Interview with Laurent Desclos - EEWeb

INTERVIEW
electromagnetism, applied to radar
cross section. At the same time, to
support my family as well as my
curiosity, I taught electronics at
the same college that I graduated
from. Additionally, I took a job in IT
support and worked for fun on the
design of some chip on GaAs.
At the end of my PhD, I wanted to
work abroad again. I got a job as
a researcher at NEC Japan and
designed a few components at 24
GHz and 60 GHz for their wireless
LAN division. I had a lot of support
and freedom to do really cool stuff,
but at that time, I think I was young
and not ready for the cultural shock.
I stayed there for about one and half
years and then decided to come
back to France, where I worked
for two years for the French Army
through a consulting company.
I was studying Electromagnetic
compatibility for new systems and
their influence on the civilian world,
as well as the implication of the
newly deployed DCS system on
the radio relays already in the field.
I learned a lot on the propagation
models and systems at that time.
I also had a few interactions with
SFR, or Bouygues Telecom, when
they just started their deployment.
Nobody at that time had a cell phone
in France, which was funny. After
two years in France, I was contacted
by NEC Japan to come back. Since
I was a better negotiator and also
a bit more mature, I negotiated a
position doing GaAs design at 60
GHz, managing a group designing
front-end and components in CMOS
and BiCMOS, and also started my
own little lab on antenna research.
Was this the first time you
became self-employed?
We worked independently, but were
funded by NEC. It was a really
fun time. We were the first ones to
develop a working solution, which
was an RF transceiver for 2.4 -5
GHZ applications. My boss at that
time gave me a lot of freedom and
Ethertronics is like
a big university
for new engineers
with support from
proprietary tools and
experienced engineers.
I learned and produced quite a
lot. We had several successes
and published and patented a few
things that are still used. Then we
transferred the lab to the research
center in Princeton, New Jersey.
I went to Princeton for a year, and
then was contacted by one of my
former students to join Ethertronics.
I accepted right after meeting the
two founders. That’s pretty much
where I started with Ethertronics in
2000.
Tell me a little about
Ethertronics--what’s your
mission and the industry you
are targeting?
We are targeting the whole wireless
industry. All wireless devices need
antennas. From the beginning, the
vision of the company has been to
create a better user experience.
We started as a company focused
on providing good support for our
customers (OEMs, ODMs) by
manufacturing antennas to meet
their mobile device needs. It was
around the 2005-2007 timeframe
when we saw that the device
form factor was shrinking while
the number of bands to cover
was increasing. We needed to
develop better antennas to deal
with these smaller form factors. We
knew that we needed to transition
from traditional passive antennas
to antennas that had more of a
systems perspective in mind, since
this is critical for next-generation
devices. We knew that we needed
to support our customers not
only on the antenna side but also
on the system side. Much of our
focus since that time has been on
developing active antenna systems,
whereby the antenna system and
modem interact with each other to
provide more “smarts” to the RF
system. On the system side, it is
interesting to bridge the gap for
us on the multidisciplinary level,
including antenna software, chip
and communication system levels. I
am very much convinced that there
is a place for a company creating
this ecosystem.
Do you find that most of
the antennas you design
are custom designs for an
application, or final products
that people design in?
We offer both custom and standard
antennas. Most of the designs
are custom, based on the OEM’s
needs. Cell phones all have different
designs, with components such as
the speaker and camera in different
locations. We consult with the OEM
to come up with the best antenna
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