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July/August 2003 - In This Issue [Cover Story] Mobile Technology Goes To Medical School Medical institutions strive to provide each student with the best tools and training possible. These physicians in training are probably most commonly described as "mobile." To observe doctors, patients, and procedures, they move between classrooms,... — John Keane , et al. [Design Application] Put Low-Cost Wireless Systems To Work Many of today's systems engineers still have difficulty specifying detailed radio requirements and evaluating possible performance tradeoffs. At times, it seems easier to select a popular wireless system, such as 802.11 or Bluetooth, rather than... — Steve Moore WLAN Benchmarking Mixes Old With New Wireless devices are becoming increasingly common in the networking landscape. Yet unlike most networking devices, wireless products offer no accurate method for users and implementers to gauge their performance. To complicate this matter, a... — Timmons C. Player The Quest Continues For The SDR Holy Grail The Holy Grail of software-defined radio (SDR) is flexible bandwidth combined with a flexible air-interface system. Such a combination could be tuned across a broad RF band that is capable of both time- and frequency-duplex operation. The technology... — Bob Plunkett Superconductors Do More With Less In recent years, wireless operators have invested heavily in their network infrastructure. To anyone who has been around the telecommunications industry over the past decade, this fact is no surprise. The expansion of... — Richard R. Conlon [Product Features] Chip Set Rejects One-Channel Approach As Wi-Fi products continue their remarkable growth rate, so too will the potential for airway congestion. The wireless networks in the enterprise environment and commercial "hot spots" will be particularly susceptible. After all, they have a greater... — John Blyler WLANs Embrace Identity-Based Networking Wireless LANs are finally receiving the serious attention of corporate IT departments. As evidence of this fact, consider the growing number of WLAN switch manufacturers. The latest entry into this business foray is Trapeze Networks. The company's... — John Blyler FPGA Tool Beckons DSP Designers Most analysts agree that this year, the growth rates of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) will actually double that of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Of course, FPGAs have been gaining market traction for some time. Seeing... — John Blyler ASIC Designers See Software's Potential Several factors are blurring the line between ASICs and FPGAs. From design flows and performance to high-volume production rates, FPGAs are looking more and more like ASICs. This transformation is being helped by Altera Corp.'s recent introduction... — John Blyler [New Products] Multiplexer Enables Multi-Function Keypads The efficient use of existing device interfaces is becoming a vexing problem for wireless-handset manufacturers. Due to the demand for smaller handsets with larger feature sets, there is less room for keypad or joystick interfaces. California Micro... — Staff Personal-Mobile-Gateway Devices Bridge Gap A new category of mobile device is being unleashed on the wireless world. Called a Personal Mobile Gateway or PMG, this device type combines cellular (e.g., GSM/GPRS, CDMA, etc.) and short-distance wireless (e.g., Bluetooth or other technologies... — Staff Power Converters Extend Wireless Battery Life In mobile applications, improving power consumption is a constant concern. One way of achieving this goal is by increasing the efficiency of power converters. Texas Instruments (TI) has taken that approach with its new 1.2-A synchronous step-down... — Staff Voice-Data Backhaul Gathers Capacity As wireless-Internet access grows in popularity, so does the need for the infrastructure to support WLAN and 2.5G and 3G connectivity. One major component of this infrastructure is the high-bandwidth, wired-Internet gateway to which wireless devices... — Staff Easily Prototype Large Antennas And Backplanes Printed-circuit-board (PCB) designs have become as complex as their ASIC and ASSP counterparts. This is especially true in wireless systems—mainly because of the analog and radio-frequency elements. In an effort to simplify matters, T-Tech has... — Staff Dual-Mode 802.11b/g Front End Emerges The IEEE 802.11g specification is expected to emerge as the preferred wireless technology for high-data-rate access in hot-spot, home, and SOHO environments. After all, it can support data rates of up to 54 Mbps in the 2.4-GHz frequency band. It... — Staff LCP Laminate Is Well Suited To Handsets In RF-intensive applications, liquid-crystalline-polymer (LCP) laminates are known for providing superior dielectric material. These thin-film, flexible, adhesiveless laminates are often used as a core for single-layer constructions. Or they can... — Staff Codec Chips Add Dual-Channel Voice Whether it's in handset or telephony applications, voice continues to be an important component of wireless communications. Both single- and dual-channel voice-codec chips are a key element in these wireless systems. But these chips also are... — Staff WLAN Technology Leaps Generations Ahead In the WLAN market, many companies are still working to support IEEE 802.11a. Atheros Communications, on the other hand, is onto its third generation of 802.11a and 802.11g silicon. Its seven new chip sets are supported by a single driver and... — Staff DSP Core Simplifies Creation Of VLIW Code The semiconductor industry just witnessed the arrival of the first complex-domain, extended-precision, very-long-instruction-word (VLIW) DSP core for system-on-a-chip (SoC) implementations. Known as mAgic, this core hails from Atmel Corp. It... — Staff Bluetooth Begins Offering Consumer Value Bluetooth, which has been hailed as everything from the industry savior to a dead end, is now making big plans. To enable new consumer applications, it is slashing power, size, and cost. In accordance with this trend, Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR)... — Staff [Column] Architectures Drive Up Cost And Power Consumption A hot debate is taking place in the wireless industry today. It is based on one question: Will mobile-handset technology follow the PC and evolve into a commodity market? According to the argument that supports this evolution, the increased... — David McCartney Little Guys Can Make Medical Products Too Hospitals and clinics around the world are adopting wireless medical products at an ever-increasing rate. In the U.S., the reservation of frequencies for both implantable and telemetry devices has spurred growth to high levels. Yet the same few... — Dave Larson What Was The Essence Of DAC '03? When you write about technology on a full-time basis, it's sometimes difficult to keep a clear and unbiased perspective. This is hardly surprising, as most editors are inundated with pitches from companies that are trying to put their best foot... — John Blyler [News] Mobile Terminals Crack Infrastructure Problem Existing 2.5G or 3G network cells usually have more download data traffic than upload traffic. As a result, base-station transmitters must work harder. They also need more power to support quality-of-service demands. Until recently, adding... — Nancy Konish Mobile And Personal-Area Networks Meet The wireless market has seemingly been dominated by cellular and wireless-local-area networks (WLANs). Though other technologies have been holding their own or even flourishing, they don't garner the same attention. Now, a new wireless category may... — Nancy Konish Hearing-Aid Order Echoes Out To Industry An order from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently required that cellular phones become hearing-aid-compatible. For the estimated eight million Americans who currently use hearing aids, today's cell phones have provided noise... — Nancy Konish Base Stations Gain Signal-Processing Might Both equipment manufacturers and network operators are facing problems like rising costs and competing interface standards. Their only chance of profits may be to find a more flexible approach to baseband processing. This dilemma has inspired a... — Nancy Konish Software And Hardware Test Solutions Merge As wireless communications devices take on more functionality, their designers must rely increasingly on testing. Yet many of these devices' new functions are software based. Often, that software is developed independently of the wireless device and... — Nancy Konish Short Clips MIPS Technologies, Inc. (www.mips.com) announced the appointment of Mike Uhler as the company's first Chief Technology Officer. Previously, Uhler served as the Vice President for systems, architecture, and software products at MIPS... — Nancy Konish Duo Expedites Prototyping And Verification Recently, quite a few companies have teamed up to quicken the radio-frequency design flow. An example is the recent partnering of National Instruments (http://ni.com) and Ansoft Corp. (www.ansoft.com). These companies have merged the Ansoft Designer... — Nancy Konish On The Wireless Front The Easy-Radio ER900FHTRS intelligent radio transceiver incorporates Easy-Radio technology to provide a high-performance, simple-to-use radio device. This device can bidirectionally transfer serial data over a range of up to 500 m line of sight. It... — Staff [Editor's Note] The Times, They Are A-Changin' The other day, my 7-year-old daughter asked me about my first phone. Our conversation went like this: "Mom, what was your first phone like?" I replied, "Do you mean what color was it?" "No," she said, "I mean did it stand straight up or did it... — Cheryl Ajluni |
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