Microwave Engineering Europe - July/August 2008 - (Page 4)

4 NEWS By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe IN BRIEF Scottish RF innovator raises additional funds Elonics has secured an additional $1 million of series A, second close ﬁnance from a consortium of investors which includes David Milne, cofounder and former CEO of Wolfson Microelectronics, John Carey, cofounder of AMD and former chairman of Wolfson Microelectronics, and technology investors Liz Sharpe, John Gray and Irene Buchanan. Founded in 2003, Elonics (Livingston, Scotland) has developed a radio frequency architecture called DigitalTune that is the foundation for a family of re-conﬁgurable CMOS RF front end products. It allows designers to implement CMOS RF front ends capable of cost effectively supporting multiple TV and radio broadcast standards and enabling smaller, lighter, cheaper and lower power consumer electronics. www.mwee.com/208801016 ZigBee Smart Energy public application proﬁle now available The ZigBee Alliance has made available its ZigBee Smart Energy public application proﬁle — a ready-to-use solution offering utilities and technology suppliers a secure, interoperable, easyto-use wireless global standard for developing products that improve energy management and efﬁciency for both consumers and corporations. ZigBee Smart Energy was developed through collaboration between utility companies, product manufacturers and technology suppliers in response to demand for a global wireless standard for better energy management — especially in view of soaring fuel prices, competition for energy resources and the expense of building new power plants. It enables wireless two-way communication between utility companies and common household devices, empowering consumers to manage their energy usage more precisely. ZigBee Smart Energy allows utility companies to implement more sophisticated programs for greater energy management, and to respond to government demands for energy efﬁciency. In May, the Alliance certiﬁed 19 ZigBee Smart Energy products. These products represent a full range of devices necessary to implement a wide variety of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) programs. All ZigBee Smart Energy products are certiﬁed to perform regardless of manufacturer, allowing utilities and consumers to purchase with conﬁdence. www.mwee.com/208800694 Nokia to acquire remaining shares in Symbian Limited Nokia has launched a cash offer of around EUR 264 million to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own (approximately 52 percent). The acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, recently announced by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. Seeing this acquisition as a signiﬁcant milestone in the company’s software strategy, OlliPekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia claims that the establishment of the Symbian Foundation will make Symbian the most attractive platform for mobile innovation that will drive the development of new and compelling, web-enabled applications for a new generation of consumers. Mobile devices based on Symbian OS account for 60 percent of the converged mobile device segment according to the analyst ﬁrm Canalys for the 12 months period to Q1 2008. www.mwee.com/208800678 Group pushes LTE device interoperability testing A global group of vendors and operators focused on LTE, the fast data rate next generation version of cellular technology, has outlined plans for cross-vendor device to network interoperability testing, setting the stage for global roaming on LTE networks. The cross-industry collaboration, under the LSTI (LTE SAE Trial Initiative) banner, is developing a phased approach for validating LTE functionality and performing standards based interoperability testing. In an initial step, a common set of features for LTE Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) equipment is being deﬁned as the basis for early interoperability tests between devices and infrastructure. This feature set deﬁnition is expected to be complete by the end of 2008 and will be followed by interoperability tests across chipsets, infrastructure equipment and mobile devices from the LSTI member companies. Cross-vendor interoperability testing is planned for 2009, based on 3GPP speciﬁcations. www.mwee.com/208800385 Energy management product portfolio targets the wireless home Skyworks Solutions has introduced a product portfolio of energy management solutions for the wireless home by uniquely tailoring a range of discrete and highly integrated front-end solutions to support a range of remote metering emerging applications. This comes on the back of the company’s Linear Products’ business having captured several key design wins with various market leaders for automated meter reading (AMR), advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and ZigBee® (IEEE 802.15.4). Multiple customer’s mesh network solutions are going into volume production using the company’s tested technology that includes frontend modules (FEMs), power ampliﬁers (PAs) and drivers, switches, voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs), phase lock loops (PLLs), diodes, and other key building block components. According to ABS Energy Research, there are approximately 2.5 billion electric, gas and water meters in the world, of which only six percent are automated. As a result, there is pent-up demand for an economic RF solution to more efﬁciently collect, report and monitor utility usage by both service providers and consumers. www.mwee.com/208700041 Microwave Engineering Europe ● July/August 2008 ● www.mwee.com http://www.mwee.com/208800694 http://www.mwee.com/208801016 http://www.mwee.com/208800678 http://www.mwee.com/208800385 http://www.mwee.com/208700041 http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - July/August 2008

Microwave Engineering Europe - July/August 2008 Contents News Comment Cover Feature: Effective EM Simulations with Micro−λ Resolution in Macro-λ Objects — General Huygens Box Implementation RF CMOS: Programmable Transceiver IC Minimises OEM Inventory for Femtocells CAD/EDA: Software-Defined Radio Platforms CAD/EDA: Cadence Enhances RF Verification While AWR Delivers an Improved Microwave Office How to Meet the Design Challenges of WiMAX Power Amplifiers Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - July/August 2008

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