SDR Insider

MIT Mints a Valuable New Form of Academic Currency

John Glossner — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:50:08 +0000

If they prove they’ve learned the material, MITx will, for a small fee, give them a credential certifying as much. MITx is the next big step in the open-educational-resources movement that MIT helped start in 2001, when it began putting its course lecture notes, videos, and exams online, where anyone in the world could use them [...]

Apple’s Mobile Share

John Glossner — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:46:16 +0000

Apple reached 75% of profit share, nearly 40% of revenue share and 9% of units share. Two great posts from Asymco here and here.

White Space Show Down

John Glossner — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:38:05 +0000

Sen. John Kerry urged the Internet community on Tuesday to rally to push Congress to free up more unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi and other new wireless technologies. Full story at dailywireless.org

North Carolina Officially Launches the First Commercial TV White Spaces Network

John Glossner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:35:53 +0000

Spectrum Bridge Enables Wilmington / New Hanover County and the Wireless Industry to Launch First FCC-Approved Smart City Using TVWS. Full Story at Market Watch.

Altair chipset finishes LTE Band Class 14 testing

John Glossner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:32:00 +0000

The FourGee-3100/6200 LTE chipset supports both FDD and TDD variants on a single semiconductor and software platform in any 3GPP frequency band between 700 MHz and 2700 MHz. It implements a high-performance MIMO receive architecture and is based on a proprietary software-defined radio processor, offering performance that exceeds conventional communications DSP cores, yet consumes a [...]

Tensilica’s ConnX Baseband Engine DSP Core Successfully Deployed by NXP Semiconductors

John Glossner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:29:54 +0000

NXP to Also Use Tensilica’s ConnX in Global Intelligent Traffic System Field Trials. Full Story at Market Watch.

LTE report

John Glossner — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:20:06 +0000

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association reports that there are now 269 LTE-enabled user devices, manufactured by 57 companies. It’s a six-fold jump in six months. The GSMA also noted the number of LTE-enabled tablets has doubled in the past six months. Full Story at DailyWireless.org

Maxim acquires LTE chip firm

John Glossner — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:11:23 +0000

Genasic was founded by Ashok Dhuna who served as CEO. Dhuna was previously vice president of RF engineering at Sequans and prior to that he was chief technology officer and founder of Synad Technologies Ltd., a fabless wireless LAN chipmaker sold to STMicroelectronics in 2003. Full Story at EE Times.

Recent College Graduate Unemployment Rates

John Glossner — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:04:00 +0000

Engineering major with three relevant internships in the engineering field? Ding. Ding. We have a winner. Job. Full Story at the Washington Post

LightSquared accuses government of ‘rigged’ interference tests

John Glossner — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:25:44 +0000

The unanimous conclusion of the group was that the LightSquared planned system did interfere with many GPS receivers, and an analysis by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it would also interfere with several aircraft systems. Read Full Story at The Register

Genachowski Lobbies for Unlicensed White Spaces at CES

John Glossner — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:25:25 +0000

said the FCC’s unlicensed spectrum use generates about $30 billion worth of economic value every year. The FCC hopes to utilize auction off the now freed up television spectrum, which could be worth an estimated $25 billion. Full Story at Daily Wireless.

It’s going to be a White (Space) winter after all

John Glossner — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:15:58 +0000

The FCC has, as expected, granted the first database to Florida-based Spectrum Bridge, who recently completed a set of trials intended to prove the company had the capacity, and the capability, to run such a thing. Those trials didn’t go perfectly, and the FCC expects Spectrum Bridge to address the remaining issues ahead of the [...]

US regulator clears path for ‘super Wi-Fi’

John Glossner — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:12:49 +0000

US consumers will have access to a new range of “super Wi-Fi” wireless services next year after the Federal Communications Commission removed the final obstacle to the commercial use of the so-called “white spaces” of unused spectrum between broadcast TV channels. Full story at ft.com

RIM Claims It Can’t Find an LTE Chipset, Delays BB10 Half a Year

John Glossner — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:30:27 +0000

Nomura analyst Stuart Jeffrey in a research note to investors concurred that this could be the end for RIM or at least was a huge hit. He writes, “We see a high risk that this is too late to turn around RIM’s position and believe the risk of further delays is meaningful. Even in the [...]

Top Mobile Operators Worldwide

John Glossner — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:58:29 +0000

List of the top Mobile Operators worldwide: China Mobile 628M SingTel (Singapore) 416M Vodafone (UK) 382M America Movil (Mexico) 236M Telefonica (Spain) 227M At 18. Verizon Wireless 106M Full List at C114.net Hat tip: @Mordyk

Congress, please don’t kill white spaces

John Glossner — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:03:29 +0000

The spectrum bill that passed the House last night will make any technologist weep. I know the tech community is upset over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but this bill represents a somewhat geekier threat–killing more unlicensed spectrum. So Silicon Valley may want to get active over this one too. The House version of [...]

Revisiting Supercomputer Architectures

John Glossner — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:29:33 +0000

The chronology of high performance computing can be divided into “ages” based on the predominant systems architectures for the period. Starting in the late 1970s vector processors dominated HPC. By the end of the next decade massively parallel processors were able to make a play for market leader. For the last half of the 1990s, [...]

SDR Products Cut Design Time And Cost

John Glossner — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:41:40 +0000

Cognovo and Lime Microsystems have software-defined radio (SDR) chips and kits that can help you bring new wireless gear to market soon. Also, Aglient Technologies is using the Lime chip in its new wireless test system. Source: Mobile Dev & Design

Processors enable global software defined radio platforms

John Glossner — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:19:51 +0000

The general explosion in available processor power makes SDR interesting for automobile OEMs. First of all, moving radio functions from hardware into software opens up cost benefits for global car production. Secondly, it affords producers flexibility when making decisions about future innovations in the pipeline—such as car-to-X. Nevertheless, pure SDR is still far from being [...]

Lattice Semiconductor Acquires Chipmaker SiliconBlue For $62 Million In Cash

John Glossner — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:07:14 +0000

Using a single chip ‘Field Programmable Gate Array’ (FPGA) fabric, SiliconBlue’s devices basically enable mobile designers to quickly add features to their mobile platform in areas such as connectivity, memory, storage, sensor management, video and imaging. Full story at Tech Crunch.

Second phase of TD-LTE scale-trial: focus on multi-mode terminal

John Glossner — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:46:57 +0000

C114 reports that the second phase of TD-LTE scale-trial will start at the end of this year. Liu said, “The second phase of TD-LTE scale-trial will focus on multi-mode terminal,” She also stressed that, “The global development opportunities of TD-LTE have emerged in 2012, and 2012 is still the critical period of TD-LTE development.

Broadcom Breaks Into Top-Five Smartphone Chip Supplier Rankings in Q3 2011

John Glossner — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:42:29 +0000

Strategy Analytics released their Q3 2011 global smartphone apps processor market share numbers and based on their estimates, the market grew 59 percent on a year-on-year basis to reach $2.24 billion in Q3 2011. Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments (TI), Marvell and Broadcom took the top-five places in unit share terms in Q3 2011.

Picochip extends leadership in small cells with next generation silicon

John Glossner — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:42:49 +0000

picoChip announces the new devices are the first ‘small cell’ optimized system-on-chip (SoC) silicon products in 40nm process node; a move made possible thanks to Picochip’s close working relationship with TSMC. Both the PC3024 and PC3032 offer improved performance from a 1GHz ARM11 processor and by continuing to use Picochip’s field-proven PHY and software, customers [...]

Carrier IQ Logging Software Found on Many Mobile Phones

John Glossner — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:15:46 +0000

This is really scary! MacRumor reports over the last couple of days, there has been a significant amount of press over the findings of Trevor Eckhart who exposed the presence of extensive logging software found on many Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones. A video showing the extent of the logging was posted and is summarized [...]

GPU’s versus Multicore CPU’s

John Glossner — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:13:06 +0000

Intel talks about why they believe multicore general purpose processors scale better than GPU’s. Watch video here

Up To 30 Gbps: New Chip Enables Record-Breaking Wireless Data Transmission Speed

John Glossner — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:18:57 +0000

TechCrunch reports Japanese electronic parts maker Rohm yesterday announced [JP] it has developed a chip that reached a wireless data transmission speed of 1.5 gigabits per second in experiments, the highest level ever. And according to the company, even 30Gbps will be possible in the future. The semi conductor device uses terahertz waves for data transmission.

Qualcomm to cover all tiers of smartphones and tablets with new Snapdragon processors

John Glossner — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:40:24 +0000

Android Guys report Qualcomm announced their new next-gen Snapdragon S4 mobile processors today along with enhancements to their S1 line. Qualcomm aims to enhance user experience and improve battery life across all tiers of smartphones and tablets with their faster, more efficient processors. Qualcomm’s S4 processors will feature their next-gen Krait CPU which will provide next-gen [...]

TI’s multicore DSPs sink to new power lows

John Glossner — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:34:55 +0000

EE Times reports TI said its C66x KeyStone-based multicore DSPs were its highest performing yet, at 16 GFLOPs/W, while also being fairly straightforward to program, making them well suited to researchers working in oil and gas exploration, financial modeling and molecular dynamics.

The Global Smartphone Market Landscape

John Glossner — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:32:58 +0000

Asymco reports the smartphone market has now reached over 30% of shipments. Non-smart devices are at 69% of total. The individual phone platform shares are as follows: Android (and Android-like): 17.6% iOS (iPhone only) 4.4% Nokia Symbian: 4.3% BlackBerry: 2.76% Bada: 1% Windows Phone 0.5%

Reissued patent could give Apple control of location-based services

John Glossner — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:29:35 +0000

Apple Insider reports Apple has been granted a location services patent that is so basic it could possibly cover any existing location-based system, giving the iPhone maker a powerful weapon in its already formidable intellectual property arsenal. It was revealed that the US Patent and Trademark Office issued Apple a patent on Tuesday that pre-dates current [...]

White Space Trial Completed

John Glossner — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:36:46 +0000

Daily Wireless reports that the 45 day trial started on September 19th and was successfully completed on November 2nd. Spectrum Bridge formally filed a Summary Report of the TVWS database trial which can be found here on the FCC’s electronic filing system. With the trial completed, the FCC could award certification very quickly, in theory allowing [...]

‘World’s smallest’ SDR radio runs Linux

John Glossner — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:33:07 +0000

Epiq Solutions announced what it claims is the world’s smallest commercially available software defined radio (SDR). The 4.6 x 2.2 x 0.9-inch, four-ounce Matchstiq incorporates a broadband (28MHz) RF transceiver supporting 300MHz to 3.8GHz frequencies, an onboard GPS receiver, and an Iveia Atlas-I-LPe module integrating a Texas Instruments DM3730 processor and a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA.

TI talks future-proofing for Omap

John Glossner — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:09:52 +0000

EE Times reports that Tomorrow’s mobile application processor will not only be capable of rendering holographic displays, high-definition augmented reality, real-time voice translation, natural speech interaction and multi-view synthesis, but may also be able to handle neuro, fuzzy-based and even humanistic intelligence according, to Texas Instruments Inc.

Sprint’s LTE Rollout Detailed

John Glossner — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:05:14 +0000

Daily Wireless provides this interview taped by Converged Digest at 4G World in Chicago, Sprint’s VP of Network Development and Engineering, Iyad Tarazi, discusses the move to LTE and the newly announced agreement with Clearwire. Sprint and Clearwire will work together to incorporate LTE-Advanced on the 2.6 GHz band, using Time Division multiplex. On Sprint’s 1.9 [...]

AMD pins exascale vision on Fusion APUs

John Glossner — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:01:03 +0000

Chuck Moore, CTO in the chip maker’s Technology Group, did the talking about exascale, or the desire to create machines that can deliver more than 1,000 petaflops of number-crunching performance. Moore was one of the lead architects of the “Bulldozer” core used in the forthcoming Opteron processors, as well as for the Fusion hybrid CPU-GPU [...]

Sony buys out Ericsson from handset JV

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:22:00 +0000

Japanese firm pays €1.05bn in cash to take full control of Sony Ericsson, pursuing more integrated multiscreen strategy

Sprint: We’re Going LTE-Advanced, Too

Sam Churchill — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:06:16 +0000

Sprint said it plans to deploy LTE-Advanced technology after rolling out its LTE network next year, according to Fierce Wireless. Speaking at the 4G World conference in Chicago this week, Iyad Terazi, Sprint’s vice president of network development an...

Sequans says Clearwire reliance is coming to an end

(author unknown) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:26:00 +0000

LTE revenues are ramping at French chip maker Sequans, to overshadow WiMAX beginnings

Sequans says Clearwire reliance is coming to an end

(author unknown) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:00:00 +0000

LTE revenues are ramping at French chip maker Sequans, to overshadow WiMAX beginnings

Creator Of Lisp, John McCarthy, Dead At 84

John Biggs — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:11:18 +0000

The creator of Lisp and arguably the father of modern artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, died last night. He studied mathematics with the famous John Nash at Princeton and, notably, held the first “computer-chess” match between scientists in t...

Huawei runs LTE in white spaces

(author unknown) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:48:00 +0000

Chinese firm brings TD-LTE platform for the unlicensed bands out of the labs for field tests

Sequans, Fujitsu Semi team on LTE

(author unknown) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 23:34:10 +0000

Sequans Communications said it established a technology and marketing collaboration with Fujitsu Semiconductor for the purpose of providing customers with a comprehensive LTE product that combines Fujitsu's multimode 2G/3G/LTE RF solution with Sequans'...

TD-LTE: It’s Alive!

Sam Churchill — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:32:45 +0000

India’s nationwide LTE plans, conceived during the country’s 4G auctions last year, is coming alive. India’s approach to 4G – TD-LTE (Time Division Long Term Evolution) – is expected to grow into a global force. The world’s second largest ...

Open Source CPUs Coming To a Club Near You?

timothy — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:05:00 +0000

lekernel writes "The Milkymist project (also mentioned earlier this year) have started shipping their so-called 'video synthesizer,' a device used by concert and other event organizers to create live visual effects. Most interestingly, the...

Leaders in Advanced Radio Technologies to Provide Keynotes for SDR'11-WInnComm

MarketWatch (press release) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:34:46 +0000

WirelessInnovation.org ) today announced an impressive keynote lineup for its 2011 Wireless Innovation Forum Conference on Communications Technologies and Software Defined Radio (SDR'11-WInnComm). The premier event for the reconfigurable radio ...S...

SDR And CR Boost Wireless Communications

(author unknown) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:05:47 +0000

Overview of software-defined radio principles and an introduction to modern cognitive radio techniques.electronicdesign.com/.../SDR-And-CR-Boost-Wireless-Commu...

mimoOn, Eden Rock Communications Partner to Deliver SON Solutions for …

MarketWatch (press release) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:05:06 +0000

LONDON, Oct 18, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- mimoOn, a pioneer in LTE software licensing for Software Defined Radio (SDR) platforms, and Eden Rock Communications, LLC ("Eden Rock"), the leading innovator of dynamic resource optimization solutions ...

iPhone 4S Battery Life Worse for 3G Data and Media as Compared to iPhone 4

Arnold Kim — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:06:42 +0000

iLounge publishes their review of the iPhone 4S and provides one of the more extensive battery comparison testing we've seen for the new model. There's been some ongoing debate in our forums about how the iPhone 4S's battery compares to the iPhone 4. ...

In memoriam: Dennis Ritchie

Horace Dediu — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:31:40 +0000

Dennis Ritchie created C and co-created Unix. One of the unsung heroes of the modern world. He died yesterday. His “The C Programming Language” was my bible during a formative period of my life. In his memory I re-link a post I wrote a little over ...

In memoriam: Dennis Ritchie

Horace Dediu — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:31:40 +0000