Member Spotlight with Filtronic on the Benefits of the HAPS Alliance

Dan Rhodes, Director of Business Development ‒ mmWave Technology, Filtronic

Filtronic designs and manufactures products that transmit, receive, condition and manage radio waves, particularly at microwave and mmWave frequencies. Mission-critical communication networks depend on our systems and components.

Our products are integral to a range of challenging applications, including mobile telecommunications infrastructure, defense and aerospace, and emergency first-responder communications. Our bespoke product range includes transmit and receive modules, power amplifiers, transceivers, MCPs, SIPs and filters, operating at levels from DC to more than 110GHz. Our next-generation, high-performance transceiver modules enable high-capacity HAPS-to-ground and inter-HAPS data transmission using E-band frequencies.

We have been working within the emerging global HAPS ecosystem now for several years. The HAPS Alliance is becoming an integral element of this accelerating industry, and therefore we believe it is good practice to be involved, sharing our ideas and technologies with other leading players in this exciting market.

The digital divide is already a significant issue, but, notably, the gap is widening and its importance is growing. We are passionate about playing an active part in a solution. The HAPS Alliance offers a platform for cross-industry collaboration, with leading technology companies working together to address this very real issue, which is the best way to solve it.

At our core, Filtronic is a communications company, and we believe that everyone should have equal rights to telecommunication and internet access. Using traditional infrastructure, this isn’t practical, so we need to look for new innovative solutions, and we believe that HAPS is now a very real part of that movement toward solutions.

I am truly excited about working collaboratively with the HAPS Alliance, with a shared vision to address this issue. We look forward to using the working groups to share best practices and to plugging into some of the outreach programs to promote STEM subjects.