Akoustis Technologies announced that it has received two design wins and a volume pre-production order for its 3.6 GHz XBAW Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) filter for 5G network infrastructure base stations as well as customer premise equipment (CPE).
This is the second and third design win in CBRS for Akoustis, and the Company remains in active discussions with over 10 CBRS equipment makers. This customer plans to use the Akoustis XBAW filters for qualification in fixed wireless base station equipment and CPE devices, both of which are expected to enter production in early calendar 2022. Both the base station and CPE applications are expected to use multiple Akoustis XBAW devices.
Jeff Shealy, Founder and CEO of Akoustis, stated, “We continue to see an increased interest in our leading XBAW filters for CBRS networking equipment.” Mr Shealy continued, “We expect additional design wins and customer ramps as the new CBRS networks roll out to facilitate 5G used to enable last-mile connectivity for broadband Internet access.”
The FCC’s CBRS spectrum auctions completed last summer set the stage for CBRS last mile infrastructure roll-out across the United States, beginning in calendar 2021. The CBRS bands will enable new and existing carriers to provide last-mile data service and augment individual networks. In addition, CBRS will enable the delivery of campus-wide communications and create secure IoT networks.
The CBRS bands operate between 3.5 and 3.7 GHz and will provide cellular carriers and other major communications companies new and additional sub-6 GHz spectrum, which can be a key enabler for making 5G deployments possible by providing last-mile data service and improving coverage of individual unlicensed networks. Verizon, Dish Network, Comcast and Charter were the early winners, spending approximately $3.7 billion of the total $4.6 billion for public access licenses (PALs) in the recent auction.
Akoustis is actively delivering volume production of its WiFi 6 tandem filter solutions, shipping multiple 5G small cell XBAW filter solutions, delivering initial designs of its new 5G mobile filter solutions to multiple customers and is now entering the market with its new WiFi 6E coexistence XBAW filter solutions.
Given the rapidly growing sales funnel activity as well as ongoing interaction with customers regarding expected ramps in both 5G mobile and WiFi 6E in calendar 2022, the Company plans to increase the annual production capacity at its New York fab by the end of calendar 2021 to approximately 500 million filters per year.
Akoustis currently has 15 commercial XBAW filters in its product catalog, and recently introduced 5.6 GHz and 6.6 GHz WiFi 6E coexistence filter modules, which when qualified, will bring the number of catalog products to 17. Current product catalog filters include a 5.6 GHz WiFi filter, a 5.2 GHz WiFi filter, a 5.5 GHz WiFi-6E filter, a 6.5 GHz WiFi 6E filter, three small cell 5G network infrastructure filters including two Band n77 filters and one Band n79 filter, a 3.8 GHz filter and five S-Band filters for defense phased-array radar applications, a 3.6 GHz filter for the CBRS 5G infrastructure market and a C-Band filter for the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) market. The Company is also developing several new filters for the sub-7 GHz bands targeting 5G mobile device, network infrastructure, WiFi CPE and defense markets.
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