About Spectrum Instruments

Corporate Description
Spectrum Instruments, Inc. was founded by a group of engineers with the mission of applying their extensive knowledge and experience in GPS to the development of high-performance GPS-based time and frequency products. From its beginnings as a small core group, Spectrum has grown to include a collaborative network of top GPS design engineers. Our objective is to provide highly reliable products that exactly meet customer needs and to back those products up with the highest level of service. While we offer a variety of standard products, many of our products are developed in close collaboration with customers who require a custom design.

Markets Served
Spectrum's products are ideal wherever precise time or frequency control is required. In particular, our products are very well suited for use in wireless base station and wireless network synchronization applications, data network timing, TDOA applications, phase-coherent solutions and scientific and instrumentation applications. Anywhere a GPS-disciplined oscillator is a requirement, Spectrum can provide a solution.

And since we specialize in custom designs, our products can be adapted to work in virtually any application.  Spectrum's unique ability to deliver products that exceed the accuracy and stability requirements of our customers while simultaneously achieving a lower cost of acquisition, lower maintenance cost, higher reliability and long life is what sets us apart from our competitors.

Major Products
In addition to custom-engineered designs, Spectrum Instruments offers a wide range of standard, off-the-shelf products that meet a wide variety of needs and expectations. Our OEM board-level products are designed to be integrated directly into customer equipment and systems.

Rack-mount products are available in any front panel configuration, and provide precise time, synchronization pulses and reference frequencies according to customer needs and specifications. The Intelligent Reference/TM-4™ is a small, easy-to-integrate instrument offering a highly accurate, 10 MHz GPS-disciplined oscillator, sine wave and TTL outputs, a one-pulse-per-second output with corresponding ASCII serial time message or optional Type-11 NTP output, simultaneous programmable output pulse and event time-tagging, optional IRIG time code output and many other features. IRIG-B and IRIG-G are the most popular time code variants, however, available IRIG choices include all standard code formats in both analog (amplitude modulated carrier) and baseband (DC level shift). The TM-4 raises the performance bar at an incredibly attractive price.

The TM-4 platform has also been used as a foundation for other fourth-generation products. The Intelligent Reference/TM-4D is a versatile analog and digital distribution amplifier that distributes any of the signals generated by the internal TM-4/OEM™ as well as signals supplied externally. Our TM-4M Time & Frequency System is incredibly versatile, operated by both rechargeable battery and AC power. Spectrum will be introducing a portable, battery-operated Rubidium version of this reference in the second quarter of 2007.

See our Products page for details on all of our outstanding products.

Technical Services
Spectrum's design engineers can develop timing and frequency products over a broad range of features and specifications. Our in-house design capabilities are supplemented by a network of consulting engineers and industry experts in all aspects of product design and development. This unique strategy gives Spectrum access to a pool of high-level talent while keeping design and overhead costs low. Our engineers can work from customer specifications and can also assist in their development. Additionally, we can assist customers in the integration process to insure that our product performs flawlessly in its intended application. Spectrum's manufacturing capability is founded on flexibility, and incorporates the ability to respond quickly to fluctuating customer forecasts.

Partnerships and Joint Ventures
We treat every project like a partnership, and recognize that being a subsystem supplier puts us in the role of a strategic partner. So, not only do customer needs drive the product design, they drive the manufacturing and supply relationship as well. Spectrum is the ideal strategic partner, because we focus on individual attention and customer service. This "partnership" approach has resulted in quite a remarkable feat: Spectrum has kept every customer it has ever designed for.

Facilities
Spectrum's design and engineering lab, plant and headquarters are all integrated in its facility in San Dimas, California. All final assembly, burn-in, test and quality control is performed in-house. Circuit board fabrication and assembly operations are performed at the separate facilities of Spectrum's manufacturing partners nearby in Orange County, California.

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