The demand for wireless high-speed data and multimedia local area networking has driven engineers to consider the abundant bandwidth in the 60 GHz millimeter-wave band. Several GHz of unlicensed continuous spectrum has been made available worldwide with sufficient bandwidth to support multi-gigabit data rates previously only available on fiber-optic networks.

This bandwidth opens new opportunities to transfer tremendous volumes of data for enterprise, data storage, and entertainment without the need for physical interconnection. Enabling the broad adoption of new electronic systems that take advantage of these opportunities requires high-performance, integrated, and low-cost solutions.

Japanese electronics manufacturer Taiyo Yuden, European semiconductor foundry United Monolithic Semiconductors (UMS), and Ansoft have teamed to meet the challenges associated with designing integrated circuits at millimeter-wave frequencies. Taiyo Yuden is performing circuit design and layout, Ansoft is providing advanced circuit and electromagnetic design software and design kits, and UMS is providing advanced GaAs MMIC fabrication and test.

Development of this solution is valuable for emerging applications of millimeter-waves for very high-speed networking, digital communications, collision avoidance radar, and automatic cruise control systems, all of which benefit from the lower cost solution that integration provides.