Keywords
Citation
(2006), "Advance Nanotech Partners with Alps and Dow Corning Corporation to Finance New Wireless Research", Microelectronics International, Vol. 23 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/mi.2006.21823bab.004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Advance Nanotech Partners with Alps and Dow Corning Corporation to Finance New Wireless Research
Advance Nanotech Partners with Alps and Dow Corning Corporation to Finance New Wireless Research
Keywords: Electronics industry, Radio systems
Partnership with the CAPE Center at the University of Cambridge could yield new technology to enhance reception capacity of mobile devices. Advance Nanotech Inc., a provider of financing and support services to expedite the commercialisation of disruptive nanotechnology discoveries, in partnership with Alps Electric Company Limited and Dow Corning Corporation, today announced financing for RANTED, a new research project based out of the Center for Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE) at the University of Cambridge, UK.
The RANTED project is the latest milestone in the CAPE alliance's collaborative mission to invent and develop through multidisciplinary research, materials, processes, components and systems.
The RANTED project will explore a new class of materials with unique dielectric properties in the microwave range, suitable for applications in mobile phones and other wireless systems. The successful development of these novel materials will enable new wireless antenna technologies that substantially reduce the footprint required for multiple antenna systems, while simultaneously reducing background noise and increasing the capacity of mobile wireless systems. The RANTED project will deliver proof-of-concept demonstrators after two years, and the development of components ready for market applications will begin after 3 years.
“By 2009 mobile devices will be required to support a myriad of wireless frequencies and protocols, including 2, 2.5 and 3G telephony, Bluetooth (802.15), WiFi (802.11), ZigBee (802.15.4) and DVB-H (mobile TV) in order to be competitive. This poses a significant challenge to designers and developers of RF antennas and subsystems,” said Dr Peter L. Gammel, Senior Vice President, Electronics at Advance Nanotech. “The RANTED technology will demonstrate antennas which support all these applications in a compact footprint with improved performance.”
In addition to mobile phones and wireless devices, the novel materials developed by the RANTED project are expected to benefit a broad range of microwave applications: from medical imaging to antennas, filters, receivers and transmitters for microwave and terahertz systems; from radar to satellite and mobile phone applications.
The investment in RANTED was made in partnership with Alps Electric Company Limited, Dow Corning and the CAPE Center at the University of Cambridge. CAPE is part of the Department of Engineering of the University of Cambridge and forms an integrated Research Facility for Electrical Engineering with a staff of 20 academics, 70 post-doctoral researchers and 170 research students. CAPE is funded by Advance Nanotech, Alps Electric Company Limited, Dow Corning Corporation plc, and is designed to encourage research activities to proceed to development and exploitation in close collaboration with industry. The program enables designers and engineers within academia and industry to benefit from the burgeoning developments in advanced photonics and electronics. In the past five years, numerous patents have been filed and ten spin-out companies have been formed from projects which began in the Electrical Division within the Department of Engineering of the University of Cambridge.
See www-cape.eng.cam.ac.uk for further information.