LONDON — Power amplifier technology specialist Nujira (Cambridge, England) is looking to raise further and "substantial" funding as it extends plans to commercialize its patented envelope tracking power saving technology by wireless infrastructure gear suppliers to include companies developing digital broadcast transmission equipment and next generation mobile handsets.
"We are in discussions with venture capital groups and some potential 'strategic investors', and expect a decision within a few months", Tim Haynes, CEO of Nujira told EE Times Europe .
"We have had some approaches from potential strategic investors, and if we decide to go down that route, would be looking for a major supplier that could help us grow and who would add credibility and validation to our technology."
Haynes adds the fund raising is helped by the growing interest in clean or "green" technologies and the desire to reduce both direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions.
To date, Nujira has had two rounds of VC funding from 3i Group and Amadeus Capital Partners, the last one in January 2007 that raised $9.8 million. Amadeus was also the original seed investor in Nujira, which started in 2002.
Haynes said ten of the 14 major cellular infrastructure providers are already either evaluating or working on prototypes using its PA modules, and he expects at least three or four firm design wins by the end of the third quarter. To date only Sumitomo Electrical Industries of Japan has gone public with plans to make energy efficient PA's using its technology.
"We are also seeing constant power efficiency improvements for our HAT (High Accuracy Tracking) power modulator, and are expanding rapidly to take advantage of the enormous opportunities presented by broadcasters as they shift to digital transmission from analog, and from the need for much better PA efficiency in next generation multi-standard cellular handsets," said Haynes.
He adds the company's envelope tracking technology enables one or two wide-band power amplifiers to replace five or six narrow-band PAs, halving the cost of multi-banding the RF circuit without reducing its efficiency.
So far, ten different FDD frequency bands and four different TDD frequency bands have been defined in 3GPP that can be used for LTE, and it is likely that more bands will be added to this list such as 700MHz in the US. A 4G handset will be required to transmit on the appropriate band anywhere in the world. Currently efficient power amplifiers currently cover only one or two bands.
The company now employs 4 chip designers developing a CMOS core device that will scale down the existing modulator to 1 to 2W of power from the nearly 600W needed for use in basestations. Haynes said the number of IC designers will double over the next few months.
Haynes adds Nujira expects to have an IP based power modulator for handsets by February 2009 in time for the next Mobile World Congress, and that the company is already talking to several PA suppliers who are selling to the handset makers.
On the digital broadcasting side, Nujira plans to release a PA module that can deliver efficiencies of up to 45 percent in broadcast transmitters.
The company suggests current broadcast transmitters use linear PA devices whose efficiencies rarely exceed 15-18 percent. even when digital pre-distortion and linearization schemes are employed. This improvement in efficiency dramatically reduces the heat dissipated by the PA, reducing and simplifying cooling requirements.
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