TRW, Air Force Team Up to Develop Advanced Data Conversion Circuits; New Indium Phosphide Chips Promise Smaller, Faster Receivers.

REDONDO BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 21, 1998--In a move that will lead to smaller, faster and less expensive military receivers and signal processing systems, TRW (NYSE:TRW) and U.S. Air Force Wright Laboratories, of Dayton, Ohio, have signed a 36-month, $5.2 million technology investment agreement to develop new high-performance technologies for producing indium phosphide integrated circuits.

The agreement, known as the Advanced Wideband Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) Technology Program, will focus on improving the technologies used to design and fabricate chips that perform analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog data conversion functions. The program is part of the Air Force's Visionary Technologies for Avionics Leadership (VITAL) initiative.

"This award capitalizes on TRW's leadership in the design and development of indium phosphide data conversion circuits and process technologies," said Fred Ricker, vice president and general manager of TRW's Electronics & Technology Division. "In partnership with the Air Force, we will move high speed data conversion technology into the next century."

Under terms of the agreement, TRW and the Air Force will focus on improving the processes used to design and fabricate indium phosphide chips using the company's heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) fabrication technology.

This work promises to improve the speed and yield of the indium phosphide circuits. It will also take advantage of chip design techniques such as metal air bridges and backside thru-vias that TRW has perfected over the past decade while making gallium arsenide (GaAs) HBT chips for military and commercial customers.

Indium phosphide is an advanced semiconductor material that offers higher operating speeds and lower power consumption than semiconductors currently used for high performance microwave communications and advanced digital signal processing. HBT refers to a technique used to construct transistors from multiple layers of semiconductor material. TRW is currently the world's largest producer of GaAs HBTs for commercial wireless communications markets and a leader in the development and production of GaAs-based wideband ADCs.

According to Brian Wong, TRW's Advanced Wideband ADC Technology program manager, the program will produce and demonstrate two 10-bit resolution data conversion circuits: an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) capable of operating at three giga-samples per second (Gsps) and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) capable of operating at four giga-samples per second.

"Our new chips will have twice the performance and consume half the power of the best ADCs currently available," said Wong. The new chips will benefit airborne, space and ground applications, he added.

According to Wong, TRW's new indium phosphide HBT technology will also enable a wide variety of new radio frequency (RF) components that can perform both analog and digital functions. Such "mixed signal" components are considered a key way to shrink the size and improve the operating performance of military electronic systems.

As their name implies, ADCs convert incoming signals from their "real world" (analog, continuous wave) form to the "1's and 0's" (digital form) required by high-speed digital signal processors. They allow digital receivers to detect and "tune in" to many incoming signals at the same time over a wide band of frequencies. A conventional analog receiver normally tunes only one signal at a time. Conversely, DACs convert digital words into analog signals. They can be used to synthesize complex signals transmitted by advanced communication systems.

Sampling refers to the process of converting an analog signal to digital form by measuring or "sampling" the amplitude of the signal at specific time intervals. Resolution refers to the number of bits that a data converter produces. The higher the resolution and sampling rate, the more accurately the digital data reflects the information content of the original analog signal, and the more accurately an analog signal can be reconstructed from digital data. A 10-bit, three giga-sample ADC, for example, samples an analog signal at the rate of three billion samples per second. It can represent analog signals with bandwidths up to 1.5 GHz to within an accuracy of one part in a thousand.

TRW is a leader in the design, development and production of RF integrated circuits based on indium phosphide. The company is currently developing such circuits for use in military and commercial communications systems.

Based in Cleveland, TRW provides advanced technology products and services for the automotive, space and defense, and information technology markets worldwide. TRW's 1997 sales were approximately $12 billion (including the recent BDM acquisition). TRW news releases are available on the corporate Web site: http://www.trw.com.