Annual Report
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HRL LABORATORIES, LLC 2005 ANNUAL REPORT TECHNOLOGIES CREATING OPPORTUNITIES CONTENTS 4 A WORD FROM OUR CEO 6 HRL IN NUMBERS 8 ADVANCED MATERIALS 10 ALGORITHMS AND INFORMATION 12 ANTENNAS 14 COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING 16 COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS 18 DIGITAL AND MIXED SIGNALS SUBSYSTEMS 20 LASERS 22 PHOTONICS 24 RF ANALOG 26 SENSORS 28 HRL IN MALIBU 30 PATENTS ISSUED TO HRL IN 2005 32 A YEAR OF INNOVATIONS 2 0 0 5 H R L L A B O R A T O R I E S VISION To enhance our position as a world-class R&D Lab and become: I Increasingly valued by our LLC Members, customers, and employees I Increasingly respected by our peers in the scientific community A N N U A L R E P O R T MISSION To create sustained competitive advantages for our LLC Members and customers by: I Developing innovative technical solutions that: I Solve important, technically challenging national and global problems I Create significant value for our customers I We will accomplish this by I Attracting and maintaining world-class technical talent and leadership I Serving the needs of our government customers I Working together to accelerate transfer of technology solutions to this, the 2005 Annual Report for HRL Laboratories, LLC, a world-class Welcome industrial research laboratory with an outstanding legacy and an even brighter future. HRL is owned jointly by the Boeing Corporation and the General Motors Corporation, our LLC Members. We continue to provide leading edge R&D services to our parent companies and to both government and commercial customers. HRL’s mission is to provide sustained competitive developments in nanotechnology and bio-inspired technologies advantages for our LLC Members and customers by developing are particularly exciting. innovative technology-based solutions. We solve important People are HRL’s most important resource, and we con- and technically challenging problems and, by working closely tinually strive to upgrade our staff through effective hiring and with our customers, ensure that our technologies are smoothly first-rate professional management and training practices. integrated. Our unique joint ownership model allows our par- Approximately 95 percent of our technical staff have an ent companies to find synergies and leverage the resources of advanced degree with more than 70 percent holding a Ph.D. both our LLC Members and our other customers. Recognizing an increasing need to strategically focus our tech- We made very significant progress in nologies, we have created a new Program Development organiza- many of our traditional technology areas tion, to better match our technologies to key market needs. We this year and we started several new and have also expanded our staff and management training programs exciting programs. In 2005, we set perform- in order to provide career growth for our staff and to better serve ance records in digital and analog microelec- the needs of our customers. These programs include a disciplined tronics, photonics, infrared detector materi- process to guide our investment in and marketing of our newest als, MEMS, antennas, energy technologies, ideas and technologies. quantum electronics, and other areas. We We continue to work with a variety of government and also had many significant accomplish- commercial customers. Our base of governmental work has ments in emerging areas such as cog- broadened with the addition of several small, but very important, nitive computing, nanowires and new programs from new customers. We have also expanded the nanotubes, active structural materi- size and scope of our commercial work. In particular, we are find- als and, bio- and bio-inspired materi- ing very significant market demand for many of our millimeter als and systems. Our proprietary wave electronic products and we have become the supplier of Technologies Dr. Conilee Kirkpatrick Creating Opportunities Vice-President | 4 | 2005 HRL ANNUAL REPORT choice for many key components in this area. This year, we also signed a major commercial agreement with Raytheon, a former HRL LLC Member. We look forward to working with Raytheon as a key customer in the future. We recognize the importance of producing a quality product on time and within budget. We continue to improve both our internal processes and standards in order to stress delivery of quality products. For those departments of the company that deliver flight hardware, we are well on our way to AS9100 quality certification. We are also planning to tailor AS9100 processes as appropriate for other departments within the company. The new governance model that we established in 2004 continues to be successful. The outside perspective provided by our external board members remains an invaluable asset. We would like to thank Dr. Paul Kaminski, Dr. George Heilmeier and Dr. George Whitesides for their integral con- tributions. The addition to our board of Dr. John Tracy from Boeing has also given the board a great boost as Dr. Tracy has tremendous insight into the operations of both the defense and commercial divisions of Boeing. There has never been more exciting time to be in the technology business. Advances in microelectronics, infor- mation sciences, and the life sciences are occurring at an unprecedented rate. At HRL, we are committed to thought leadership across a wide range of technologies while focus- ing in those areas that are most linked to the success of our Dr. Matt Ganz LLC Members. President & CEO 2005 HRL ANNUAL REPORT | 5 | HRL in NUMBERS HRL LABORATORIES CLIMBS IN PATENT RANKING 6% The Patent Scorecard 2006 issued by the Intellectual Property, Intelligence Quotient (ipIQ) identified HRL as 22% "A Company of Excellence" in its Industrial Equipment & Materials grouping of industries. As described in the Patent Scorecard, "The research and development 72% derived from [HRL] may well drive this industry to new levels of innovation." The Patent Scorecard is an industry-by-industry rank- TECHNICAL STAFF EDUCATION AT HRL ing of companies based on innovation metrics. It analyzes several decades of patent data collected on over 50,000 companies across 14 industries. Among the metrics are Science Linkage, which measures cut- I I I INNOVATIONS THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS ting-edge technology, and Current-Impact Index, which reflects how often a company's patents are used as the basis for other innovation. In both of these metrics, HRL was well above the industry average. In addition, HRL's Technology Cycle Time metric, which measures the speed in turning research into Intellectual Property, was clearly competitive. As a conse- quence of these metrics, HRL's ranking on the Patent Scorecard moved to 17th in the Industrial Equipment & Materials industry group for 2005, up from 39th in 2004. 11% Companies within this group include General Electric, 35% Mitsubishi Electric, and Honeywell. 23% The ipIQ is a Chicago-based entity that focuses on advancing patent-based intellectual property as a meas- urable financial asset and integrating intellectual prop- 31% erty into corporate decision-making, including evaluat- ing mergers and acquisition and identifying areas for TECHNICAL WORKFORCE DIVISION capital investment. 2005 HRL ANNUAL REPORT | 7 | RL is engaged in the creation, demonstration, and transition of emerging materials and chemistry technologies to enable new func- tionality and system efficiencies for next- Hgeneration products and platforms. Staffed with talented chemists, physicists, and engineers, our materials technology portfolio leverages our strengths in novel electronic materials, surface and electrochemistry, and mechanically active materials (materials that can transform from flexible and compliant to rigid to impart motion or force). I Morphing materials for adaptive mechanical structures I Novel mechanical actuators for distributed structural control I Heterogeneous monolithic integration of diverse semiconductor technologies for high-density, high-performance electronics I Nanoscale electronic materials for next-generation quantum and spin electronics I Solid state hydrogen storage materials I Electrochemical analysis of critical energy storage components for system level energy management I Materials and device theory and simulation ADVANCED MATERIALS HRL HAS DEVELOPED A PORTFOLIO OF INNOVATIVE PROCESSES AND CAPABILITIES I I I PIONEERING DEVELOPMENTS | 8 | 2005 HRL ANNUAL REPORT The breadth of the technologies we are now developing includes otechnology, HRL is now also able to boost the performance of heat trans- morphing materials used in mechanical structures that can adapt their fer fluids and influence gas phase reactions. shape to different conditions; mechanical actuators for distributed In the area of active and structural materials, HRL has pioneered the structural control; integration of various emerging semiconductor development of variably stiff composites, the foundation of on-demand technologies into high-density, high-performance electronics; structural control. Here, material behavior can be switched between struc- nanoscale materials for next generation electronics; chemically engi- turally stiff and readily moldable states and can be tailored for ultra high neered hydrogen storage materials; analysis of energy storage compo- strain applications. HRL has developed novel high-strain, high-force nents for system level management; and material and device theory mechanisms with superior energy density for ultra-compact actuation. and simulation. These new mechanisms allow small actuation elements to be embedded and distributed for control. THE