Handset-technology advances dominate Barcelona confab
( 01 Jun 2006 )
Maury Wright Editor-in-Chief, EDN
The mobile handset continues to drive the global high-tech industry, and the adoption and enabling of new features, such as multimedia, typically happen first outside North America. The industry gathered Feb 13 through 16 at the 3GSM World Congress (www.3gsmworldcongress.com) in Barcelona, Spain, where the latest handset features debuted. The theme of the handset as an extensible computing platform was front and center. Companies are layering on features ranging from GPS (global positioning system), to video, to additional wireless-communication schemes.
STMicroelectronics (www.st.com), for instance, made announcements in multimedia, ancillary wireless, and components. The company launched the STw5095 stereo codec with integrated amplifiers; it targets battery-powered portable products, including handsets and media players. STM touts 20-bit resolution and 93dB dynamic range for quality, but its 23mW power consumption during playback and 1μW during standby suit it for the intended application.
STM also announced a pair of digital encoders, the STw8009 and STw8019, that enable video output in portable devices ranging from handsets to media players and digital cameras. The company claims that the design optimizes cost and pc-board real estate by partitioning image-processing functions to the host processor and performing encoding and data-conversion functions on chip. The company also announced at 3GSM that its STLC4370 802.11 chip for handsets is in production, and several manufacturers are now shipping handsets that incorporate the technology. Adding 802.11 to a cellular handset allows enhanced corporate-e-mail capabilities and, eventually, seamless roaming between cellular and local networks.
Cambridge Silicon Radio (www.csr.com) and Portal-Player (www.portal-player.com), meanwhile, partnered at the show to demonstrate support for both 802.11 and Bluetooth in portable devices. The demo relied on Portal-Player’s PP5022 application processor and CSR’s UniFi Wi-Fi chip and BlueCore Bluetooth chip. The demo illustrated the broadening of 3GSM to focus on other portable products, such as media players, although the wireless enhanced design could masquerade as a mobile phone, as well.
CSR also partnered with Fractus (www.fractus.com), which specializes in fractalantenna technology, to demonstrate simultaneous Bluetooth and Wi-Fi operations on a prototype combo card. The card, which is tiny enough for deployment as a handset, can support a VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) call over Wi-Fi while a normal call uses the Bluetooth radio.
The 3GSM crowd also continued the migration toward faster, more capable cellular technologies. On the GSM side of cellular, the next step is a move from EDGE to W-CDMA (wide-band CDMA) that's already under way in parts of Europe. Analog Devices (www.analog.com) showed its first W-CDMA/EDGE (enhanced-datafor-GSM-evolution) chip set at the exhibition. The company based its SoftFone-W chip set on the Blackfin embedded processor technology. The software-centric design is adaptable; Analog Devices recently used the same building blocks to deliver a TD-SCDMA (time-division synchronous-CDMA) design for the Chinese market.
Design wins and partnerships are always hot themes at 3GSM, and this year was no exception. For instance, Ceva (www.cevadsp.com), a licensee of DSP, GPS, and multimedia cores, announced handset wins in Korea, China, and France. EoNex (www.eonex.com), a Korean CDMA-chip supplier, will use the Ceva-TeakLits DSP core in a CDMA-2000 design. Spreadtrum Communication (www.spreadtrum.com), a Chinese basebandchip supplier, will use Ceva technology in a TD-SCDMA design, and VMTS (www.-vmts.com), a French company, will also use the Ceva DSP core.
In addition, SIRF Technology (www.sirf.com) announced the GSCi-5000 combo GPS and Bluetooth product. Artesyn (www.artesyn.com) demonstrated its new microTCA platform for 3G and WiMax base stations, and Aeroflex (www.aeroflex.com) announced a software-trace capability for wireless-network testing using its SystemAT testers. The company claims that it can slash the diagnostic time for operators rolling out new software or performing field trials.
