Power amplifier firm Nujira has closed a funding round worth $9.8m to help with manufacturing start-up costs for its high accuracy tracking RF amplifier.
Nujira has taken some significant steps forward in the past 12 months, including an all important deal with Sanmina-SCI for manufacturing.
"The new investment will allow us to ramp up the manufacture of our HAT™ modulators to meet customer demand and further commercialise the technology," Tim Haynes, CEO of the Cambridge-based firm.
Leading the funding round were existing investors 3i and Amadeus, the latter being Nujira's seed funding partner, giving the start-up £850,000 in 2003.
The two firms provided Nujira's main funding source to date, with a first round of $7.75m in 2005.
Nujira's technology is a form of envelope tracking, with modulators for wideband CDMA, CDMA2000 or WiMAX basestations. the firm claims to have achieved 35 per cent efficiency for the amplifiers, and is targeting up to 50 per cent efficiency.
“The high power consumption of current 3G networks is a serious cause of concern for all operators,” said Ian Lobley, senior partner at 3i. “We are now seeing operators setting themselves hard targets for reducing the power consumption, and hence environmental impact, of their networks. Power amplifier efficiencies of at least 50 per cent are essential to achieving these targets, and Nujira has a clear lead over other vendors in providing commercially-available solutions to address this urgent need.”
Mike McTighe, Nujira’s non-executive chairman, said the firm has demonstrated its technology to mobile infrastructure companies, "and it is currently being evaluated by more than half of the leading infrastructure OEMs worldwide".
www.nujira.com