everything RF recently interviewed Jeanmarc Laurent, the Vice President and founder of Milliwave Silicon Solutions Inc. and the inventor of MilliBox. Together with Chinh Doan the CEO and founder, they pioneered mmWave IC devices and customer applications in 2008 at SiBEAM, which became Silicon Image then Lattice Semiconductor. Before this, Jeanmarc worked at C-Cube which became LSI Logic where he led global teams of application engineers putting a significant number of semiconductor designs in mass production. He is an inventor on several patents.
Q. Can you give a brief overview of MilliBox? What does the company do, and how did you get started on this interesting and innovative concept?
Jeanmarc Laurent: MilliBox is a product line of Milliwave Silicon Solutions Inc. Its founders Chinh H Doan and Jeanmarc Laurent are pioneers of mmWave RFIC dating back to 2005 when Chinh started SiBEAM out of UC Berkeley, Jeanmarc Joined in 2008. SiBEAM was doing consumer-grade V-Band CMOS ICs. In 2016, seeing the potential for mmWave Radar and 5G, we started Milliwave Silicon Solutions Inc. as a consulting service firm. Several customers and partners asked us to help them design Over The Air (OTA) test capabilities, so we started designing something modular which could satisfy multiple far-field requirements, and to sustain the demand we created a standalone standard product line called MilliBox and we unveiled it at IMS 2018 in Philadelphia.
Q. What does the MilliBox product portfolio look like?
Jeanmarc Laurent: MilliBox portfolio is made of chambers, positioners and accessories. Because of their modularity, the user can create many combinations of chambers and positioners to respond to their test requirements. Usually, the DUT size dictates the positioner size, the positioner size dictates the chamber cube unit size, and the DUT frequency drives the far-field requirement which dictates the number of cubes needed. This is how our portfolio can create many configurations to satisfy customer requirements.
Q. Can you tell us about your Benchtop Chambers? What makes these chambers unique, and how do they compare with those manufactured by other companies?
Jeanmarc Laurent: Our solutions are based on three basic ideas, Modularity, Flexibility and Affordability. Modularity is the fact that our chambers are constructed around cube units that are combined to make a chamber of the right size for a given project. Cube units can even be added later on if the requirements change. Modularity has also been extended to our Antenna positioners of the latest generation GIM04 and GIM05 which are available in different sizes.
Flexibility is related to our software controller. It is written in Python and provided in source code, this way our customers are not dependent on us if they want to make changes to the code, expand its capabilities or integrate it into a large automation project. Also, the user can integrate a driver for its own Device Under Test, which is very key feature for applications like Radar. Many instrument drivers are already implemented so that the MilliBox software controller can exchange SCPI commands with equipment from all major test and measurement brands, but one can develop their own driver for more exotic instruments.
Finally, affordability is a very important aspect of MilliBox.
At the end of the day, I think access is the most important solution that MilliBox brings to the market. By access I mean, the freedom for an engineer to work on their own system, that is not offsite and that is not shared among large groups. This guarantees that individuals or small teams can get the results they want when they need them. This on its own accelerates the project because people work in parallel instead of waiting in line.
Q. MilliBox Offers a range of antenna positioners – Can you tell us about these? What applications are these developed for? Have they been specifically designed for use within MilliBox chambers?
Jeanmarc Laurent: In short, we have 2 series of modular positioners. The first is GIM04 which is a modular Horizontal/Vertical (HV) positioner type and comes in four sizes from 20 cm wide to 38 cm wide. GIM04 comes with an option for a third axis for polarization control. The other type is GIM05 which is a modular Spherical Roll positioner series. All positioners use the same software controller and have the same mounting footprint compatible specifically with either MBX0x or MBX3x chambers depending on their DUT sizes. GIM04 is preferred for high gain antenna and radar test whereas GIM05 is preferred for low gain antenna.
Q. What are the benefits of using 3-axis antenna positioners for testing?
Jeanmarc Laurent: Most antenna positioners have 2 axes like Azimuth and Elevation or Theta and Phi, for GIM04 and GIM05 we introduced a third axis which is Polarization or delta-Phi. This third axis is useful for antenna configuration where the polarization plane is not known or defined, and the user wants to measure the total radiated power with 2 port instruments.
Q. Can you tell us about your OTA Antenna Test Solution? What are some applications for which this can be used?
Jeanmarc Laurent: Nowadays, antenna simulation is a critical step in the design flow for antenna design but when the physical antenna comes back, it needs to be measured physically, and this is when Over-the-Air measurement comes into play. MilliBox has a unique approach to the OTA antenna test which makes it accessible to many labs of any size and budget. Now we have extended our frequency range to sub-Thz bands with the addition of built-in frequency extenders that allow for 3D measurement of waveguide-fed antennas. This is so unique that it is getting a lot of traction on the market.
Q. How can MilliBox Products be used for radar testing? Can you tell us about the setup and how it operates? What type of radar products can be tested using this?
Jeanmarc Laurent: Radar measurement is a big part of the use case for MilliBox. Most people think immediately of automotive radar and aerospace radar, but there are countless applications of radars in the mmWave and sub-THz range. With MilliBox you can do basic RF radar tests like radiation patterns, EIRP, gain and so on. Beyond this, we introduced MBX33R which allows for radar performance tests against physical fixed and moving targets. For example, one wants to know if a radar has a blind spot or impairment at certain angles and debug the issue. The next step is with our partners where we can do Radar parametric measurement or even active Radar target Simulators.
Q. MilliBox recently introduced a compact antenna test range. Can you tell us more about this solution?
Jeanmarc Laurent: Even though our solution is modular and allows for cube unit addition to reach the far field distance critical for accurate measurement, there are applications like for example long-range radars or satellite communication where the far field distance can be even larger than the lab itself. This is when a Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR) is beneficial. CATR systems employ a parabolic reflector, and a feed horn judiciously placed at the focal point which both convert a round incident wave plane to a flat wave plane. This technique therefore converts any near-field incident plane as if it were in far-field configuration. MBX32CTR uses this solution to offer the benefit of MilliBox solutions to long far-field antennas and radars.
Q. Can you tell us about the software and interface solutions that control your products? How do these work with test equipment from other manufacturers?
Jeanmarc Laurent: We never liked the approach of the big Test & Measurement actors with regard to software, from day one we decided our software would be entirely in Python and delivered with source code. The interface from the computer to the 3D positioner is a simple USB cable. It is very important that our customer keep the freedom to look under the hood and modify, hack or improve our code base for their own project. I think this is also why our solution is so widely used in academia and research labs. We want to encourage innovation; we want our users to see MilliBox as a playground, not as a fridge. Having said this, we have implemented all interfaces for most main instrument vendors, so our solution works plug-and-play seamlessly with everyone out there.
Q. Can you tell us about the "Build your MilliBox" tool? What is this, and what can customers do with this tool? What is the turnaround time to get a custom enclosure?
Jeanmarc Laurent: Build your MilliBox is a web-based application where visitors can input the critical points of their project and the tool suggests some configuration that will work well for their project.
It has its own far-field calculator and accessory selector. This is the result of our modularity and product offering which can make new visitors a bit overwhelmed with the number of possible combinations possible, so this tool makes it easier to navigate.
Regarding your question about lead time, we are still almost built to order, and our lead time is 6 weeks but, in most instances, we deliver much faster.
Q. Who are your customers, and where are they located? Can you give us a percentage breakup by geographic region? Can you tell us about your global sales and support process?
Jeanmarc Laurent: When we started, our customer base started from the San Francisco Bay Area with word of mouth and then it spread to the rest of the US. Now Europe is a significant part of our business and Japan, Korea, India and China are developing steadily. We are happy to have such a wide customer base, we have installed more than 300 systems and are proud of our regular loyal returning customers.
Q. How has 2024 been for MilliBox so far? What will your product and solutions roadmap look like for the next three years?
Jeanmarc Laurent: 2024 is a year where we invested more in our partnerships for example with Eravant, Copper Mountain and Maury Microwave to offer more complete turnkey solutions. We also continued our sales network development in Europe and Asia.
For the future, we have many ideas, as we always did, and we will spend some time cleaning them up to focus on our customers' most important needs. Besides natural software features development, subjects like meta-surface, Sub-THz, 6G, UWB, radar VTS and printed antenna are always coming back for internal consideration. Then sales network expansion and more partnerships. This will keep us busy…
