T E C H N O L O G Y R E V I E W I N T E R D E S I G N A wireless world?

Demand for wireless connectivity drives comms industry innovations. By Graham Pitcher.

he world continues to be driven by the need – almost the demand T – to communicate and we’re get- ting our ‘fix’ through a range of wireless communication options. The more obvious wireless communi- cations are the ones used in our day to day affairs – the mobile phone and one of the WiFi variants; IEEE802.11a, b or g. But, as the BBC is careful to say when dis- cussing its magazines, other wireless com- munication methods are available. And there were interesting developments in the Bluetooth, ultrawideband, ZigBee and zlik said: “WiFi and Bluetooth wireless Philips Research created a 'fully functional' IEEE802.20 worlds. technologies are already working side by 13.56MHz rfid tag based entirely on The Bluetooth Special Interest Group side in applications across the globe. We plastic electronics. The device could see (SIG) announced its intention to work see this as a trend that will only increase barcodes being obsoleted. with ultrawide band developers in May and acknowledge the potential in the 2005. That turned out to be the first of future for the technologies to work not a number of approaches designed to inte- just concurrently but jointly to achieve for less than a second. Sharing a phone call, grate Bluetooth technology into other more advanced wireless applications.” pairing a new headset, or setting up wire- communications protocols. The SIG also expressed interest in less keyboard, mouse and game pad – it is According to the SIG, developers working with those developing Near just a snap, even for people that never read have shifted their focus from concentrat- Field Communication (NFC) based a user manual,” said Christophe Duverne, ing on one wireless technology per prod- products. Whilst Bluetooth has a range NFC Forum chairman. uct to exploring ways to create of up to 50m or so, NFC only works over The UK, of course, is home to the lead- combined wireless solutions. a few centimetres. ing Bluetooth technology provider CSR. Speaking on behalf of the WiFi “NFC enables instant pairing of Blue- And the company took advantage of the Alliance, managing director Frank Han- tooth devices, by holding them together growing interest in Bluetooth to launch

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last year. ZigBee, which bases itself on the products jointly and be second sources. work of the 802.15.4 group, is intended WiFi – the 802.11 based wireless com- to be used in embedded applications munication technology – continues to where low data rates are typical and low gain in popularity, with many laptops power consumption is important. The now WiFi enabled and hot spots abound- technique is likely to find application in ing. Two examples came in February of such areas as industrial control, medical WiFi’s increasing penetration. A £1.6mil- electronics and home automation. lion project was announced to turn Bath An important indicator of a technol- city centre into a ‘pervasive’ computing ogy’s market position is the development zone. Meanwhile, the City of London of single chip solutions and these began to announced plans to work with WiFi spe- “By putting more focus on our dsp emerge last year. One of the first came cialist The Cloud to install a network to from Chipcon, whose CC2430 blends a cover the famous ‘Square Mile’. architecture, we can integrate more tech- certified software stack with a proven WiMAX – or 802.16 – also made transceiver, memory, an 8051 micro and advances in the last year. Originally nologies with the Bluetooth radio.” an AES coprocessor. Offerings also came intended to be the wireless version of the from Ember, in the form of the ‘last mile’, the technology has now devel- Glenn Collison, CSR EM250, and Jennic’s JN5121. oped into a longer range version providing, Chipcon’s potential for example, links between hot spots. And, was recognised by as such, the approach is now seen in some Texas Instruments, quarters to rival 3G services, particularly as which snapped up the it supports simultaneous multiple users. company at the beginning But will WiMAX be a 3G buster? Lin- of 2006. “Chipcon’s techni- ear Technology thinks so. James Wong, cal capabilities and leading high frequency products marketing man- rf integrated circuits will ager, said: “We believe WiMAX is now a their complement our low power wireless reality in the market. Customers want fifth gen- product line and strengthen our high per- WiMAX capability integrated with eration formance analogue portfolio,” said Gregg UMTS in basestations.” BlueCore, offering Lowe, senior vice president of TI’s High WiMAX’ position was enhanced in more dsp power, along Performance Analog division. June this year, when the IEEE suspended with more memory. CSR Meanwhile, Ember licensed its ZigBee work on the development of the 802.20 cofounder Glenn Collison said: hardware and software to STMicroelec- standard. This effort was directed “By putting more focus on our dsp archi- tronics in a deal that will see them develop towards creating broadband wide area tecture, we can integrate more technolo- gies with the Bluetooth radio.” Above: Design consultancy Plextek developed the Class 2 Bluetooth module for Eleksen’s Yet UWB ran into stormy waters. Two fabric keyboard, designed for use with smartphones and handhelds. technically different approaches have Below: CIP developed what it believes is ‘the photonics equivalent of the pcb’. been championed by the UWB Forum, led by Freescale, and the WiMedia Alliance, led by . The rival groups argued for three years in the IEEE802.15 meetings, but no common ground could be found. The result was the IEEE decided to leave the choice to the market. With the UWB task group disbanded, both camps said in a joint statement: “A more prudent course of action is necessary to allow the market to move forward with the commercialisation of multiple UWB technologies.” Unsurprisingly, both sides remain committed to their approaches. Another IEEE802.15 based technol- ogy has also been making strides in the

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HSDPA requires suitable test equipment. will need to show interoperability.” Whilst it is a download technology, there SiConnect, meanwhile, is looking to is still a return path obligation – the mobile exploit the mains wiring system within device needs to acknowledge every packet houses to provide networking facilities. received. Testing at the maximum data rate The UK start up has developed POEM is a complex task, yet Agilent has devel- technology, which uses a synchronous oped the 8960 basestation tester for this. multiple access/contention resolution pro- Another approach to high speed data tocol with built in quality of service man- download was announced by IBM in Feb- agement. Its first products, expected soon, ruary. Its researchers unveiled a 60GHz are likely to address domestic triple play SiGe chipset which runs in an unlicensed applications at a 14Mbit/s bandwidth. “VDSL2 is the ultimate dsl technology, part of the spectrum. Thought to be capa- Triple play is also the target of one of ble of supporting data rates of more than the biggest announcements of the last year but to get it ... established, we will 600Mbit/s, the device may find use in – Xilinx’ Virtex-5 fpgas. Triple play serv- wireless personal area networks. ices mean high performance is needed, but need to show interoperability.” At the other end of the rf spectrum, the solutions have to be flexible and cost Philips Research created what it claimed effective. Three of the four 65nm based Christian Wolff, Infineon was a ‘fully functional’ 13.56MHz rfid Virtex-5 families will feature high speed tag based entirely on plastic electronics. serial connectivity and the company is networks which might rival those based The device can be printed directly onto a aiming at such applications as packet pro- on WiMAX. However, allegations of plastic substrate, along with an antenna. cessing, chip rate processing and bridging. commercial favouritism and technical According to Philips, this development Meanwhile, picoChip introduced the challenges saw activities suspended. could see barcodes being obsoleted. latest version of its picoArray technology. Our appetite for downloading to The PC202, 203 and 205 integrate more mobile devices is developing rapidly. And It’s not wireless than 200 dsps on one die, with the 202 the technology is beginning to appear Although many developments have been and 205 also featuring an ARM926 that will support this. Bristol based start in the wireless arena, work continues processor. The result, said the company, is up Semiconductor has developed a with wired communications. a device that beats the $1 per GMAC bar- software based PHY which, in turn, has Last year, the ITU agreed the specifi- rier. Marketing vp Rupert Baines said the been used to create Livanto, a wireless cation for VDSL2 – the latest broadband devices could find application in customer soft modem chip supporting high speed access technology. Importantly, VDSL2 premise equipment, but may even be used download packet access – or HSDPA. enables so called ‘triple play’ – voice, in residential gateways. “The parts,” he Although HSDPA will theoretically video and data. Equally important, it contended, “offer six times the perform- support data rates of 14.4Mbit/s, Livanto allows operators to provide those services ance of a dsp for a quarter of the price.” will run at 3.6Mbit/s using 16QAM mod- over the existing copper infrastructure. Underpinning many communications ulation. But a ‘simple’ software upgrade First out of the trap with hardware systems is optoelectronics. According to will double this. Now Icera is looking at was Infineon with its Vinax chipset. the Centre for Integrated Photonics, its the reverse path – high speed upload Christian Wolff, vp of Infineon’s com- latest hybrid assembly technique is the packet access. And it has the funds to do munications business group, said: photonics equivalent of a pcb. Although so after raising an additional $40m. “VDSL2 is the ultimate dsl technology, the technique – a planar silica waveguide Nigel Toon, Icera’s vp of marketing, but to get it stabilised and established, we device as a motherboard and plug in sili- claimed the company already had con based daughter boards – sounds sim- ‘strong engagements’ with major ple, it’s taken a decade to perfect. s

e operators and those building The opportunities are said to be m l o

H data cards. Support for this immense, encompassing optoelectron-

p i l i position comes from Ericsson, ics, communications and computing. h P

:

n which claims its HSDPA solution is Fibre to the home could be amongst the o i t a

r ‘live’ in 15 countries. first applications, but supercomputing t s u l l I Of course, the development of interconnects are another possibility. But wireless technology is likely to be the biggest market. Graeme Maxwell, the company vp of hybrid R&D, noted: “All wireless traffic ends up in an opti- cal network.”

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