Agile Materials and Technologies Debuts High-Performance, Low Cost Family of Phase Shifters; Proprietary BST Thin-film Ferroelectric process delivers unparalleled performance while reducing design complexity, product footprint and overall cost.

Agile Materials and Technologies, Inc. (Agile), the technology leader in tunable wireless components, today announced its PSCPS family of coplanar analog phase shifters. These products are the first in a series that enable commercial and military RF communications manufacturers to significantly decrease the number of components required for multi-mode systems, reducing device size, power consumption, complexity and cost.

GOLETA, Calif. (PRWEB) June 10, 2003 -- Agile Materials and Technologies, Inc. (Agile), the technology leader in tunable wireless components, today announced its PSCPS family of coplanar analog phase shifters. These products are the first in a series that enable commercial and military RF communications manufacturers to significantly decrease the number of components required for multi-mode systems, reducing device size, power consumption, complexity and cost.

Agile¡¦s new phase shifters are manufactured using the company¡¦s proprietary advanced thin film ferroelectric technology. Using Barium Strontium Titanate (BST), a ferroelectric material with a tunable dielectric constant, Agile has developed a series of BST-based capacitors which, when integrated with other passive components, facilitate the design of high performance phase shifting devices in compact form and at low cost.

Traditionally, phase shifters in phased array antennas account for nearly 50% the total cost of the antenna array. For the first time, using Agile¡¦s innovative phase shifter technology, manufacturers can create high performance power-efficient parts for nearly half the cost incurred using conventional devices.

Agile¡¦s PSCPS family of phase shifters requires only a single analog tuning voltage per device, reducing signal routing complexity and allowing precise, continuous phase shift control. The proprietary thin film BST technology utilized by Agile requires a maximum control voltage of 20V, and because the phase shifters utilize only passive components, the control voltage draws nominally zero current, enabling the phase shifters to consume zero power.

Agile¡¦s phase shifters achieve greater than 360 degrees of phase shift with 6 to 7 dB or less typical insertion loss at zero phase shift, improving to 4 to 5 dB with increasing phase shift. The PSCPS products can handle RF power levels in excess of 20 dBm (100 mW). In addition, their distributed design yields highly uniform group delay effectively enabling wide instantaneous bandwidths. Phase shifters from Agile are available in frequencies ranging from below L-band through Ka-band (sub-1 GHz to 40+ GHz) for use in phased array antennas and base station amplifier linearization.

With no active device components, these phase shifters do not require hermetic or other special packaging. This enables designers to reduce manufacturing costs and conserve board space. The devices occupy a minuscule 3 mm2 to 6 mm2 of board space, depending upon frequency. Flip-chip board mounting techniques can be effectively utilized as well as conventional wire bond approaches. For pricing and availability, contact Agile Materials and Technologies: 1.805.968.5159.

About the Company

Founded in 1999, Agile Materials and Technologies the technology leader in tunable wireless components that enable commercial and military RF communications manufacturers to significantly decrease the number of components required for multi-mode systems, reducing device size, power consumption, complexity and cost. The company evolved from a Defense Advanced Research Project Administration (DARPA) funded research project on Frequency Agile materials (FAME) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has successfully commercialized its proprietary method to harness the unique properties of a thin-film ferroelectric material called Barium Strontium Titanate (BST). Unlike GaAs, MEMs, or thick-film technologies, Agile¡¦s technology facilitates the design and fabrication of high-performance tunable components that for the first time cost-effectively allow a single wireless device to operate over a range of frequencies and formats.

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