RF Micro Devices has announced that it has been awarded a $1.5 million R&D contract by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) related to gallium nitride (GaN) microelectronics, including the development of materials, device fabrication and high power circuits.

The $1.5 million R&D contract award expands RFMD's contract backlog over the next six quarters to approximately $5 million. Since calendar 2004, RFMD has been awarded over $14.5 million in R&D contracts by the U.S. Government for development of its GaN high power RF technology.

Jeff Shealy, VP and general manager of RFMD's Defense and Power business unit, said, "GaN technology offers unprecedented performance advantages to advanced military applications, including radar, mobile communication and electronic warfare (EW) systems. Our partnership with ONR is mutually beneficial, and we are very enthusiastic about our shared mission to deploy GaN technology broadly across multiple high performance RF power applications."

Bob Bruggeworth, president and CEO of RFMD, said, "RFMD is leveraging the world's largest compound semiconductor wafer fab and captive assembly and test facilities to deliver an industry-leading supply chain for the design, packaging and test of GaN high power devices. Importantly, we utilize our scale manufacturing assets used to manufacture and ship approximately three million RF components per day, enhancing our competitive position in the high power amplifier (HPA) marketplace and increasing our ability to improve upon RFMD's return on invested capital (ROIC)."

In addition to military systems, RFMD's GaN RF power technology delivers enhanced performance to a growing number of commercial power amplifier applications, including private mobile radio (PMR), 3G/LTE wireless infrastructure and CATV transmission networks.