RFEL congratulated by the Queen
Representatives of RF Engines Limited (RFEL) recently attended a ceremony at Buckingham Palace where they were presented to the Queen, following the company winning the 2009 Queen’s Award for Innovation. John Summers, RFEL’s CEO, said, “It was a great honour to meet Her Majesty, Prince Phillip and other members of the Royal family and represent RF Engines at Buckingham Palace. So much of the company’s work is of a confidential nature and of necessity low profile, so it’s wonderful to have such high-profile recognition of both our innovation and business success.”
Since the announcement of the award, RFEL has experienced an even higher level of business enquiries due to the raised awareness of the company and its technologies. “The Awards Office does a great job in promoting the Awards and the winners around the world,” added John Summers, “and the Innovation category naturally draws the most interest, which is tremendously beneficial for us.”
The Queen’s Award for Enterprise is the UK’s most prestigious Award for business performance and recognises and rewards outstanding achievement by UK companies. The Innovation category is for continuous innovation and development, sustained over not less than five years to levels that are outstanding for the size of a company’s operations.
RFEL is based on the Isle of Wight, started business in 2000 and now employs over 20 highly qualified designers. It has been profitable for several years and has been steadily growing year on year both in revenue terms and head count. RFEL's customers are mainly 'Tier 1' companies in each of its main markets, including Thales, Qinetiq, UK Ministry of Defence, Rheinmetall (Germany), CEA (France), Agilent (Switzerland) and LIG Nex1 (Korea), as well as many other major international clients.
The company develops (and patents as appropriate) products based on high performance, state-of-the-art, digital signal processing techniques that enable fast moving events or fleeting, hopping signals occurring in the radio spectrum to be identified and analysed. These designs are incorporated into an increasing number of RFEL’s own products as well as their customers’ products.
RFEL’s solutions have a variety of applications such as in the design of efficient wireless communication (satellite and terrestrial) networks, test and measurement instrumentation, homeland security surveillance systems, bespoke wideband receivers/transceivers and in systems to detect signals from fast moving missiles or other military threats.