Koden

(Anritsu/Koden/Lowrance/Nobeltec/Northstar/SI-Tex/Simrad/SeaCross)
 

            Sometimes, the exploration of corporate relationships is like tugging on a thread in a tangle. So it is with the "Koden clan," whose story embraces almost all of the world's MNR vendors. First among these - alphabetically, at any rate - is Anritsu, which has no present-day marine radar manufacturing capacity, may in fact have been acquiring its radars from Koden Electronics since at least 1993, and closed its facility around 2000; nowadays, its sole remaining radar activities are concentrated in automotive experiments, radar test equipment and signals analysis systems. It has not always been so: in 1969, the radar division of the company was called Anritsu Electronic Works Ltd., and - somewhat curiously - it exported its products to the US under the Kelvin Hughes brand-name. In Europe, these same products were sold under the 'Anritsu' label, and today, given the convoluted nature of corporate relationships, the same products might be sold under a 'Boeing' label.    

         More recently, Anritsu formed an alliance with Simrad, headquartered in Horten, Norway, which manufactures marine electronics, principally for recreational, fishing and service craft. One outcome of this alliance is the existence of marine radars with the label 'Simrad' or 'Simrad/Anritsu', which are in reality radars provided to Simrad by Anritsu. Further complicating the story, Simrad was, until 2003, a division of Kongsberg Gruppen ASA, based in Kongsberg, Norway (about 75 km inland from Horten). That year, however, Kongsberg Gruppen divested itself of its recreational electronics division, creating Simrad Yachting, which it sold to an investment corporation, Altor 2003 AB, based in Stockholm, Denmark. Kongsberg retains a minority stake in Simrad Yachting, but now focuses its own activities on industrial and defense activities. Thus, the parentage of the very few Kongsberg radars is unclear [1], but it would be fair to say that the Simrad product line was almost entirely bought-in.  Only very recently has there been any change in this, in late 2005, with Simrad initiating manufacture of radome-based systems and, possibly by 2008, open-array antenna systems.  How did Simrad Yachting make this transition? Possibly by teaming and then acquisition, in January 2006, of a US manufacturer of marine electronics, Lowrance Electronics Corporation, based in Tulsa, OK. This latter company has a fifty-year history of developing fish-finding sonar, GPS systems and charting aids, although no experience in the design and manufacture of radar systems, but nonetheless advertises a range of 'Lowrance' radars [2].       

            So where, then, did the Simrad radars come from? After the departure of Anritsu from the radar-supplier scene in the 1990s and up until 2005, the Tokyo-based Koden Electronics Company direct-shipped all Simrad transceivers and much of the other hardware - antennas, signal processing units, displays etc. Furthermore, from component-list analysis, it seems probable that Koden also manufactured most - if not all - of the hardware underlying Anritsu products, from at least 1993. Thus, to get to a clear grasp of Anritsu and Simrad marine navigation radars, it is necessary to explore Koden products; and, since they appear in other affiliations, it is necessary also to consider SI-Tex Marine Electronics, Nobeltec and Northstar as part of the overall 'Koden family.' 

         First among equals, Koden Electronics: this company was founded in 1947 and has sustained a continuous legacy of innovation in electronic components and systems, 'soup to nuts' - from integrated circuits to scientific computers, ground-penetrating radars, laser docking sensors and so on. The company is not large, with around 200 employees today, but is certainly successful, despite its very close proximity to possibly the world's most successful marine radar manufacturer (Furuno), as attested by its extensive range of products and its many teaming arrangements. Its creations range from some of the smallest radome-based designs to some of the largest MNR systems afloat.

  • SI-Tex Marine Electronics is based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koden, until 1988 it was a part of a UK company, Smiths Industries.[3]

  • The corporate lineage of the Nobeltec brand, based in Portland, Oregon, is substantially more complex than that of SI-Tex. Founded in 1993 by software engineers engaged in developing GPS-linked marine navigation tools, the then-Nobeltec entered the MNR market in 1999, when it teamed with SI-Tex to promote a Koden radar coupled with its own navigation suite, Admiral, as the RadarPC. That same year, the company was acquired by Jeppesen and formed the basis for Jeppesen Marine, which continues to use the Nobeltec name on its products because of widespread brand recognition. In turn, Jeppesen itself is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Boeing Commercial Aircraft Company, a division of The Boeing Company. The MNR product line today is based on the Nobeltec Insight Radar-2, or IR-2, series; installation literature acknowledges Koden Electronics copyrights, while analysis of component designations implies that the antenna, transceiver and possibly the radar processor are manufactured by the latter company.  It should be noted that the teaming of Nobeltec/Jeppesen with Koden Electronics may not be an exclusive arrangement: one of two 'black box' versions of the IR-2 is designed explicitly to augment a Furuno MNR.[4]

  • A very recent addition to "the Koden clan", C A Clase, a small UK vendor, recently began offering a range of radome-based and small open-array-based radars bearing the "SeaCross" logo. These radars are, in fact, simply re-badged Koden systems, using MDS-5 and MDS-6 controllers with either 24" radomes or 3' and 4' open array antenas. [Added May 2010]

  • Last, but by no means least, Koden Electronics had, until very recently, provided radar systems to Northstar, an MNR supplier absorbed into the Brunswick Corporation in 2003 and only recently sold to Navico. Northstar's roots lie in LORAN and GPS navigation systems, and the addition of recreational MNR systems in its catalog is a rational extension of this. Its erstwhile parent, Brunswick Corporation, may be more widely known for it bowling and leisure interests, but also has an extensive portfolio of recreational marine products.

         Clearly, the presentation of published characteristics for so diverse a corporate college requires considerable distillation. This is undertaken as follows:

  • Appendix 1:  Many systems appear repeatedly in literature, each provided a guise by its distributor. However, when component analysis is undertaken, it is clear that Koden uses a consistent nomenclature that may be traced through all of the various guises - especially so in the case of 'scanner' (i.e. the transceiver housing system) designation. Appendix 1 exploits this to correlate supplier names to Koden scanner-designations; wherever possible, subsequent appendices use these designations rather than system names, so as to condense an otherwise-unwieldy taxonomy; and 

    Appendix 2 exploits the taxonomy developed in Appendix 1 wherever possible, to condense and tabulate the various characteristics of the 'Koden clan' - Anritsu, Koden, Nobeltec, Northstar, SI-Tex, Simrad and SeaCross. The characteristics are presented in 3 tables, covering pulse/power/beamwidth; radome antennas and scans; and open array antennas and scans.

    Appendix 3, available only to subscribers, presents the results of observation through physical access, and analyses of signal data from some Koden-based systems .

    [1]A handful of Kongsberg radar designs is included in this section for convenience.

    [2]There is no published information on these. It seems likely that they will share Simrad-design characteristics.

    [3]Thus a sister company of Kelvin Hughes, a well-known brand name in maritime radar. As a clock maker, Samuel Smiths provided the chronometers used in the voyage of HMS Bounty.

    [4]One of four confirmed instances of a manufacturer offering processing but no radar; the others are Rutter Technologies, based in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada; SSR Engineering, based in Anaheim, CA; and Transas, based in Horten, Norway