I believe that innovation and cooperation can drive future business growth for UK companies, writes Frank Mackel, managing director of Rohde & Schwarz UK.
The UK wireless communications industry is a particularly fertile source of innovation. UK companies are now leading development of a new wireless standard that uses the vacated analog TV spectrum.
Proposed by Neul with support from Cambridge Wireless, weightless is a machine-to-machine standard that could also fulfil other data only roles, such as cognitive radio, SmartGrid and asset tracking.
In September, Neul outlined an impressive first proposal to interested parties.
We supported Neul through its start-up programme, providing test equipment and direct access to our support team. The equipment we supplied enabled Neul to launch its first product in June. Meanwhile, we intend to monitor the machine-to-machine standard closely to ensure future products meet the specification’s needs and will
contribute expertise to the standard’s development groups.
Another lively and relatively new market is the non-linear characterisation of RF and microwave products, such as high power transistors and power amplifiers. We have long supported Cardiff University’s Centre for High Frequency Engineering, which has achieved a comprehensive understanding of these devices.
Lastly, in the fight against breast cancer, a small UK company’s radar-based breast imaging system is close to being able to transform the effectiveness and speed of screening the world over.
Micrima and The University of Bristol have developed an array that connects to an 8-port ZVT8 analyser. The array has 60 antennas to stimulate and measure, yet the analyser’s parallel data acquisition capabilities across 16 independent receivers has enabled Micrima to reduce measurement time by a factor of six.