July 17, 2013
Kymeta closes $50 Million Series C Financing
In a recent aricle from Satellitetoday.com "Kymeta has successfully closed a $50 million Series C financing arrangement to accelerate its growth plans. Kymeta, a privately held technology company, designs and manufactures satellite communication antennas and systems. Osage University partners and the Kresge Foundation joined existing Kymeta investors including Bill Gates, Lux Capital and Liberty Global in the financing.
Kymeta is using patented metamaterials technology that steers antenna beams without moving parts, resulting in flatter, thinner, lighter and more adaptable antennas and communication terminals. The company says this capability enables “new opportunities in the satellite industry to provide new broadband mobile services and highly-flexible portable and fixed services to a wide range of applications.”
In addition to this announcement, Kymeta’s CEOfficer Vern Fotheringham announced several key promotions on the company’s senior leadership team, including the appointment of Bob McCambridge as president and COO. Co-founder Nathan Kundtz was appointed as executive vice president and CTO, and John Schilling as executive vice president and CFO." -Steve Schuster
Metamaterials Surface Antenna Technology
mTenna utilizes new reconfigurable antenna technology: Metamaterials Surface Antenna Technology (MSA-T). MSA-T enables wide-angle, all-electronic beam steering from a proprietary, PCB-like surface that can be manufactured using a mature and affordable lithography manufacturing infrastructure.
The reconfigurability is achieved through the use of a standard PCB-like circuit board composed of several thousand sub-wavelength resonators (see photo above) that can be individually tuned. This PCB-like board is attached to a conventional feed structure. Thus, as the RF energy propagates through the system, individual tunable elements can be activated (i.e., turned “on”) to scatter a portion of this RF energy out of the guided mode. It is the pattern of activated tunable elements that determines the shape and direction of the radiated wave through the formation of a reconfigurable grating. Changing the pattern of activated elements changes the shape and direction of the beam. The net result is an antenna with the dynamic performance of a phased array, but without the need for phase shifters, related amplifiers and other components.