A SCOTTISH technology firm has had a major breakthrough which could see the technology come into the market in the next two years.
RF MEMS technology (radio frequency microelectromechanical systems) has historically suffered from issues causing devices to fail.
However, Sofant Technologies have developed a new piece of radio technology which could revolutionise satellite communications.
The benefits of RF MEMS for radio applications have been understood by system designers for decades.
The technology has historically suffered from reliability problems which caused devices to fail prematurely and prevented widespread adoption of the technology.
Commenting on the milestone, David Wither, CEO of Sofant Technologies, said: “RF MEMS have been a promising technology for more than 20 years with hundreds of millions of pounds invested by companies from all over the world.
“However, the technology has struggled to reach the market with reliability being its single biggest hurdle.
“Our latest testing is a critical milestone for the commercialisation of our technology, overcoming the final major technical risk.
“Solving the reliability problems that the market has faced for decades puts Sofant on a direct path to commercialisation.
In its most recent testing period, Sofant’s development team achieved 25 billion cycles, a testing process the company runs on the production prototypes and showed no signs of failure.
“Sofant had previously achieved reliability on devices from two separate development lots exceeding 15 billion and 20 billion cycles, respectively.
“The latest results demonstrate Sofant’s ability to produce a highly reliable RF MEMS device using conventional high-volume semiconductor manufacturing processes.
“This means the technology will scale and places Sofant in a strong competitive position. We now expect to begin volume production within two years.”
