everything RF recently interviewed Brandon Malatest who is the COO and co-founder of Per Vices Corporation, a leader in Software Defined Radio technology. Brandon has an honour’s degree in Physics with a specialization in Experimental Physics from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. On graduating, Brandon started his career as a research analyst and statistician at one of the largest market research firms in Canada and later joined Victor Wollesen to co-found Per Vices.
Q. Can you give us a brief history of Per Vices? What made you decide to focus on Software Defined Radios?
Brandon Malatest: Per Vices Corporation was founded in 2006 and accepted into Y-Combinator, a prestigious technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm, in 2012. It was in 2012 that we had our first commercial product released and the company started to grow. Throughout the history of Per Vices, our primary objective was to build high-performance radio products using the power of software-defined radio and the advancements in semiconductor technology. Through our R&D efforts, we were able to build a family of products that served the needs of multiple industries with the only changes to support different applications being in software. This helped us continue to build higher-performing products and advanced features that were not only applicable to a single industry but could be utilized to provide greater value to customers across multiple verticals.
Q. Can you tell us a little about each SDR product family that you have developed?
Brandon Malatest: Our SDR products range in performance and cost with the differentiating characteristics being driven by customer demand and semiconductor advancements. We have always focused on building multi-channel, high bandwidth, and wide turning range products in a convenient form factor for our customers. Our Crimson TNG SDR was the first of our current product line to be released and was designed to provide the best value in its class. Our Cyan and Cyan HB platforms were designed next to meet the growing needs that our customers had for a higher tuning range, a greater number of radio chains, and very high sampling bandwidths. Following the great success of these products within our target verticals we found that some customers were interested in an SDR that was a midway point between these two systems which was the driver behind our Chestnut platform. We are continuing development on more SDRs and plan on releasing systems with even higher tuning ranges and higher sampling bandwidths to continue offering the highest-performing COTS SDR solutions for our customers.
Q. Have your SDR Products been developed for specific market segments or are they more general?
Brandon Malatest: The utility behind software-defined radios is that they are, by definition, software-defined. This has enabled us to use the same hardware platforms to meet the needs across multiple verticals – essentially any application that requires software applications to interface with analog radio waves is where our products have found to be an excellent fit. This spans across different verticals of test and measurement, MRI, radar systems, defense, communications, and GPS/GNSS.
Q. What market or industry segment is the largest for you? What are the advantages of using SDRs in this segment?
Brandon Malatest: Currently our largest market segment is across two major industries of test and measurement and defense. Within the test and measurement market SDRs offer a very flexible solution to operate across a wide tuning range and support multiple different device protocols. This is further coupled with the software-defined nature of the systems to support rapid development and prototyping without the need for costly changes to hardware. Within the defense market, multi-channel and high-performance SDR platforms offer a significant advantage over analog counterparts through the ability to capture a large amount of spectrum to enhance situational awareness along with the ability to send wireless signals utilizing different methodologies to support more advanced radar systems, communication networks, and electronic warfare applications.
Q. How do you differentiate your SDRs from those offered by other companies?
Brandon Malatest: We strive to offer customers different product lines to ensure excellent value. For those customers who are looking for a very effective cost per radio chain or cost per MHz of bandwidth, our Crimson TNG and Chestnut solutions offer some of the best value. For other customers that demand the highest performance, our Cyan and Cyan HB offers some of the highest channel count, sampling bandwidth, and tuning range available in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions. We also pride ourselves in supporting our customers through not only offering COTS products but modified off-the-shelf (MOTS) and full custom developments along with integration support to help ensure success
Q. Do you offer a range of standard catalogue products or customize products based on a user requirement? If so, what can a user customize? What is the % breakup of custom vs catalogue products in terms of revenue?
Brandon Malatest: We do offer a combination of standard COTS SDRs along with MOTS and fully custom solutions. In many instances, our customers start with one of our standard COTS products for the initial proof of concept stage of their project. For some customers, our COTS products meet all of the needs for their project while others sometimes require modifications to help meet their objectives. We work closely with these customers to support them through each stage of development all the way through to production by offering expertise in RF, mechanical, hardware, firmware, and software modifications and designs.
Q. Can you tell us about the software that controls your SDR product range? - Key features, screenshots, etc.
Brandon Malatest: Similar to many SDRs, we use a UHD interface which allows open-source tools such as GNURadio to be used for customers. This has been the most effective way to help our customers work with our platforms as quickly as possible. For many high-performance applications we work closely with our customers as they usually have their own software that they want to interface with our products.
Q. Along with the SDRs Per Vices also offers storage and processing solutions, can you tell us more about these solutions? How does integrating SDRs with these solutions contribute to spectrum monitoring and recording applications?
Brandon Malatest: Our storage and processing solutions were found to offer significant value for our customers working in high data capture applications, such as spectrum monitoring. There are significant challenges associated with ensuring seamless operation of passing very large amounts of data between systems which is something our engineering team was able to find a solution to address. This solution combines both the hardware architecture of these systems along with the appropriate software for streaming very high amounts of data.
Q. What criteria should users consider when choosing a software-defined radio? Which key parameters are crucial for evaluating and selecting the right SDR?
Brandon Malatest: Different customers will have different criteria but the key starting points usually involve the number of receive radio chains, the number of transmit radio chains, sampling bandwidth, tuning range, and digital throughput. These are the first-order metrics that need to be considered where the next level of review will typically involve RF performance, features and commands, and digital resources available.
Q. Who are your customers? Where are they located? What is a % break up in terms of region? How do you support international customers?
Brandon Malatest: We are proud to support some of the largest customers across our target verticals including leading-edge intelligence community groups, advanced research agencies, global defense prime contractors, and large commercial organizations. The majority of our customers are located in North America with a growing customer base in Western Europe. We do have customers across the globe and provide different levels of support to all of our customers to ensure we can meet their project needs.
Q. Can you tell us about how SDR products have evolved over the years? Have you seen an increase in adoption recently? What factors do you think are contributing to this growing interest? Are there any technological improvements that have fuelled this trend?
Brandon Malatest: SDR products have advanced significantly over the years offering greater performance and flexibility than ever before. This has been driven by the advancements in semiconductor technologies and the increasing processing capabilities associated with high-performance software/firmware development. As the advancements have scaled so has the adoption across different verticals as the ubiquity of software-defined radios is being realized. Some of the biggest advancements that have led to this increase in adoption relates to the RF performance, sampling rates, and processing capabilities of these SDRs for different industries.
Q. How does 2024 look for Per-Vices? Are there any new announcements or products on the horizon?
Brandon Malatest: We are always working with our customers to both support existing programs where our solutions are deployed and for developing new products to meet customer needs. Our existing relationships between our customers and the large semiconductor manufacturers allows us to ensure we utilize the advancements in integrated circuits in a way to address the needs of our customers across multiple markets. We are planning to launch a new product in the near future with additional details to follow soon.
