Cambridge-based Nujira has been formed to develop an advanced high-efficiency power-amplifier technology for the wireless industry. Just two months ago it closed its second funding round, obtaining $9.8 million, with 3i, Amadeus, and the Cambridge Gateway Fund all contributing. The company's engineering staff has a long-standing history of networking equipment designs for the likes of Alcatel, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Sony. With the huge performance demands being put on next-generation mobile networks, power consumption levels are set to rise. In order to curb this, RF power-amplifier efficiencies need to rapidly improve. Nujira's HAT (High-Accuracy Tracking) technology aims to offer efficiencies that will keep pace with 3G/WiMAX base-station development, and enable the design of a smaller, cheaper network infrastructure. As Tim Haynes, the company's CEO, explains: "The technology most often used to improve efficiency is the Doherty technique, but this can only achieve about 30% improvement. The envelope-tracking method, where a variable voltage supply is dynamically adjusted to track the envelope of the applied modulation, has been around for decades, but until now it has not been possible to commercialise it. It modifies the voltage on the output transistor to try to keep efficiency high, but the difficulty is to keep doing this dynamically. Through our technology we have produced an architecture that allows the supply voltage to be modulated very quickly. This results in improved efficiency, increased dynamic range and less distortion." He continues: "We sell this as a module that is simple to integrate into the end user's system and that effectively doubles the overall efficiency level of the power amplifier."The company is currently under contract with seven major OEMs within the telecoms sector, and will be in a position to make formal announcements on some of these in the coming months. "A lot of operators have made lowering energy consumption a priorority and have put a lot of pressure onto their technology partners to look at how they can make this happen. This makes the solution that we can provide very interesting indeed. Also, in developing countries, the need to keep cost to a minimum and making use of renewable resources will be vital when rolling out infrastructure," he adds.Haynes expects to have one last round of funding in 2008, but is confident that from then on the sales revenue generated will be more than adequate to take the enterprise forward. When asked if the company would consider the possibility of licensing this technology to large equipment manufacturers, he was adamant in his reply, stating: "This doesn't interest us at all; we are a component company. If you go down the licensing route you don't have a scalable business, you have stunted your growth right at the start. There are still a broad number of applications out there that we can go on to address with this technology, so building a healthy business that will allow us to explore these other avenues is our only goal." He concludes: "Our intention is to be a big business one day; we are looking for long-term expansion, not just to go for the easiest route."