Q: Last year, we asked what impact the worldwide economic crisis had on the markets you serve and on how you run your business under these conditions. One year later, what is your perspective? Are things getting better? If you sell into the aerospace and defense market, what are your projections for the coming year?

A: The market we serve have stabilized this year or are improving slightly. International markets in China, India and a few other places are growing faster than US markets so we see that trend continuing. Last year many companies reduced expenditure so many development projects were delayed or their budgets were cut. We are beginning to see some companies are beginning to spend money on development projects. Hopefully the double dip recession may not happen, then the economy and jobs will slowly recover.

Q: Do you participate in social networking sites such as Facebook and/or Twitter? If not, why not? If yes, what benefit do you feel comes from being on one or both of those sites?

A: No, we don’t participate in the social networking sites like Facebook. We have found Linked In to be very useful in finding the right talent for us. We do believe that social networks will play important role in future and we need to look at those sites for our business in future.

Q: There remains a serious shortage of RF engineers out there – what’s the solution? Is your company involved in programs that might promote or encourage talented engineering students to pursue a career in the microwave industry?

A: We need to encourage more graduates to join the RF and microwave industry. There should be more interaction and cooperation between industry and universities. We have done some of that but with tight funding and budget cuts university / industry interactions suffer. Hopefully this will improve as economy improves.

Q: Now that the Far East is growing its own RF and microwave component and subsystem manufacturing, have you seen any “inbound” competition?

A: Yes, we see competition from Far East. It is growing rapidly and we need to deal with it. Far East has advantage of low cost but engineering talent is not as experienced or strong. We are also getting some assemblies made in China and India to take advantage of the lower cost there. We had to emphasize to them the importance of quality which is an issue at times.

Q: If you could list three markets or technologies that will drive the industry in the next two years, what would they be?

A: In my opinion the markets and technologies that would drive the industry in next two years would be high data rate cellular and broadband wireless connectivity, High speed optical interconnect technology and millimeter wave IC technology. With 802.11N, WCDMA and other broadband wireless technologies high data rate connectivity will become more popular. High speed optical interconnect technology like Intel light peak technology can give better data rates than USB 3.0. This will become popular for PC, camcorder and video file transfer / connectivity. Also millimeter wave ICs and systems are finally becoming affordable and will become commercially viable.

Q: Has the enormous power of the FPGA had an impact on your designs?

A: FPGAs have made system design easy and lowered the development costs. We are using FPGA where we can. I wish there was a similar technology in the RF and microwave world for development of RF systems. We are doing some very interesting R&D work in this area and are looking for the right system partner to make some interesting RF FPGA products.