COM DEV Opens New $10.7 Million Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Facility in Cambridge
MP, Janko Peric Announces $2.5 Million Technology Partnerships Canada
Investment in New Development and Manufacturing Facility
CAMBRIDGE, ON, May 23 /CNW/ - COM DEV International Ltd. (TSE:CDV) today
officially opened its new $10.7 million surface acoustic wave (SAW)
development and manufacturing lab at its COM DEV Space facility in Cambridge,
Ontario. Cambridge MP, Mr. Janko Peric, representing Industry Minister, the
Honourable Brian Tobin, opened the new lab, made possible in part by a $2.5
million Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) investment. The new facility will
allow COM DEV to use its proprietary design tools to develop and manufacture
high efficiency, high frequency SAWs.
"These new SAW devices will eventually help satellites to deliver high-
speed Internet access to Canadians in remote regions," said Mr. Peric. "Among
the many other applications for SAWs, COM DEV's new SAW products, now possible
with this new facility, will help move us toward our goal of making Canada the
most connected country in the world."
"This new facility will allow us to leverage the leading SAW technology
that COM DEV has developed over the past 15 to 20 years," said John Keating,
President of COM DEV Space and COO of COM DEV. "This state-of-the-art SAW
facility will also enable us to address limitations in our current
manufacturing capabilities and overall capacity."
SAWs are crystal devices used in electronic circuits to process radio
signals by converting them to acoustic waves (vibrations), modifying them
mechanically as they traverse the device, and converting the modified
vibration back to a radio signal. Tiny chip-size SAWs can make analogue
transformations of radio waves that would require a large mainframe computer
to do digitally. This new lab provides COM DEV with an ability to now "print"
transducers with line width as small as 0.35 microns, and pattern thickness as
low as 0.03 microns. To put this in perspective, this is equivalent to being
able to paint twenty stripes on a typical human red blood cell with a diameter
of 7.5 microns. SAW devices are used in a wide range of microwave radio
applications from RF filters to chemical sensors, as well as most terrestrial
wireless communications devices and systems.
The new SAW development and manufacturing centre will allow COM DEV Space
to more fully address a global SAW market estimated to be worth more than one
and a half billion dollars per year. The new equipment is expected to allow
COM DEV to create a new product division designing and manufacturing high end,
stand-alone SAW devices, that is expected to grow to generate $25 million per
year in revenue and create or sustain 26 new jobs. |
