to drive business
growth.
"Ritu brings
more than
25-years-experience in the
semiconductor
Favre
industry and a
deep understanding of our
target market and customers," said NI president and
COO Eric Starkloff. "She is a
proven leader with a passion
to empower teams to achieve
results. We expect Ritu's
impressive track record for
growth will make a significant impact on our semiconductor industry focus, which
is already showing strong
momentum. I am excited our
industry leadership team is
now complete."
NI shared that Favre is a
seasoned high-tech industry
leadership veteran with experience across general management and executive roles
in the RF and semiconductor
industries. Most recently, she
was CEO of NEXT Biometrics
and served on the Cohu Board
of Directors.
"I believe NI is well positioned to capture the tremendous opportunity that is
occurring with the commercialization of 5G and today's

software-centric smart devices," Favre said in NI's press
release July 30. "I look forward
to applying my experiences to
help accelerate NI's progress
in the fast-paced semiconductor market, with a focus
on driving sustained growth."
Prior to her role as CEO of
NEXT Biometrics, Favre held
senior management positions at Motorola, Freescale
Semiconductor, and Synaptics.
She received her bachelor's
and master's degrees in
electrical engineering from
Arizona State University.
Fav re is a member of
the Global Semiconductor
A s s o c i a t ion's Wome n's
Leadership Council, which is
aimed at inspiring and sponsoring the next generation of
female leaders in the semiconductor industry.

help build the North Korean
3G infrastructure for North
Korea's Koryolink, the report
stated.
This revelation comes on
the heels of trade restrictions
leveled at Huawei in May by
the Trump administration,
on claims that the company
had engaged in activities contrary to the national security
or national security of the U.S.
Those activities include bank
fraud and violations of U.S.
sanctions on Iran.
In a statement, Huawei denied having any business in
North Korea.
These latest events could
further impede Huawei's trade
aspirations with the coming
international rollout of 5G,
should Western nations decide
to ban Huawei's products from
their networks.
The U.S. has imposed stringent sanctions on North Korea
over the proliferation of nuclear weapons in that country.

LitePoint is first
test vendor to join
FiRa Consortium

Report: Huawei helped
North Korea develop
cellphone network
Leaked documents have revealed that technology giant
Huawei secretly helped North
Korea to build a cellphone network, according to a recent
report by The Washington Post.
The documents, which included spreadsheets, work
orders, and contracts leaked
by a former employee, reveal
that in an eight-year period
ending in 2016, Huawei and
China's Panda International
Information Technolog y
transported equipment to

LitePoint, a prov ider of
wireless test solutions, announced Aug. 8 that it is the
first test vendor to join the
FiRa Consortium, a brand
new organization launched
by industry leaders to facilitate the evolution of UltraWideband (UWB) wireless
technology to fine-ranging
(FiRa) technology.
The FiRa Consortium's
mission is to create a broad
ecosystem to develop specifications and a certification program to ensure interoperability among new FiRa chipsets,
devices and solutions. FiRa
devices have the ability to
tell the relative position of another device very accurately.
Headquartered in Beaverton,

OR, the FiRa Consortium is a
member-driven organization
dedicated to the development
and widespread adoption of
seamless user experiences using the secured fine ranging
and positioning capabilities of
UWB technologies.
Applications for FiRa include car locking systems,
location tracking, and secure
mobile payments. The safety
and security aspects of the
technology make specification and calibration validation
extremely important.

As a provider of wireless
testing, LitePoint has created
the IQgig-UWB, which is the
first fully integrated wireless
testing solution for UWB/FiRa
technology. The test system offers complete physical-layer
testing and calibration of devices enabled with UWB/FiRa
technology.
"LitePoint recognizes the
exciting potential of UWB/
FiRa technology and is pleased
to be an early member of the
FiRa Consortium. LitePoint
looks forward to working with
our industry peers to help to
enable successful UWB/FiRa
use cases," said Adam Smith,
Director of Product Marketing
at LitePoint.
Other FiRa Consortium
members include The ASSA
ABLOY Group, HID Global,
N X P Semiconductors,
Samsung Electronics and
Bosch. To learn more about
the FiRa Consortium, visit
firaconsortium.org.

SEPTEMBER 2019 EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

http://www.firaconsortium.org http://www.EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

Evaluation Engineeering

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