Microwave Engineering Europe - July/August 2008 - (Page 5)

By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe NEWS 5 Patent alliance formed for WiMAX 4G technology Six of the major players in the mobile WiMAX sector have formed a patent alliance to encourage expansion and speedy uptake of the technology. Alcatel-Lucent, Intel, Cisco, Clearwire, Samsung Electronics and Sprint hope that the creation of a patent pool will help companies designing for WiMAX get access to licenses to patented technology at a predictable cost, the companies said. The companies say the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) “will advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model, thus stimulating a larger WiMAX industry that supports innovation through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications globally.” The OPA will form a WiMAX patent pool to help participating companies obtain access to patent licenses from patent owners at a predictable cost. To help ensure product differentiation and interoperability at a more predictable cost, this approach will focus on providing a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMAX products. The patent pool will incorporate a variety of royalty licensing solutions, including accounting for cross-licensing among individual members within the pool. The alliance will also issue a call for WiMAX essential patents for inclusion in its patent pool. An independent third-party reviewer will serve as the “patent referee” and will evaluate submitted patents to determine how essential they are to the WiMAX standard and WiMAX Forum proﬁles. www.mwee.com/208403054 IN BRIEF Yole forecasts 80 percent CAGR for GaN devices The market for gallium nitride (GaN) radio frequency devices was $17 million in 2007, according to Yole Developpement. The market was split 65 percent in R&D, 17 percent defense and satellite, 16 percent 3G basestations and 2 percent deployed in LTE/WiMax applications. With strong penetration of GaN into LTE/WiMax Yole is forecasting the market for GaN RF transistor could increase to about $100 million in 2010. This would imply 80 percent average annual growth and a market of about $30 million in 2008. Yole predicted that in 2012 the GaN market will show that the R&D proportion will have fallen to 6 percent, defense and satellite 27 percent, 3G basestations 31 percent, LTE and WiMax 29 percent. The broadcast market would be 4 percent. Yole did not say how large the market would be in 2012. www.mwee.com/208404135 RF remote speciﬁcation planned for consumer devices Seven companies have formed the Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics consortium to create a new protocol for RF remote controls. Philips, Samsung Electronics, Sony Corp. and Panasonic will be working with Freescale Semiconductors, OKI and Texas Instruments to develop the remote control standard for consumer electronic devices. Current remotes increasingly integrate advanced functionality not supported by existing infrared technology. The standard will be based on the IEEE 802.15.4. MAC/PHY radio technology spec in the 2.4-GHz unlicensed frequency band. Consortium members said the group aims to develop a RF platform that allows omnidirectional and reliable two-way wireless communication along with frequency agility that would allow advanced remotes to co-exist with other 2.4-GHz wireless technologies. The spec would also provide simple security set-up and system conﬁguration. The RF speciﬁcation is due to be launched in the second half of 2008. www.mwee.com/208403873 Cree rolls foundry kit for GaN Cree Inc. has rolled out a foundry process design kit (PDK) for a technology called gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT). The company’s GaN foundry is a wide-bandgap, monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) facility. The company’s GaN-on-silicon carbide technology is said to have higher power density, thermal conductivity and operating voltage over GaAs or silicon MMIC technologies. The PDK works with the Advanced Design System (ADS) from Agilent Technologies Inc. It can enable radio-frequency (RF) and microwave designers to shorten the development cycle for MMICs used in high-power, high-performance electronic systems. The company’s GaN kit includes microstrip lines, discontinuities, scalable capacitors, inductors and resistors, pads, vias, airbridges as well as active devices (HEMTs) at multiple biases. www.mwee.com/208403877 Compal picks Wavesat’s 4G chip set to power its mobile WiMAX products Compal Communications, an ODM specializing in handheld devices, has chosen Wavesat to co-develop products for its Mobile WiMAX product line, starting with a USB dongle. The collaboration leverages Wavesat’s multimode Odyssey 8500 4G Broadband chipset, which handles multiple broadband wireless technologies including WiMAX Wave2, XGPHS, WiFi and seamless migration to LTE. The Odyssey chipset features a 4G multi-core architecture incorporating multiple ultra low power DSPs, offering ﬂexibility, high performance and low power consumption, without any tradeoff. Manufactured using advanced embedded DRAM technology, the chip requires no external memory, which saves real estate, cost and power consumption for very small formfactor portable and mobile applications such as wireless USB dongles, mobile handsets and other consumer electronic devices. www.mwee.com/208401982 Microwave Engineering ● July/August 2008 ● www.mwee.com http://www.mwee.com/208403054 http://www.mwee.com/208404135 http://www.mwee.com/208403873 http://www.mwee.com/208401982 http://www.mwee.com/208403877 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

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.