Technology Maturity and Other Hurdles: Strategic Planning for Emerging RF Consumer Products

Engineering new high-volume/low-cost RF consumer products does not begin on the manufacturing floor. It begins much sooner when theoretical implications from physics and mathematics are applied to realize an engineering proof-of-concept (POC) demonstration. After the initial demonstration, new technologies are further developed to make them predictable, repeatable, reliable, inexpensive, and manufacturable. Each of these next steps beyond POC is typically a complex and difficult engineering problem that requires significant time, money, and effort to solve. Only after all of these individual efforts have addressed each of the engineering issues is a technology ready to be introduced to the high-volume manufacturing floor. This process of technology maturity is complex and lengthy, but it is necessary before emerging technologies can be exploited successfully in high-volume/low-cost consumer radio products.