History
In 1997, three of our founders: Dave Synder, Les Baych and Bruce Melick formed DLB Ltd. in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to work on solutions to locate and track parts on a manufacturing floor. They determined that technology to track, locate and distribute information about devices indoors was not available. They attracted funding from local angel investors to develop ideas and patents.
A number of patents were filed in each of the areas of interest and they started combining these ideas with a new wireless technology at the time, UltraWideBand. This technology could determine precise location, could easily penetrate walls and provide substantial bandwidth. These capabilities were needed to complete and optimize the ideas. A number of additional patents were filed combining the base inventions with Ultrawideband.
The largest US competitive telephone company, McLeodUSA was headquartered in Cedar Rapids during this time. McLeodUSA developed television, voice and data communications solutions on fiber, wireline and wireless mediums. Philip Kennedy, the current CEO of Lightwaves, was the Chief Technologist responsible for technology and network design at McLeodUSA. Mr. Kennedy became interested in the competitive effect and capability of Ultrawideband technology during the process of acquiring wireless licenses for the company.
Mr. Kennedy retired from McLeodUSA in February of 2001 to pursue development of a fiber to the home video distribution solution. He incorporated Lightwaves Communications Systems that month. Joe Gerke, the current COO of Lightwaves, became a partner in the company continuing two decades of working with Mr. Kennedy at the IBM Corporation and McLeodUSA.
The two groups met in March, 2002 by way of introduction to help DLB Ltd. understand the technology and capability of various networking methods. Mr. Kennedy found that the patents defined an idea applying Ultrawideband techniques to some typical issues with wireline communications namely lower power and higher efficiency. The result would be lower emissions, crosstalk and higher performance. Application of this technology would enable wireline networks to perform at much higher levels of performance and reliability than existing technology. TimeFlux™ technology was born. Additional patent applications were filed on this and a number of related inventions.
The companies merged in October 2002 as Lightwaves Systems, Inc., an Iowa C Corporation. The next three years focused on lab equipment experimentation and patent development funded by the original and a small number of new angel investors. In 2004, after very successful tests and experimentation the company was funded by three Iowa based corporate angel investment groups to develop a proof of concept of the TimeFlux™ technology. In 2007, the same group funded the creation of the semiconductor and rights to the design of the UltraJack™ product. The headquarters was moved to Austin, Texas to take advantage of the more desirable technical environment. In March of 2009, the completed semiconductor and reference platform began demonstration with potential customers.
As of November 2009, Lightwaves, Inc. has received 14 patents and has over 70 pending.
