Business Durham, the economic development company for County Durham in the UK has supported the move of Filtronic Broadband to the North East Technology Park (NETpark) and secured 85 jobs for the region.
Aligned with plans to focus its broadband business unit on higher frequency technology and products, Filtronic has established a mmWave centre of excellence at NETPark in Sedgefield.
The state-of-the-art test facilities include a laboratory, cleanroom, office space and a new production suite.
The company specialises in the design and manufacture of wireless communications systems and customers include mobile phone network operators.
Alan Needle, CEO, Filtronic Broadband, said: 'We received excellent support from Business Durham and they were instrumental in our decision to move [from Newton Aycliffe] to NETPark. We now have a centre of excellence which will be of great benefit to all our customers.'
The cleanroom will be used in the development and manufacture of mmWave and microwave hybrid assemblies for the telecommunications and defence industries.
Filtronic Broadband says it has made significant investment in automated high frequency test facilities for both semiconductor device level characterisation and tx/rx module performance testing up to 90GHz.
The company is already a leading supplier of mmWave transceiver products at both E-band and V-band frequencies and distributes to several international OEM customers. With wireless data volumes doubling year-on-year through the roll-out of 4G/LTE services, increasing cellular backhaul capacity pressure is driving the need for ongoing product development and production to keep pace with market requirements.
