Nujira has set up a design centre focusing on the development of energy-efficient RF transmitters for mobile phone and broadcast applications.

The Cambridge-based hardware and software design company has recognised the established pool of RF design skills among the engineering workforce in the West Country and has chosen a location near Bath as the site of the new design centre.

“There is a pool of RF systems, digital pre distortion and digital/analogue IC design expertise in the Bristol area, and our new office harnesses this to help our customers bring to market the most efficient possible RF transmitter design achievable within their project parameters,” said company CEO Tim Haynes.

The design centre will be managed by basestation design specialist Simon Whittle who joins Nujira from PowerWave Technologies. He will be supported by a team of specialist engineers offering RF systems, RF power amplifier, DSP and FPGA design skills.

“Simon Whittle and his team are available to work with customers on a consultancy basis to address project-specific design challenges,” said Haynes.

Nujira originally designed its RF power modulation technology to increase the efficiency of 650W power amplifiers in 3G mobile basestations. It is now working on a lower power version which should reduce cost and improve power efficiency in next generation 3G LTE (long term evolution) mobile phones.     

“We’ve been working on this for 12 months. It will be in chipsets in one to two years and in handsets by 2011,” Tim Haynes, Nujira CEO told EW earlier this year.

For the handset market, which is potentially much higher volume, Haynes said the company will look at an intellectual property approach which will see its technology designed into more integrated silicon designs.  

For the next few years the company’s main business will come from its basestation design wins. Two are confirmed and Haynes is confident of others before the end of the year.

Haynes also said the company was developing a version of the power modulator for use in DVB digital broadcast transmitters.

“We will offer a PA module for the DVB digital broadcast market that can deliver efficiencies of up to 45% in broadcast transmitters. Current broadcast transmitters use linear PA devices whose efficiencies rarely exceed 15-18%, even when digital pre-distortion and linearization schemes are employed,” said Haynes.