The Kyocera Group and Ube Industries, Ltd. recently announced the signing of a joint venture agreement to jointly produce ceramic filters for 5G base stations. According to the joint venture agreement, the Kyocera Group will hold a 51% stake in the joint venture Kyocera-Ube RF TEC Corporation (Kyocera-Ube RF Tech Co., Ltd.) and Ube will hold a 49% stake. The newly established joint venture is scheduled to begin operations in December 2019.
5G networks can improve high-capacity, low-latency bandwidth guarantees for emerging areas such as smart home, driverless technology, and remote medical services. At present, the 5G base station solution mainly adopts two technical solutions: macro-cell base station (mBS) and small-cell access point (sAP). The signal coverage of the mBS solution is relatively wide; the sAP solution It is suitable for high-density locations to strengthen 5G signals. With the geometric growth of 5G communication in the future, the miniaturization of base station electronic components has become an important investment area in the popularization of 5G networks.
Ceramic dielectric filters are one of the key products of Ube Electronics, a UBE consortium. It is a key component of the 5G base station radio frequency unit. Compared with traditional small metal cavity filters, it has the characteristics of high dielectric constant, high Q value, low loss, temperature drift resistance, and miniaturization. Since ceramic dielectric filters provide the possibility of miniaturization of components while ensuring high power transmission, they are expected to replace metal cavity filters in the 5G era.
This time together, through the integration of UBE's existing filter solutions and Kyocera's know-how advantages in the field of functional ceramics with its global sales network, Kyocera-Ube RF TEC is expected to deeply explore future business opportunities for key components under the 5G technology framework .