Huawei closing Irish RF design center

MUNICH, Germany – Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is closing down its RF IC design center in Cork, Ireland.

The 10-person RF design team was acquired by Huawei in 2010 as part of the purchase of M4S from Option NV (Leuven, Belgium), which gave Huawei access to a 40-nm CMOS multimode software-defined radio, originally developed at the IMEC research institute. A source said the RF IC design team is now seeking other opportunities.

Jim Connelly, Cork site manager for Huawei, confirmed the closure. Other engineering activities continue at the site, he said.

M4S was spun off from IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) in 2006 to commercialize the Scaldio scalable radio transceiver for use in software-defined radio. M4S (Leuven, Belgium) subsequently tried to raise venture capital as an independent startup but in a difficult funding climate eventually became a subsidiary of USB dongle and data card supplier Option NV (Leuven, Belgium).

In December 2010 Huawei announced it was acquiring all of M4S as part of a cooperation agreement with Option to develop mobile broadband technology for Europe. The purchase price was reported to be 8 million euro (about $10.5 million).


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