Georgia Tech’s Packaging Research Center has received a $5 million, five-year research award from the South Korean government to develop and commercialize the world’s first glass-based wireless modules.

The Center (PRC) is led by professors from various schools of the College of Engineering. They will be collaborating with Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), a top academic institute in Korea, and GigaLane, a wireless module and package company in Korea.

This international partnership will focus on developing ultra-miniaturized, low-cost and high-performance long term evolution (LTE) front-end modules. Using Georgia Tech’s innovative Integrated Passive and Active Components glass package concept, these modules will have multi-band radios integrating miniaturized active and passive components.

Their research will also include the integration of multiple bands for global roaming in glass packages with a large reduction in form factor, cost, and power consumption.

“GT PRC, KAIST and GigaLane partnership is a very unique global collaboration model in that KAIST will design, GT PRC will develop and GigaLane will commercialize the most advanced WLAN and LTE modules. It is a perfect fit to what we are trying to do in GT PRC — explore, demonstrate and commercialize new technologies by means of global collaborations involving universities, industry and government,” said Center Director Rao Tummala, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in a news release.

The Packaging Research Center was established in 1994 as a U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. Since then, it has been the largest global research center dedicated to System-on Package technologies. Its research vision is to explore and demonstrate new fundamental concepts in all the core technologies necessary to achieve highest functionality at smallest size and lowest cost for electronic and bio-electronic 3D systems by embedded thin film components and high density interconnections at nanoscale.