Pacific.Business Journal

Technology

Defense contractor will expand to Honolulu

By Terrence Sing

San Diego-based defense contractor Trex Enterprises Corp. plans to open an Oahu office next month in the Davies Pacific Center. Trex has been doing work in the islands since 1990 and operates offices on Maui and Kauai where it now employs 65.

The company is focused on government and commercial research and development in the field of applied physics. Trex has pursued a dual –use product-development strategy here using lucrative federal research-and-development contracts to bring highly skilled workers to Hawaii. Once here, their skills are leveraged part-time on commercial projects.

Trex makes products as diverse as video chips for the medical endoscope market to ceramic gun barrels for the U.S. Army. The company's passive millimeter wave camera system can find metal objects through clothing and can be used at airports, schools, courthouses and other places with high security needs.


Loea spinoff

The new Oahu office also will house a contingent for Loea Corp., a Trex subsidiary started in 2001 that specializes in wireless point-to-point communications systems. Using microwave dishes arrayed in line of sight, the system can beam video, voice or data at speeds equivalent to 650 T * lImes at distances up to several miles. Only severe bursts of rain will disrupt the transmission. Loea calls it "last-mile fiber-optic replacement" because it doesn't require digging up streets and getting the necessary permits required to lay fiber-optic cable.

When the U.S. Coast Guard needed to beef up communications capacity between its Sand Island base and headquarters in the Honolulu federal building, Loea designed a wireless system.
The agency previously relied on a T-lline between the two points to transmit data
communications, and that was near full capacity. But in the wake of the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, redundancy was a must. The problem was finding a way to breach Honolulu harbor; the shortest distance between the two offices, which was about a half mile. Laying down fiber-optic cable proved too costly an option, estimated at about $500,000.

"Putting fiber (in) is outrageously expensive, which really means we would have had to live without it; said Lt. Commander Marc Sanders, executive officer of the Coast Guard's Electronic Systems Support unit in Honolulu. Instead, a wireless system was completed for under $200,000 that included two sets of dishes that would allow switching between them if a large ship temporarily blocked the line-of-sight signal path of one.

"Loea's virtual fiber allows the U.S. Coast Guard to get ultra-broadband data across a waterway in Honolulu where existing bandwidth wasn't available;' said Loea Executive Director Jay Lawrence. Right now, only a very small portion of the wireless link is being used to carry video signal But the system will be used in the future for other applications, including network data.

"We are really excited about it;' Sanders said. "It's cutting edge."

Former STI Corporate Communications Director Linda Jameson has been hired as vice president of business development for Trex Enterprises and will be the first employee in the new office. She will oversee business development for Trex and Loea on Oahu, which will involve homeland security meetings for Trex's passive millimeter wave camera system.

Reach Terrence Sing at 955-8001 or tsing@bizjournal.com,