everything RF recently interviewed Philip Pratt, the Vice President of Marketing at Jariet Technologies. Philip has 30 years of experience in high-speed data converters and RF at various companies, working in applications, design, systems, business development and marketing. He joined Jariet in 2024 after 18 years at Texas Instruments, where he was World-Wide Product Marketing for high-speed converters in Aerospace and Defense for the most recent 10-year period. He has published numerous articles and holds a patent.
Q. Could you give us a brief history of Jariet Technologies? When was the company founded, and what was the vision that led to its creation?
Philip Pratt: Jariet Technologies was founded in 2015 by Charles Harper (CEO) and Craig Hornbuckle (CTO) with the vision to develop world-leading direct RF-sampling data converters and RF transceiver ICs. The mandate was not to build “me too” products similar to existing solutions, but rather, to invent a new and better approach to RF signal acquisition and generation for advanced defense and communications equipment.
Q. What is Direct RF-sampling? Could you tell us about this technology, its architecture and discuss its advantages for high-frequency applications?
Philip Pratt: Direct RF-sampling moves the signal acquisition and generation to the antenna frequency and replaces conventional RF components with ultra-high-speed ADCs and DACs to perform frequency conversion and filtering operations in the digital domain. This approach has the advantage of lowering the SWaP-C (size, weight, power and cost) compared to traditional RF architectures, while improving flexibility. Jariet provides a true small signal software-defined radio and enables ultra-wide, multi-function and multi-band signal capture and generation from a single component.
Q. While the concept of Direct RF Sampling isn’t new, what advancements in recent years have made it commercially viable and more widely adopted in recent years?
Philip Pratt: When Jariet was founded in 2015, RF Sampling with good performance was just barely reaching the L- and S-bands (1-4 GHz), driven by the cellular communications industry wanting to take advantage of the software-defined flexibility and lower SWaP-C offered by the approach. The cellular industry had the size of scale to justify the R&D investments to make that a reality for those bands. Over the next few years, the innovation mainly focused on increasing the number of RF channels integrated into the cellular base-station ICs from 2-4 up to 4-8 channels and reducing the power and cost per channel. The RF range saw a modest increase up to the 6-10 GHz range, but most volumes were shipping for use in the cellular bands from 700 MHz to 6 GHz.
All applications with frequencies beyond these ranges still require traditional analog frequency conversion techniques. Jariet was very busy during this time developing IP in 32 nm and 12 nm standard CMOS processes that could instead provide direct sampling to frequencies >30 GHz. Funding and requests for this capability came from sources such as the US DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the US DIB (Defense Industry Base), to provide the same benefit commercial cellular frequencies were seeing, but for RADAR, electronic warfare and satellite frequencies between 6-36 GHz that weren’t being served by 4G/5G cellular chips.
Q. What is ELECTRA? Can you tell us more about this product series? What are the different options in this series? How should users determine which variant best suits their needs?
Philip Pratt: ELECTRA is Jariet’s (and the world’s) first commercially available standard products that address these frequencies and the benefits of direct RF-sampling. The first three versions to release to qualified production are tailored for use cases up to 12GHz, up to 22 GHz and up to 36 GHz at three different price points but within the same package and ball map. All three are targeted for use up to 2 RF transceivers per chip.
The selection criteria for the 2T2R versions are summarized here:
- Electra-MA, if the application needs:
- Sample rates up to 64 GSPS
- Frequencies up to 36 GHz
- IBW (instantaneous BW) up to 6.4 GHz
- 4 sub-band digital tuners
- Electra-MK, if the application needs:
- Sample rates up to 58 GSPS
- Frequencies up to 22 GHz
- IBW (instantaneous BW) up to 2.9 GHz
- 2 sub-band digital tuners
- Electra-MX, if the application needs:
- Sample rates up to 51.2 GSPS
- Frequencies up to 12 GHz
- IBW (instantaneous BW) up to 1.28 GHz
- 2 sub-band digital tuners
Q. How does ELECTRA compare in terms of cost and performance to traditional transceiver solutions?
Philip Pratt: Electra eliminates the intermediate frequency (IF) from many systems, and this reduces the BOM (bill of materials) for the system by eliminating a mixer, PLL/VCO, IF filter and IF gain stage, while delivering performance as good or better. As an example, the receiver NSD (noise spectral density) provided by Electra’s 10-bit ADCs is -156 dBFS/Hz. This is better NSD than 14-bit ADCs used in heterodyne receivers that digitize much slower and at an IF. The power consumption of those components is also removed from the system budget.
Q. How does Jariet Technologies support next-generation electronic warfare systems, and what makes your solutions uniquely suited for high-performance defense applications like radar, ELINT, and jamming?
Philip Pratt: The basic premise of EW is to monitor, react or otherwise control the electronic magnetic spectrum across as much frequency range as is feasible in the size, cost and power budget of the asset utilizing it. No solution does that as well as Jariet’s chips and IP. Now a singular chip can ‘see’ the entire spectrum from 100 MHz to 30 GHz without interruption (all signals in 1st Nyquist) and with low latency. At any one moment, the Electra-MA can be observing and/or jamming any 6.4 GHz wide slice of that spectrum before quickly tuning to the next slice with digital accuracy, stability and flexibility.
Q. How are Jariet’s direct RF solutions advancing capabilities in modern satellite communications, both in space-based payloads and ground station systems?
Philip Pratt: While there are frequency bands in use in the satellite industry from HF to V-band, a large majority of satellite communications occurs in the X, Ku and Ka-bands. Much of Jariet’s chips and IP were designed to accommodate a common communication link scenario that involves the payload receiving wideband signals near 30 GHz (Ka uplink band) while transmitting wideband signals near 20 GHz (Ku downlink band). The ground station performs the opposite of this. Chips like Electra-MA can serve both sides of this link. Electra-MA has also demonstrated suitable radiation performance for payload use cases.
Q. Jariet Technologies offers solutions tailored for 5G and other advanced wireless systems. How do your products support these high-speed, low-latency applications, and what sets them apart in today’s wireless landscape?
Philip Pratt: For decades, cellular communications have utilized the allocated frequency bands mostly between 700-3500 MHz. As such, this spectrum and the competitive landscape serving it, is very crowded. 5G (and future 6G) have begun to take advantage of wider, less crowded spectrum at higher frequencies to provide better throughput to the user, especially in congested and shorter-range environments. In 5G NR (new radio) terms, there are three primary bands: FR1 (sub-7GHz), FR2 (24-71 GHz) and FR3 (7-24 GHz). Jariet’s chips and IP can cover all of FR1, FR3 and lower FR2 in one chip. This is unprecedented flexibility and software controllability. The devices built for this market also need test equipment to verify them, where you may also find Jariet. 6G is speculated to be deployed after 2030, and Jariet’s IP and chips are so advanced that they are already being employed in 6G development prototypes.
Q. Can you tell us more about product adoption? How does it compare in terms of cost and performance to traditional solutions? Who are your customers? Where are they located?
Philip Pratt: Product adoption is going well, especially as a direct function of frequency and/or bandwidth. Jariet’s solutions are overall smaller, lower power and less costly than traditional approaches with analog frequency conversion and a large bill of materials. We have many US and non-US defense and commercial customers acquiring Jariet IP and chips for satellite payloads, satellite ground stations, electronic warfare, RADAR, 5G/6G, quantum computing controllers, wireline communications and test equipment.
Q. How is 2025 looking like for Jariet Technologies? Are you planning on adding any new product lines or widening the existing ones?
Philip Pratt: We are focusing on expanding the reach of Jariet to new customers and markets by adding sales rep firms in many new locations in the US and beyond. We are working to expand the ELECTRA family to include versions with additional assurance screening targeted to space applications, and to add 4-channel versions.
The selection criteria for the 4T4R versions are summarized here:
- Electra-QA, if the application needs:
- Sample rates up to 64 GSPS
- Frequencies up to 36GHz
- IBW (instantaneous BW) up to 6.4GHz
- 4 sub-band digital tuners
- Electra-QK, if the application needs:
- Sample rates up to 58 GSPS
- Frequencies up to 22GHz
- IBW (instantaneous BW) up to 2.9GHz
- 2 sub-band digital tuners
- Electra-QX, if the application needs:
- Sample rates up to 51.2 GSPS
- Frequencies up to 12GHz
- IBW (instantaneous BW) up to 1.28GHz
- 2 sub-band digital tuners
