Communications

Machine-to-machine communication industry body Weightless is switching its focus from whitespace radio to ultra-narrow-band radio. “Weightless not pursuing white space as availability is not coming along anything like as quickly as we thought it would. We won’t return to whitespace for two or three years, or maybe longer,” Weightless Special Interest Group CEO Professor William Webb told Electronics Weekly. Instead ...

Ton Middelman, technical business development manager (communications) at Acal BFi, takes a look at Bluetooth Low Energy The engineering world has fallen in love with the concept of the internet of things (IoT) without being clear about how billions of devices are going to connect to the internet. The introduction of Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) technology appears to move the world one ...

IP-addressable wireless mesh networks for use in the home are the focus of a design initiative by Silicon Labs. The chip supplier has created a networking protocol, called Thread, to help customers with product development for ZigBee-based mesh networking. It is not yet a Zigbee standardised protocol, but described as a “ZigBee-like” protocol. It seems that Google is also included in the Thread IP-addressable mesh networking initiative. ...

NXP Semiconductors says it has moved into production of chipsets to support secure vehicle to vehicle communications, which will alert drivers of traffic information. The technology is expected to be on the roads within two years, said NXP. NXP said it will supply Delphi Automotive with its RoadLINK chipset for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication. The system allows alerts ...

CSR announces two Bluetooth Smart ready v4.1 qualified SOCs

Accelleran, the Belgian 4G small cell specialist, and Cavium have created a platform for urban small-cells.

The Weightless SIG today announced the launch of Weightless-N, a complementary open standard for the internet of things (IoT).

Google has teamed up with mobile chipset firm MediaTek to encourage manufacturers to bring lower cost Android smartphones to market. The smartphone design called Android One is aimed at what Google called the  “super-midmarket” in emerging markets such as India. The first set of Android One smartphones based on MediaTek’s MT6582 is being introduced in India by Karbonn, Micromax and Spice. The first set of Android ...

More cost effective mobile broadband coverage is what Ericsson says it is aiming for with its first indoor picocell which is capable of delivering 300Mbit/s LTE data rates with carrier aggregation. Small cells have been suggested as part of the roll-out of 4G LTE networks particular in buildings and areas of high traffic density. But the challenge is intergating numerous small cells with the larger ...

Frontier Silicon has halved DAB receiver power consumption with the introduction a second generation of its Verona module. “Verona 2 power is 80-100mW decoding for DAB reception, Verona 1 was 200-220mW,” Frontier v-p corporate development Patrick Hannon told Electronics Weekly. “Hibernate is 1mW. Verona 1 was 50mW in stand-by, there is no hibernate mode.” At the centre of the module ...