Q: Given the current economic crisis affecting the U.S. – which will certainly have international repercussions – how do you think the markets you serve may be impacted? How do you and your company plan to address this?

A: The current global economic conditions and the results of the recent U.S. Presidential election will certainly play major roles in the future of the electronics and microwave industries. Our plan is to stay the course of building our customer base in all areas of the military and commercial complexes and to continue to respond to our customers’ needs. We will also maintain our efforts on developing new technology which will support new applications and emerging technologies.

Q: At the last MTT-S show, “LTE” was added to “WiMAX” as the killer app for 2009. Would you agree with this, or do you have something else in mind?

A: We agree that LTE is a very exciting expansion to the mobile network technology world. As with all new technology, it is important to continue to improve performance to be able to provide effective solutions at an extremely rapid pace. Our product lines are extremely agile and will easily be adaptable to most of these new technologies that utilize terrestrial radio access networks.

Q: What do you feel are the greatest opportunities for manufacturers in either the commercial or military markets?

A: Achieving wider bandwidths with better specifications in smaller and less expensive packages are important for all microwave component companies. Our next generation of products are available for both commercial and military markets. Recent additions like our CLX Series, offer excellent performance and improved depth to our surface-mount line. Improvements to existing products, such as our ESP Series, now with typical phase noise of <-143 dBc/Hz @ 100 KHz, operating at 1.1GHz, allow us to offer exceptional performance in robust designs.

Q: Which of the past year’s developments or emerging technologies has you most excited?

A: This compliments the response to Question 3; we are definitely excited about all the new projects for the multitude of applications being utilized on smaller platforms. These applications all require highly-sophisticated products that are orders of magnitude smaller and must meet the stringent environmental requirements of hi-rel products.

Q: How would you rate the health of the microwave industry as we near the end of the decade?

A: R & D projects and other new programs are still available, but the uncertainty in the economy may affect the ability of these projects to be able to transition into production. I had a discussion with an individual recently. His company designed a new widget that is passing all tests and field trials. It is exceeding all expectations, but the company’s funding is up in the air and they don’t know if and when they will be able to take this new product to market. However, I believe that companies will continue to use resources for R & D to develop the next generation of products and continue to push technology further so they are ready when the pendulum swings back.

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