Zilog Inc of Campbell, California is a new company in more ways than one since it finally shook off the Exxon Corp shackles and gained a quotation for its shares. Solidly profitable (see Company Results, p5), the company has just announced a new initiative in partnership with Stanford Telecommunications Inc in the field of wireless spread spectrum technology. The two will jointly develop, make and market application specific standard products using spread spectrum technology; Zilog gets non-exclusive second source and superintegration rights to Stanford Telecom spread spectrum technology and Stanford gets cross licence rights to the chips. Stanford will develop wireless system designs and architectures to meet specific requirements of Zilog and its customers. Spread spectrum technologies originated with military and space communications research to ensure signal integrity and maintain security while reducing susceptibility to jamming and noise. It distributes transmitted data over a range of carrier frequencies with either direct sequence or frequency-hopping, and the signal is then restored to the original data bandwidth at the receiving end. Santa Clara-based Stanford’s products are now used in cordless phones, stolen vehicle recovery equipment, mobile data communications, radar and global positioning satellite kit.
