Microwave Engineering Europe - December 2008 - (Page 8) 8 NEWS By JP Joosting, Microwave Engineering Europe IN BRIEF U.S. broadcaster gives thumbs up to mobile TV A large TV broadcaster has announced good results from recent trials in Chicago and Denver of mobile TV using a draft standard from the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). Ion Media Networks, Inc. said it found it relatively easy to set up two mobile channels in each city and reception was better than expected. The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC), an alliance of local and national TV broadcasters, hopes to see members roll out commercial mobile TV services late next year. To date mobile TV services using other technologies have failed to deliver and grow a market among cellphone, notebook and car video users. Ion Media’s stations WCPX and KPXC have been multicasting two standard definition mobile channels since August. LG Electronics and Harris Corp., whose technology was selected for the ATSC standard, provided prototype mobile TV receivers and transmission equipment for the tests. www.mwee.com/212200900 Nokia calls home to save on energy — wireless platform to control home appliances Nokia has started developing a wireless platform to control functions such as heating and security in homes. Dubbed the Home Control Centre (HCC), it is being promoted as an energy efficiency initiative and the phone maker is partnering with one of Europe’s largest energy firms, RWE, to develop an HCC application for managing a home’s energy consumption and thus carbon footprint. The company sees the platform as over time being able to control many appliances found in homes, from fridges and heating to digital cameras and TVs. The initial HCC application will enable users to manage electricity usage, switch devices on and off, and monitor various appliances’ settings, such as the oven’s temperature. It should be available late next year. The home heating management system will use remote-controlled radiator thermostats that can be managed through an application running on mobile phones or PCs. Nokia says the platform will be an open one, so that other manufacturers can integrate their products and services into HCC infrastructure. The second phase of the project will see Nokia working with RWE to add other services in connection with smart meters beyond 2009. Nokia said it is looking to develop a new kind of mobile access to intelligent systems at the home. It will do this through collaboration with partners such as Danfoss, Zensys, Delta Dore, Ensto, and Meishar Immediate Community. www.mwee.com/212200892 Wireless specialist picoChip targets femtocell ‘sniffer’ opportunity Wireless chip specialist picoChip Designs Ltd (Bath, England) has released three reference designs for femtocells that deals with one of the major problems and concerns surrounding the emerging technology. The software designs are said to provide the first integrated ‘network listen’ (or ‘sniffer’) capabilities for femtocells. “A femtocell needs to control itself and fit in with its network environment and ensure there is no interference. This diagnostics capability is hugely important for cell planning, synchronization and handover within networks, and these designs provide the algorithms needed for the necessary measurement and reporting information,” according to Rupert Baines, VP of marketing at picoChip. The ‘network listen’ functionality also enables the implementation of the self-organizing network (SON) techniques that will underlay the operation of future networks, and can be used to support timing and synchronization. Baines notes that currently, most of this diagnostics and interference management is supplied by the femtocell OEMs, often using proprietary algorithms and computational techniques. “There is work within the industry to ensure all this works with the best performance and security, with Femto Forum supporting a major effort. What we will see is a minimum performance level specified that OEMs will still be able to improve on,” said Baines. He adds this plays to picoChip’s strengths in this area, with the software reference designs targeting the PC202 single chip device — replacing the complete handset baseband chipset and radio, cutting design complexity and thus femtocell costs. The software will enable femtocells based on the company’s chips to run the manufacturer-specific code for SON or cognitive radio that automatically manages self-configuration and on-going self-optimization tasks. Dubbed the PC8210, PC8211 and PC8810 Radio Environment Scanners (RESs), they enable femtocells to detect WCDMA, GSM and TD-SCDMA networks respectively. The designs perform cell search and decode automatically to implement self-configuration and hence automate provisioning. Furthermore, in an all-3G context, they also enable handover between a femtocell and adjacent cells. And, as users move in and out of range in a mixed 2G/3G network, the PC8211 (GSM) reference design enables hand-off between a 3G femtocell and the adjacent GSM basestations. The WCDMA RES capability is integrated into the hardware of the next-generation PC3xx system-on-chip products. The PC8211 GSM RES reference design also targets the PC203, PC205 and PC302 picoChip devices. www.mwee.com/212200903 AWR joins European wireless design effort The Finnish R&D arm of AWR, a U.S.based EDA company, will conduct research for a European IC design project called Icestars. The goal of Icestars (Integrated Circuit/Electromagnetic Simulation and design Technologies for Advanced Radio Systems-on-chip) is to develop low-cost wireless chips that can operate up to 100 GHz. Icestars is being funded by the European Commission within its Seventh Research Framework Programme. The effort is led by NXP Semiconductors. Qimonda will develop analog simulation techniques; Magwel of Belgium will focus on electromagnetic simulation. The universities will concentrate on modeling, algorithmic problems and simulation issues that must be solved to produce accelerated automated testing of analog circuits with digital signal processing in the EHF realm. www.mwee.com/212000532 Microwave Engineering Europe ● December 2008 ● www.mwee.com http://www.mwee.com/212200892 http://www.mwee.com/212200900 http://www.mwee.com/212200903 http://www.mwee.com/212000532 http://www.mwee.com
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