Thongchai (Luck) Hongsmatip

Our current project is to establish the square that commemorates the birth of his majesty of the King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand at Mount Auburn hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 5, 1927. For more information click here.

His job experience in the engineering field for the past fourteen years has been mainly in microwave industry. Currently Mr. Hongsmatip is a Sr. Principal Engineer of Bae Systems in Nashua , New Hampshire . Previously he was a Principal Engineer with M/A-COM Inc., Lowell , Massachusetts . Mr. Hongsmatip developed the first non-linear MESFET model for M/A-COM's Power GaAs MMIC (Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuit) process. That model is still in use today and M/A-COM has developed a full line of MMIC Power Amplifiers (PA) based on that model. One of his significant contributions in manufacturing today is a 14GHz PA, which has been used, in commercial Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) applications since 1993.

The initial design met the customer's specifications, but variations in the chip fabrication process impacted negatively on the yield. With this consideration, he worked closely with testing and manufacturing personnel to redesign the amplifier to make it more tolerant to the manufacturing process variations and thus increase the electrical yield from 50% to 80%. Mr. Hongsmatip also participated in the development of a broadband X-Band 1.5Watt PA for airborne phased array radar. This amplifier provides twice the bandwidth at double the power-added efficiency over competitors' products. Mr. Hongsmatip also published numerous technical papers for IEEE, Microwave Journal and M/A-COM Engineer conference.

He joined M/A-COM's Corporate R&D group in 1997 to work on the DoD sponsored MAFET (Microwave Analog Front-End Technology) program. He is supporting the establishment of a Multichip Module (MCA) foundry for low cost military and commercial assemblies using advanced manufacturing tools and methods. In this activity he has been adapting microwave circuit designs that employ both digital and analog multi-chip ICs in advanced packaging technologies such as Ball Grid Arrays (BGA), Coated Flip-chips and Surface Mount Technology (SMT). He is evaluating some of the most advanced design tools from HP and Ansoft such as Libra and MDS as well as new ADS and EM simulators for package designs ranging from 1GHz wireless communication to 38GHz application.

The design requirements for MCAs have been required more emphasis toward efficient/low cost manufacturing and thus require a close working relationship between the designer and manufacturing personnel. He has been designed the microwave products in BGA format, leveraging that platform as an efficient technique for interconnecting semiconductor die in MCA packages. The platform distributes RF and DC signals to a circuit grid manageable by the system. The BGA comprises a mulitlayer substrate with semiconductor components and passive components. With careful design for manufacturing, it offers ease of assembly, reduces electrical parasitics and provides higher levels of integration into a single package. It is essential to understand the complex issues of packaging and electrical design at microwave and millimeter wave frequencies to effect low cost manufacturing of commercial and military communication products.

Our current project is to establish the square that commemorates the birth of his majesty of the King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand at Mount Auburn hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 5, 1927. For more information click here.