Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007 - (Page 12)

12 NEWS By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe IN BRIEF MediaTek buys ADI’s cellular chip operations MediaTek, Inc. a leading fabless semiconductor compay, has signed a deﬁnitive agreement to acquire the assets related to the Analog Devices Othello radio and SoftFone baseband chipset product lines, as well as certain cellular handset baseband support operations, for approximately US$350 million in cash. Through this acquisition, MediaTek’s wireless handset division gains: a global team of approximately 400 experienced product development and customer support professionals; an established customer base around the world; new radio transceiver and baseband chipset products, as well as key patents and intellectual property to enhance MediaTek’s competitiveness. ADI plans to continue to invest in the wireless handset market by focusing on developing highperformance analog, MEMS, and programmable DSP products. www.anolog.com MEMS/Microsystems activities in China moving from low-cost to high-value Given the rapid growth, over the past few years, of the Chinese industry in electronics manufacturing, it is no surprise that the breadth of the MEMS/Microsystems (MST) activities in China is also experiencing a dramatic rise. China now counts over 600 nanotechnology companies, 1500 sensor manufacturers, 60 biochip companies and 150 fabless design houses. Consultancy ﬁrm, enablingMNT’s assessment of the developments indicate that the Chinese MST/MEMS industry is in the ﬁrst place aiming at: the semiconductors, automotive and telecommunications markets, but efforts to penetrate the medical, industrial and consumer markets are also evident. The analysis demonstrates that there are two strong drivers behind the Chinese MEMS industry, namely: foreign companies starting joint ventures or subsidiaries and national and regional government investment. The major areas of interest to those investing companies are in two main areas: manufacturing equipment and components/sensor fabrication. In the later group tire pressure sensors are especially of interest, given the size of the automotive world market but also the Chinese domestic market. While the existence of organisations developing manufacturing equipment for microsystems as well as an upcoming service industry are preparing China for future growth, the supply chain is still rather incomplete. www.enablingMNT.com U.K set to free up 900/1800 MHz spectrum for mobile broadband as early as 2009 Britain’s communications and media regulator Ofcom has revealed plans to open some of the 900 MHz bands to more efﬁcient use and increasing competition in mobile services. The regulator is looking at freeing up some spectrum currently used for 2G networks by Vodafone and O2 for higher data rate networks by other operator. The move is part of a wide ranging consultation by Ofcom to “support innovation and competition” in mobile technologies by promoting more ﬂexible use of the spectrum. The aim is to improve rural coverage, speed the uptake of mobile broadband and improve indoor coverage. Liberalising the spectrum could bring very large beneﬁts (up to £6 billion) to citizens and consumers, as it will allow major improvements to be made at low cost to the capacity and coverage of 3G networks. Most of these beneﬁts would ﬂow from more efﬁcient and ﬂexible use of the 900 MHz band. www.ofcom.org.uk BarZ and u-blox introduce multimedia GPS tour guide BarZ Adventures, a pioneer of automated tour guides, and u-blox America Inc., the leading GPS receiver technology provider, have announced their cooperation in bringing GPSbased tour guides to a number of U.S. National Parks and Zoos. Bar Z’s handheld device with an interactive tour guide for U.S. National Parks and Zoos delivers multimedia content based on the user’s current location. “One of the biggest challenges for BarZ Adventures was to be able to accurately determine the user’s exact location, so as to offer multimedia content accordingly. Only with exact location information can the multimedia tour provide the visitor with the corresponding historical, geographical, or entertainment information. That is why BarZ chose u-blox’ high performance GPS technology,” said Lee Little, CEO for BarZ Adventures. www.u-blox.com Freescale and ArrayComm join forces on WiMAX reference design Freescale Semiconductor and ArrayComm LLC have joined to develop a reference design intended to speed and simplify the creation of highperformance WiMAX base station equipment. It combines ArrayComm’s multi antenna signal processing software (A-MAS™) with Freescale’s high-performance MSC8144 quad-core DSP. The reference design leverages the high performance of the MSC8144 DSP to handle both Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) processing. Equipment based on the referenec is optimized to deliver high frequencies, superior channel density and low operating costs. Compared with current generations of WiMAX base station equipment systems, the companies claim that products based on the combined solution are expected to offer two to four times greater coverage, more than doubled data rates, and as much as a fourfold increase in capacity for 802.16/WiMAX networks. The reference design meets the IEEE802.16e standard and conforms to the WiMAX Forum Wave 2 base proﬁle. ArrayComm’s A-MAS software offers supports multiple input/multiple output MIMO, adaptive antenna system (AAS) and combined MIMO/AAS modes. www.freescale.com Microwave Engineering Europe ● October 2007 ● www.mwee.com 012_MWEE.indd 12 21/09/07 14:24:22 http://www.enablingMNT.com http://www.anolog.com http://www.ofcom.org.uk http://www.freescale.com http://www.u-blox.com http://www.mwee.com

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Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007 Contents Comment News CMOS RF: Si-On-Sapphire Goes Mainstream Cover Feature: New Data Protection Concept for UHF RFID Tags CMOS RF: RF Design Team Touts CMOS Spin for 3G PAs Wireless HID – Are You Following the Standard to Another “Average” Product Development? Phase Optimisation of the RF Front-End Direct Synthesis of UWB-WiMedia Signal Generation 4G Chips to Target 700 MHz Applications Femtocells Mobilize to Fight Wi-Fi in the Home Products Product Feature: AXIEM Pioneers the Future of EM Technology Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007

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