News and Events

Crossfield in the news and recent events:

September 2010: Crossfield demonstrates a software defined radio (SDR) prototype to DMEA. The Gigsa features a 2 Gigsample A/D and supporting FPGA hardware to enable a programmable receiver and transmitter. Crossfield is working on an RFIC to support a greatly reduced power version of the radio transceiver for Low Power - Flexible Radio Transceiver program. Crossfield’s ultrawideband implementation of the LPFRT will provide extended battery life and improved range compared to the standard off-the-shelf IEEE 802.15.4 radios.

August 2010: In August, Crossfield delivered hardened data logger with wireless readout and control capabilities to the Army for performance and environmental testing. The data logger is designed for a high shock environment and incorporates eight individually programmable analog or digital channels, simultaneous sampling, programmable electrical interface, programmable trigger, and USB or wireless setup and readout using LabView. This data logger operates during a high shock event and is the basis for Crossfield’s next generation of wireless instrumentation systems.

June 2010: The annual Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) was held in Orlando, Florida this year. Crossfield was a Silver Sponsor of FTF 2010 and almost all Crossfield employees supported the booth and attendant technical discussions. Crossfield received many inquiries about its Network Instrumentation capabilities and had the opportunity to discuss the evolution of this technology with both customers, potential collaborators, and Freescale’s engineering and business management attendees.

May 2010: In May, Crossfield moved to a new facility located near the southwest corner of Research Blvd and Mopac. The new offices are located on the second floor of the Kaleido Building I. The new facility has increased lab space, improved conference facilities, and more ergonometric flow for communications between engineers.

April 2010: Crossfield is teamed with Nanohmics to develop nanowire FET technology using Nanohmic’s novel nanowire fabrication technique. Nanowire FETs offer better performance than classical FETs due to the ballistic nature of majority carrier transport. Crossfield is providing novel FET designs to support enhanced linearity RF circuit designs using Nanohmic’s fabrication constraints.

February 2010: Crossfield has demonstrated a novel RF sensor to support advanced guidance and navigation systems. The new sensor employs a conformal fabrication technology that enables high performance microwave and millimeterwave circuits and antennas to be developed. Crossfield is currently supplying prototype quantities to its customers to support performance and environmental testing.

September 2009: Crossfield begins a Department of Energy contract to develop a non-linear wireless control system to support instrumentation in fossil fuel power plants. The non-linear wireless control system employs a linear quadratic estimator (LQE) as part of the wireless communications system to estimate the quality of the datalink.

June 2009: Crossfield has a very active quarter including support for the Navy Opportunity Forum in Washington DC with a booth on the benefits of our Navy ASIC Re-engineering and Wireless Instrumentation technologies. Significant interest was demonstrated in Crossfield’s ASIC re-engineering technology and the Forum response exceeded all expectations. The photo at the right shows the Crossfield Program Manager for the ASIC Re-engineering project with a representative from another Austin company which also hosted a booth at the Forum.

In addition to the Navy Opportunity Forum, Crossfield won several new programs in this quarter including efforts on novel wireless control system technology, aircraft engine test instrumentation, and ultra low power wireless instrumentation networks.

May 2009: Crossfield adds three upper division interns from the University of Texas at Austin to support embedded software development and circuit analysis in support of Crossfield’s wireless instrumentation product development. The interns will support embedded code development, circuit analysis of signal conditioning circuits, printed circuit board layout, and integrated circuit verification. The culmination of their activities will be the development of a wirelessly controlled power switching system in support of a consumer product development.

January 2009: Crossfield begins Navy Phase III contract to demonstrate a novel reverse engineering technology for obsolete semiconductors . Working with several subcontractors, Crossfield is developing an automated technique for extracting interconnect and characterizing devices such that the original semiconductor device can be fabricated using current process technologies. This technology has wide application to industrial and military systems, litigation, and trusted verification.

November 2009: Crossfield becomes a iPhone developer to support iPhone hardware and software development as a control head for wireless networked instrumentation. Crossfield expects to demonstrate this technology with its networked instrumentation products in the coming year.

August 2008: Crossfield completes the development of its third generation wireless instrument system and begins sourcing prototypes to early adopter customers. The third generation instrumentation system employs IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) radio transceivers and enables the rapid development of harsh environment, low power wireless instrumentation networks. The primary wireless node has been tested to 5,000 “g” acceleration.

June 2008: Crossfield publishes paper on Multipath RDMA technology at the 2008 ITEA conference. Crossfield’s Multipath RDMA technology (patent pending) takes advantage of Gigabit Ethernet to enable high fidelity simulations and gaming across multiple heterogeneous computing platforms.

April 2008: Crossfield develops 32 channel Power Over Ethernet (PoE) instrumentation system to support industrial applications such as engine or air frame testing. The low power instrumentation system enables a significant reduction in the cabling required to support remote, programmable, data acquisition by taking 32 channels of strain gage signals (or other sensor), signal conditioning each channel, digitizing the signal, and transmitting the data to a remote site via Gigabit Ethernet. The system is designed for harsh environment applications and is low power.

May 2008: Crossfield receives a contract to implement the next phase in its efforts to develop multipath gigabit network communication to support high fidelity simulations and gaming. Graphics processing units and gaming processors have significantly higher computational performance compared to general purpose processors for those problems which are amenable to the type of stream processing supported. Crossfield’s effort will demonstrate high performance communications for clusters of gaming processors used in high fidelity simulations.

February 2008: Crossfield begins effort to develop a UWB transceiver for extremely low power wireless instrumentation networks. Crossfield’s wireless design is IEEE 802.15.4a compliant and implements a proprietary high data rate and long range modes to enable low power wireless sensor networking.

November 2007: Crossfield Technology begins Army contract to develop Conformal Semiconductor Circuits using flexible substrates. Crossfield will investigate manufacturing techniques to support semiconductors on plastic and extremely thin microwave substrates in support of microwave sensor development for munitions.

June 2007: Crossfield Technology wins Air Force contract to develop a Dynamic Strain Sensor System.

April 2007: Crossfield Technology wins Navy contract for ASIC Re-Engineering.

April 2007: Crossfield Technology announces ZigBee compatible wireless instrumentation products using IEEE 802.15.4 transceivers from Freescale Semiconductor.

June 2006: Crossfield Technology wins Air Force contract to develop wireless instrumentation for harsh environments.