Cavendish Kinetics, the provider of high-performance RF MEMS tuning solutions for mobile and wearable devices, today announced the closing of a $7 million funding round as well as the appointment of Gilles Delfassy to its board of directors. The round was co-led by Tallwood Venture Capital and Wellington Partners, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and other existing investors.

The funding will be used to support Cavendish’s growing number of customer design-wins, following Cavendish’s first commercial product launch earlier this year. The nubia Z7 LTE smartphone for China Mobile uses Cavendish’s RF MEMS tuner to exceed China Mobile’s radio performance requirements for the 2GHz LTE frequency bands.

“The explosive growth of smartphones and wireless network traffic is driving the use of additional spectrum, which traditional smartphones cannot support efficiently. Cavendish’s innovative RF MEMS solutions are dramatically improving smartphone connection speed and battery life over the entire LTE spectrum, resolving this conundrum.” said Paul Dal Santo, CEO of Cavendish Kinetics. “The continued support of our investors and the addition of industry veteran Gilles Delfassy to our board is a strong endorsement of our roadmap and achievements thus far.”

Gilles Delfassy is a highly experienced and respected expert in the semiconductor and mobile/wireless industry. He began his career with Texas Instruments, where he created and built the company’s wireless business, which has helped to shape the industry. He has also served as president and CEO of ANADIGICS and ST-Ericsson.

“The growth opportunities for Cavendish are very exciting as the wireless industry is beginning to push for better radio performance,” said Delfassy. “Cavendish solutions have the potential to disrupt the LTE RF component market by significantly improving signal strength, data throughput and battery life of mobile devices.”