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[September 2003]
ERA Technology Acquired - Ceramic Antenna Development Programme in Progress
ERA Technology Ltd (Leatherhead, Surrey, England) has reached an agreement to sell its entire issued share capital to Chelton Ltd, with the transaction to be completed shortly. ERA provides specialist, high value added, technology based services, including design and development, testing, assessment and expert advice.
ERA's turnover in 2002 was 21.3 million and its projected turnover for 2003 is 23 million. It has net assets as of 1 September 2003 of 10.8 million, including over 5 million in cash. It will continue to serve its many customers and the entire management team remains in place.
In the ceramic sector, ERA has started a major research programme to demonstrate an innovative antenna technology using ceramic structures. The new technology will combine the efficiency and bandwidth of conventional antennas with the compactness of current ceramic designs.
The new approach uses low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC), which ERA says is expected to provide an unbeatable combination of compactness, excellent efficiency and low cost. The LTCC process is relatively new and can be used to make compact and complex 3D structures that contain conductors and active electronic circuits as well as the radiating elements.
The new technology is said to be suitable for use in a wide variety of both consumer and military applications. Because of the rugged ceramic construction, antennas based on the new technology are fully compatible with a range of operating environments. It will also be possible to fabricate low cost phase arrays, where each ceramic tile contains both radiating elements and associated active circuitry. In addition, ERA's technology can be applied to low gain integrated antennas suitable for use in many types of wireless products.
The technology will offer bandwidths better than 10% (i.e. 5% around the specified operating frequency) and can be configured for multi-band applications - something which ERA says is very difficult to achieve with existing ceramic antennas.
Following initial studies, ERA Technology won a contract valued at well over 100,000 from the ERA Foundation to undertake this research and to produce fully working prototypes.
ENDS