Manhasset, N.Y. - Anadigics Inc. has purchased the power amplifier product line of RF Solutions Inc. for $2.8 million, giving the gallium arsenide IC supplier a stake in the wireless local-area network market.

"Wireless is the growth engine right now [for the electronics industry], and WLANs are at the leading edge of that growth, with a compound annual growth rate of 25 to 30 percent. You won't find that anywhere else," said Bami Bastani, chief executive officer of Anadigics (Warren, N.J.).

The purchase follows Anadigics' attempt to add a WLAN capability to its portfolio by reapplying its cellular-oriented code-division multiple-access power amplifiers to 802.11g WLAN applications, Bastani said. "But six months into our development cycle we kept bumping into RF Solutions; we had the same target customers," he said. "It became apparent that they had the best-of-breed solution for WLAN PAs." Anadigics decided to abandon its internal power amplifier development efforts and purchase RF Solutions.

"Our value-add going forward will be the integration the PA, switch, filter and LNA [low-noise amplifier] on a single multichip module using best-in-class technology," Bastani said. That technology will use indium gallium phosphide heterojunction bipolar transistor power amplifiers made in a GaAs process that uses RF Solutions' PA technology.

"We had come to a crossroads and felt it was important to take the next step to reach critical mass," said Marcus Wise, head of sales and marketing at RF Solutions (Norcross, Ga.) and now senior director of WLAN products at Anadigics. "We decided to leverage Anadigics' fabrication, assembly and test expertise."

RF Solutions is "seeing what's left" of the company and may look for partners for its remaining WLAN technology, Wise said.

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