Space and defense giant TRW Inc has acquired privately held gallium arsenide chip specialist Milliwave Technologies Corp, to bolster its efforts in high speed radio communications. Financial terms were not disclosed. Diamond Springs, California-based Milliwave becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of TRW, and will be renamed TRW Milliwave Inc. TRW will use the Milliwave technology to build multi chip modules for use in high frequency wireless applications. They will be used in microwave radio transmitters operating at between the 18GHz and 60GHz frequencies, as used in high speed point-to-point microwave wireless links for mobile phone networks, or in high speed local-loop wireless networks. The acquisition is the third move that TRW has made into the gallium arsenide arena in the last 18 months. In March 1996 it signed with RF Micro Devices Inc to supply gallium arsenide transistors, followed by an agreement with Multilink Technology Corp in July this year for the supply of gallium arsenide chips in electronic modules for fiber-optic networks.
