UWB chip developer Artimi secures further funding

Richard Dellabarca, commercial director of Artimi (Cambridge, England), declined to say how much additional money was raised, saying only that "it is substantial, in excess of $1 million, and will be sufficient to secure our development until the middle of next year.

"We have also started looking at the next stage of financing, which will include raising resources from venture capital groups and private equity investors," he added.

The funds will be used to speed development of Artimi's low- power UWB transceivers with multiple interfaces and are capable of delivering data at up to 500 Mbit/s at distances of up to 30 meters with precision location capability. Artimi said its solution is based on a patent pending mesh wireless technology.

Dellabarca said silicon should be available by the end of the year, and that the company has already demonstrated the benefits of its technology to consumer electronics companies.

"Our solution will be fully standards compliant, though we do advocate the single mode specification being pushed by companies such as XtremeSpectrum, Motorola and PulseLink. We believe that reflects better the advantages of the technology for consumer applications and has the benefit of quicker time to market."

Dellabarca was referring to the standards debate within the IEEE 802.15.3.a working group that is due to decide next month between two competing proposals for the physical layer interface. The XtremeSpectrum/Motorola group, that also includes ParthusCeva and Oki, favors a scheme based on DS-CDMA. The other group, which earlier this year formed the Multiband OFDM Alliance, advocates a multiband approach and is led by heavyweights such as Intel and Texas Instruments and includes UWB pioneers such as Staccato Communications.

Artimi also announced the appointment of Tom Cooper, an industry veteran, as vice president of sales and marketing.Cooper was most recently CEO of New Visual Corporation, a San Diego-based fabless semiconductor developer. He has also served as senior vice president of corporate development at GlobespanVirata.