GigaTera India Pvt. Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the global leader, Korea Microwave (KMW) Inc. that delivers innovative and core RF technologies and products to its esteemed clientele spread across the world. Established in 1991, KMW Inc. constantly keeps producing new technology for wireless infrastructure market in order to pursue perfection when it comes to offering best available solutions. KMW occupies over 1,448,978,7 sq. ft. that includes manufacturing and R&D facilities in Korea, the USA, China and Japan.
GigaTera, incepted in the year 2010, is KMW Inc.’s LED lighting business division under which the company offers energy saving solutions with its cutting-edge LED fixtures designed to save energy. Core technologies such as its patented “Narrow Multi-Beam Forming” application are made possible by keeping in-house designers, engineers and manufacturers thereby allowing the company to guarantee efficiency, reliability, and competitive pricing.
To achieve this feat, KMW Inc.’s GigaTera has consistently been investing US$ 40 mn, around 20% of the company’s total sales, in R&D each year to develop innovative products and maintain quality control throughout the design & manufacturing processes to surpass customer expectations. In the last six year of its existence, the company has invested a total of US$ 150 mn in this direction. This is apart from the annual investment of US$ 6 million that KMW GigaTera keeps putting in to acquire certifications.
Owing to the vertical integration from R&D to mass production system that includes test laboratories, die-casting (Aluminium, Magnesium), machining center, plating & painting house, ceramic lab. & fab., SMD line, etc. GigaTera offers right from basic components to complete systems to meet any level of customer’s need. At GigaTera, apart from elegant design & functionality, energy savings and a reduction in the carbon footprint are made without any sacrifice in light quality or performance.
GigaTera India (GTI), with its factory in Manesar, Haryana, has started its business operations in November 2015. Currently, it has order-in-hand surpassing 22,000 units of different types of fixtures to be supplied in a couple of months. Besides, the company has recently installed 6x400W high-mast LED lights replacing 12x400W MHL near the Sanjay Gandhi Park in New Delhi under its CSR initiative.
“Our integration of wireless communications with LED lighting technologies is just one of the ways we push the limits of research and development to be at the forefront of the LED lighting industry,” says J. B. Chung, the company’s Managing Director, with whom LED World met to explore about GigaTera’s offerings to Indian market and its technology that the Korean technology giant feels proud of. Here are the edited excerpts:
How is the term ‘GigaTera’ associated with lighting technology?
It’s simple. Let me explain it to you. Giga means 1 billion (109) ¬which is a unit of the metric system and stands for the frequency range in KMW’s wireless telecommunications business; while Tera, a trillion (1012) – again a unit of metric system, stands for the frequency range in KMW’s LED lighting business. Put together, KMW’s GigaTera pursues a unique and state-of-the-art IT-converged lighting technology intended for contributing to the society.
At GigaTera, we apply the world’s most advanced communications technology to LED lighting products that is resulting in the development of an advanced IT-convergence in the existing lighting technology. This evinces the dedication of KMW and its staffs to constantly rise to the challenge of contributing to the good, not only to the mankind, but also to the environment as a whole to balance the ecology.
What does your lighting products’ portfolio comprise of?
GigaTera’s wide assortment of product lines comprise panel lighting, interior lighting, high-bay lighting, street lighting, flood lighting, sports lighting, façade lighting, explosion-proof lighting and much more. We have developed specialised lighting products that is lighting in combination with communications technology (IT-converged LED lighting). And to ensure the development of products of the highest caliber, we at GigaTera, have recruited and employed various specialists. The process from concept design of indoor-outdoor lighting to equipment design, artwork, casting and drivers are all conducted in-house by the team of specific experts at GigaTera to ensure safe and reliable manufacturing of the finished products.
Our protfolio of products also includes designer products that are developed to match the contemporary needs of exterior as well as interior requirements. For outdoor, our streetlights are specially designed to better handle the surge, wind and hot conditions. Further, the attractive sleek styled wings of butterfly, seagull, eagle landscaping and security lights have been designed to match the parks and beach environments. For interiors, various types of lighting have been designed to adapt the indoor environments even when the lights are dimmed showcasing the emphasis on design and core technologies.
What are the core technologies at GigaTera?
Our ability to create and innovate induces us to aggressively accept the challenges for designing and developing future technology. At GigaTera, the core technology revolves around LED chip, lighting
How crucial is the thermal management when it comes to designing LED lighting fixture? How does GigaTera address it?
Actually, there are two major sources of heat caused by components within the LED light fixture. One is the LED light source itself and the other is the driver that converts aletrnating curent (AC) to direct current (DC) to supplying electrical power to the LEDs. This makes the thermal design technology crucial for lighting fixtures as both the two sources of heat require the use of specifically designed external heat dissipation structures.
GigaTera’s technique for heat dissipation design is based on the natural thermal control technology of the lighting fixture. This is for enhancing natural convection considering both optical as well as thermal dissipation design. Following one of the core principles of thermodynamics where cold air flows towards hot air, GigaTera maximises the natural phenomenon at the level of utilising fixture design similar to what it does in the optimal mechanical structure for a vertically positioned LED module. GigaTera ensures a 50,000 hours life time of its drivers with its in-house technology and reliability test.
What makes you claim a longer than usual lifespan for your LED lighting products?
Each of our products carry a 5-year replacement guarantee, which no other manufacturer is offering. And to ensure this, we have an in-house driver development facility where our qualified driver engineers keep developing technology to guarantee a minimum lifespan of 50,000 hrs. For this, we perform acceleration tests of our drivers for not less than two months (approx. 1440 hours) at +80°C. We make sure that any failed product in this test is not commercialised.
To further ensure the enhanced lifespan for our products, we keep the junction temperature of the LED light source below 80°C unlike the industry trend of keeping it below 65°C. Besides, heat sources like the transformers and FETs of the driver are designed with a heat dissipitaing mechanical structure to keep the temperature difference between the inside lead and outside temperature within 30°C.
How does the patented Narrow Multi-Beam Forming (NMBF) Technology make GigaTera different from the league?
Most manufactrers design lighting fixtures by implementing lens and reflector technology to match the desired light distribution where lenses are used in LED packaging to generate the desired light pattern. And reflector technology is used to project the light emmitted from the LED illumination to shed light where it is needed. Depending upon the properties of light, such existing LED lighting methods do illuminate a wider area, but also end up covering areas outside the target. This could result in light pollution, and is seen as an inefficiency that must be improved for the sake of saving energy.
GigaTera’s NMBF technology prevents light pollution and emits light only to areas where it is needed. NMBF is advanced technology that has been designed to control luminance with low power consumption yet provide a similar level of luminous flux and maximise energy savings. Our modular reflectors come with different beam widths that allow maximum energy savings without compromising on illumination of target areas. Equipped with NMBF technology, our short-range lighting fixtures are designed to light target areas close to the fixture with wide beam, while long-range lighting fixtures are designed to light up targets far away from the fixture with focused beam.
