Quite some time ago, we reported on WiSpry, a MEMS company that was using its technology to switch capacitors so that the antenna tuning can be optimized and changed in real time as conditions and needs change.

Much more recently, a new solution was announced based on collaboration between Taoglas, who makes antenna assemblies, and Peregrine, who produces an array of digitally-switchable capacitors (amongst other things). They’ve combined the two into a module that can fit into phones and other devices like automobile telematics and patient monitoring devices that have to be small and yet communicate afar. You might think this sounds just like what WiSpry is doing, but, while they’re attacking the same basic problem, their solutions are very different.

Peregrine’s capacitors aren’t actuated by MEMS elements; they’re switched electronically using Peregrine’s UltraCMOS process, which relies on silicon-on-sapphire technology to provide good RF performance. So they’re purely electrical where WiSpry (and also Cavendish Kinetics) is electromechanical.

So which one is better? I asked what the benefit of the electrical version is, and I can oversimplify the answer as being, “We can actually produce ours reliably.” (They didn’t articulate that in a snarky fashion, to be clear… Yeah, I’m sexing it up to keep your attention…) Which suggests, of course, that MEMS makers can’t.

So I asked both WiSpry and Cavendish Kinetics about this; I can’t imagine either one of them saying, “Oh yeah, our production sucks!” even if it were true (and, for the record, I’m not saying it is). But it’s only right to let them respond, so I checked in. Cavendish Kinetics’ Marketing and Biz Dev EVP Larry Morrell said that they have real customer designs in the works, but that they haven’t reached production status yet.

But significantly, he said, “Based on our collective management experience (and the management team has done all this before), we are on a normal yield learning curve for a CMOS process.  So we are tracking to our plan and the yields are improving monthly.  Our current yield levels are well above minimum requirements to be able to predict fab output to support customers.” Carefully worded; it suggests to me that yields aren’t great today (a threshold of predicting output simply means stable, not high) – but if they can support customers without going out of business, that’s all that matters to customers. They expect production this year and capacity in the 10s of millions per month by the end of the year. [Update note: more clarification on Cavendish Kinetics yields can be found here.]

I did not receive a reply from WiSpry by “print” time.

You can find out more about the Peregrine/Taoglas offering in their release.