Keeping quartz a heartbeat ahead

By ADAM GIFFORD

If you buy a GPS (global positioning satellite) device, there is a 65 per cent chance it will include crystals made by Auckland company Rakon.

With 10 million GPS devices sold last year, plus all the other wireless and electronic equipment at whose heart beats a finely shaved crystal of quartz, Rakon's 400 Mt Wellington staff were kept busy.

Now consider this. Last year, 400 million cellphones were sold around the planet. Rakon stayed out of that market, leaving it to giant Japanese companies such as NDK and NEC.

Until now.

In the wake of 2001 terror attacks, the United States Government decreed telephone service providers should be able to say where a particular cellphone was located.

Theoretically, GPS can do the job better than base-station triangulation systems. The challenge is how to do it at the cheapest possible price.

Solving that kind of problem is what keeps Rakon ahead of the curve in an intensely competitive industry.

The company was started in 1967 by Warren Robinson, who sold his Marlin Electronics marine radio business to build crystals in his garage.

His son, Rakon marketing director Darren Robinson, says: "Back then each channel you wanted to operate on needed two crystals, one to transmit and one to receive.

"It took three months to get them from overseas, so there was an opportunity for a local manufacturer to make and deliver them a lot faster."

As new technology reduced the need for multiple crystals, Rakon sought new opportunities.

Another son, Brent, entered the business in the late 1970s and developed a TCXO (Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator) for the emerging cellular phone business.

Rakon put its TCXOs into NEC phones manufactured in Australia.

When it was eventually squeezed out by NEC's own crystal-making subsidiary, Darren joined the family firm to find new markets.

"About 1990 I came across this American magazine with a Magellan handheld GPS in it. I said to Brent: 'Does this thing need a TCXO?' He said: 'I'm sure it does'."

Two breakthroughs have helped Rakon deliver.

One is the way it coats the thinly sliced wafers of quartz crystal with gold. Rakon built its own thin film deposition Machine, because it could not afford to import equipment.

The second is in its testing process. Most manufacturers test crystals in a sequence of ovens several temperature steps apart. Rakon's test ovens measure frequency performance for each degree, so it can give its customers far more detail on how its products will perform.

As well as winning the Magellan account, Rakon became a supplier to most emerging GPS manufacturers.

The GPS-enabled cellphone will push the company into high-volume manufacturing, a challenge it is getting ready for by partnering with one of its Japanese competitors.

The problem with tracking phones is that traditional GPS systems struggle to pick up the satellite signal indoors.

Rakon has developed two integrated circuits, which will be in production by March, which tackle this "weak signal GPS" problem.

They use Rakon's CDXO (calibrated dual crystal oscillator), which layers a highly temperature-sensitive crystal alongside a temperature-stable one for very accurate frequency measurements.

* Rakon is one of more than 80 companies featured at the Carter Holt Harvey New Zealand Pavilion, an Industry NZ initiative showcasing innovative businesses. The pavilion is at Viaduct Harbour Ave on Auckland's waterfront.

Rakon
The Carter Holt Harvey New Zealand Pavilion