News

27 October 2010

 

RFMD wins $1.5m Navy contract for GaN RF power technology

RF Micro Devices Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA has been awarded a $1.5m R&D contract by the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) related to gallium nitride (GaN) microelectronics, including the development of materials, device fabrication and high power circuits.

The $1.5m R&D contract award expands RFMD’s contract backlog over the next six quarters to about $5m. Since 2004, RFMD has been awarded more than $14.5m in R&D contracts by the US Government for development of its GaN high-power RF technology.

“GaN technology offers unprecedented performance advantages to advanced military applications, including radar, mobile communication and electronic warfare (EW) systems,” says Jeff Shealy, VP & general manager of RFMD’s Defense and Power business unit.

“RFMD is leveraging the world’s largest compound semiconductor wafer fab and captive assembly & test facilities to deliver an industry-leading supply chain for the design, packaging and test of GaN high-power devices,” claims president & CEO Bob Bruggeworth. “We utilize our scale manufacturing assets used to manufacture and ship approximately 3 million RF components per day, enhancing our competitive position in the high power amplifier (HPA) marketplace and increasing our ability to improve upon RFMD's return on invested capital (ROIC),” he adds.

RFMD says that, in addition to military systems, its GaN RF power technology delivers enhanced performance to a growing number of commercial power amplifier applications, including private mobile radio (PMR), 3G/LTE wireless infrastructure and CATV transmission networks.

See related items:

RFMD’s quarterly revenue grows 12% year-on-year to record $285.8m

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