Motorola and Phiar Corporation announced a Joint Development Agreement for a project focusing on the creation of next generation electronic circuits which can be incorporated with tiny antennas to deliver high-speed millimeter wave receive arrays. These next generation receive arrays are expected to be low cost with the ability to be incorporated into multiple high-speed applications including Device-to-Device wireless communications and Personal Consumer Near Field Communications (NFC) as well as Medical Imaging, Automotive Radar, Homeland Security Scanning, and Defense applications.

Whereas today's mass market semiconductor technology enables devices which run in the megahertz (MHz) frequency range and are pushing to enter the low end gigahertz (GHz) frequency range of operation, Motorola and Phiar plan to demonstrate circuits based on this new low cost technology that are capable of running in the hundreds of GHz and potentially into the THz range. The joint development effort will utilize Phiar's new Metal-Insulator technology and Motorola's millimeter wave circuits and systems technology, modeling and simulation, device and circuit characterization and advanced prototyping capabilities.

This enabling Metal-Insulator technology can be broadly incorporated with circuits which use standard CMOS manufacturing as well as other semiconductor and printed circuit technologies. Because the technology is compatible with multiple standards and substrates, it has the potential to greatly improve the speed and simplify interconnects, both lowering cost and improving performance. The technology has the potential to provide the marketplace with consumer devices which can run at significantly higher data rates (tens of Gbps) as compared to other wireless solutions such as Bluetooth and Ultra-Wideband which operate in the low to hundreds of Mbps.

"We view the Metal-Insulator technology from Phiar, combined with Motorola's technology and expertise, as being an innovative approach to potentially providing the device speeds that will be required in future generations of wireless, radar and imaging solutions provided by Motorola," said Vida Ilderem, Vice President and Director of the Center of Excellence for Embedded Systems and Physical Sciences Research, Motorola Labs.

"Motorola's technological expertise in wireless, radar and imaging is certainly of tremendous benefit to Phiar," said Garret Moddel, Phiar Corporation Chairman, CTO and co-founder. "We look forward to working with Motorola on the technology development as well as the follow-on industry adoption and standardization work that is required to make the potential THz solution accepted commercially on a worldwide basis."