Earl McCuneConversation with Karen Jackson (Paratek)

Wednesday 18th March 2009

The call

Karen is bus-dev director for Paratek, xM/A-COM. I have met her several years ago at an IWPC event near Grenoble.

Product area

Paratek is focused on antenna tuning and control. The purpose is to improve TRP performance of the handset, a very critical spec for operators. The product includes a set of electrically tunable passive linear capacitors (not semiconductor), called the PTIC. Along with the capacitor array is a control IC which generates the voltages needed to control the capacitors, itself controlled with a 3-wire SPI. The inductor needed by the boost DC-DC converter is external.

Both modular and discrete versions of the capacitor array are provided, based on customer preference of course.

Power consumption is essentially zero for the capacitor array. The controller IC draws some power, though “very little” in steady state. Otherwise, when changing voltages on capacitors physics requires that current must flow. There is a standby mode where everything is turned off for very low current.

Technology and business bits

Their fundamental technology is based on the material BST, of which Paratek has their own secret recipe to significantly reduce leakage and otherwise improve RF performance. The original foundry for this material was Gennum in Canada. Following business changes at Gennum, Paratek now is in full control of this source having acquired the necessary assets from the current successor of Gennum.

Yet this fab is not big enough to hope to supply the handset market. So Paratek has a cooperation underway with ST Microelectronics (not ET-Ericsson). Manufacturing is progressing at the STM Tours facility, where STM already has their volume integrated passives (IPAD) line. This cooperation is expanding to also include the controller IC.

This arrangement is described as “very cooperative, including sales and marketing”. Details of the arrangement are not released, but clearly the attitude is very positive. It has been developing for several years now.

Other applications?

Work is underway on a fully adaptive and autonomous antenna tuner. Best possible input match will be continuously adapted to, independent of any outside control. This is being developed with cooperation from STM.

Karen recognizes the problem of duplexer proliferation within handsets, and that Paratek technology may well be an enabler to address this additional problem. But they must maintain focus (being a start-up person myself, I definitely agree!) so this product possibility is not being addressed at Paratek.

That being said, Karen mentioned that at IWPC meetings there is attendance from an outfit called Agile RF ( which talks about tunable duplexers as well as adaptive PA tuning. They are a tiny company in Santa Barbara which apparently lives mostly from US government contracts. The company has changed its name from Agile Materials & Technologies Inc., explaining their URL.

Fin

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