Motorola moves toward next-generation 60-GHz mobile wireless
By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- 10/31/2007
Mobile phone maker Motorola Inc. has completed the final phase of its joint development agreement (JDA) with metal-insulator electronics provider Phiar Corp. According to the company, the completion of the JDA validates Phiar's metal-insulator electronics as a part of potential next-generation 60-GHz mobile wireless, point-to-point networks, wireless HDMI and imaging technologies from Motorola.
Phiar and Motorola entered the three-phase JDA in 2005. The JDA's Phase I gate required a Phiar diode with comparable or better performance than the best known Sb- and GaAs-based diodes currently on the market; Phase II focused on the performance of the diode integrated with matching circuitry; and Phase III involved taking the diode and incorporating it into a Motorola demo system where the Phiar technology was asked to meet certain bit error rate and minimum detectable power levels.
Historically, Motorola said, millimeter-wave wireless applications required gallium arsenide or other high performance semiconductors. Motorola claimed this week that it has successfully incorporated Phiar's metal-insulator diodes into their 60-GHz prototype system and demonstrated multi-Gbps data rates.
"By working together with Phiar, we were able to validate the performance of metal-insulator diodes in our receivers," Vida Ilderem, VP of physical and digital realization research for Motorola Labs, said in a statement. "The response of the Phiar diodes surpasses that of our known benchmarks of commercially available diodes for millimeter wave detector applications."
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