A new integrated platform speeds the development of high-performance wireless LAN (WLAN) IP phones.
A new integrated platform speeds the development of high-performance wireless LAN (WLAN) IP phones. The fully integrated solution incorporates TI’s voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and WLAN software and silicon, enabling developers to capitalise on the company’s broadband and wireless expertise to quickly bring to market WLAN IP phones for enterprise and residential applications. This technology will enable portable IP phones for use on WLANs, allowing users to roam throughout an enterprise campus or home.

It will also enable users to receive e-mails and other data services on their WLAN IP phone, further extending the cost benefits and convenience associated with VoIP services.

Ascom Wireless Solutions, a market leader in enterprise mobility terminals throughout Europe, is extending its onsite communications platform with WLAN technology using TI’s TNETV1600 solution.

“Being active in the onsite communication field for many years, we are always looking to evolve our solutions with new technology”.

“The combination of VoIP and WLAN is a very promising platform for our target market segments”, said Stefan Bramberg, CTO of Ascom Wireless Solutions.

“This co-operation between Ascom WS and TI will greatly enhance our feature set and time to market for new portable handsets”.

The TNETV1600, which is based on TI’s power-efficient OMAP16xx architecture, widely used in cellular phones, provides the cost savings, flexibility and power management to allow developers to manufacture a WLAN IP phone with talk and standby time comparable to cell phones.

The complete solution incorporates TI’s TNETW1230 WLAN chipset with software support to meet existing and evolving standards, and TI’s Telogy Software for VoIP, the industry’s leading voice processing software supporting the transport of toll quality voice over WLAN networks.

Additional TI technology used in the design includes the TLV320AIC22C dual channel codec, which integrates drivers for handset and headset on one chip and the TPS65010 power management product, a fully integrated battery management/power management IC.

TI is further implementing standards-based and pre-standard security features in this platform to offer comprehensive and secure Voice over WLAN communications.

“Coupling broadband telephony with mobility presents tremendous cost savings, flexibility and new feature opportunities for consumers using residential VoIP”, said Jeffrey A Citron, Chairman and CEO of Vonage.

“Also, business travellers whose mobile phones don’t work overseas or who pay expensive roaming fees can benefit from WLAN IP phones as well”.

“As the market leader in VoIP and WLAN, it makes sense for TI to enable the creation of these next-generation IP-based portable devices, and we’re pleased to be working closely with them to broaden the reach of this technology”.

As VoIP solutions continue to evolve, TI supports developers creating a range of products that enable portability in the enterprise and at home while maintaining cord-free flexibility.

International Rectifier is now offering a complete reference design circuit for the IR2161 halogen transformer IC.
International Rectifier is now offering a complete reference design circuit for the IR2161 halogen transformer IC. The reference design is a prefabricated and proven circuit for halogen lighting applications, which can simplify the design process and streamline time to market. The “electronic transformer” reference circuit features compensated load regulation, short circuit and overload protection with overtemperature shutdown, and is compatible with all dimmer types.

An EMI filter is also included.

All International Rectifier lighting reference designs include complete circuits with comprehensive documentation, including schematics, bill of materials, board layout, application notes, board silkscreen and data sheets.

Ballast design software also is included.

A listing of lighting reference designs is posted on the International Rectifier website.

The IR2161 features adaptive dead-time control, which increases transformer reliability by continually maintaining soft switching, regardless of external conditions.

The IR2161 detects the point at which the DC bus voltage in the half bridge slews to 0V and sets the low-side driver high.

An internal sample and hold system allows approximately the same delay to be used to set the high-side driver high after the low-side driver has gone low.

The IR2161 reference design, IRPLHALO1E, is available immediately.

Next month at WiCon Americas Cambridge Consultants will unveil an off-the-shelf reference design for a Bluetooth cordless telephony access point featuring a very low bill of materials of under $15.
Next month at WiCon Americas Cambridge Consultants will unveil an off-the-shelf reference design for a Bluetooth cordless telephony access point featuring a very low bill of materials of under $15. The cost breakthrough stems from an implementation that uses only the processor integrated on a single-chip Bluetooth device from the market-leading BlueCore family, and is achieved by means of novel application software that runs natively - a technique made possible by Cambridge Consultants’ design partnership with the chip maker CSR. The new design is targeted at an exciting emerging market being pioneered by BT in Europe with its Bluephone initiative, and attracting the attention of many other telcos and virtual network operators around the world.

It supports the concept of mobile handsets with Bluetooth being used as more versatile “three-way” devices: making calls on the cellular network when roaming, but when at home or in range of an access point, using Bluetooth for a cordless connection to the fixed network, or as an intercom to other devices.

Although this concept has been discussed before with wireless standards like DECT, the runaway success of Bluetooth in the mobile phone arena is now making it an interesting proposition for the telecommunications industry.

Variants of the access point design also support the powerful data communications capabilities of Bluetooth.

Cambridge Consultants is demonstrating a circuit design for a single-line telephony access point suitable for residential applications, but has similar circuits available for related multiline office and public applications.

The design is offered as a reference design ready for manufacture or adaptation - complete with schematics, PCB files and software - for a one-off license fee or per-unit royalties.

“Our extensive experience in the Bluetooth sector, and design agreement with CSR, allows us to help OEMs enter emerging product markets more quickly, or to create leaner and more finely-tuned designs”, says Tim Whittaker of Cambridge Consultants.

“With this design we have stripped a very significant amount of cost from the usual bill of materials, as well as reducing PCB size and power consumption”.

The Bluetooth telephony access point is built around a single-chip BlueCore2 device and its on-chip XAP microcontroller, with a power amplifier to achieve Class 1 performance and support a range of 100m.

Its small bill of materials costs under $15 in OEM volumes.

The design uses external Flash memory for the application program, and a low-cost external codec for the Bluetooth-to-PSTN interface.

The bill of materials can be reduced even further by migrating the design to a BlueCore device with integral ROM and codec, once a product concept is proven.

The design is implemented on a PCB measuring 40 x 58mm.

The application software in the demonstrator implements three Bluetooth profiles: cordless telephony, hands-free and headset.

A dialler application running on a PDA or phone platform can also be added, for use with a headset.

Other profiles may be added easily, depending on an OEM’s product requirements.

In addition to a design partnership with CSR for application-specific single-chip Bluetooth designs, Cambridge Consultants has extensive experience in the 802.15.4/ZigBee market, and a similar software design partnership with the leading vendor in this field, Ember Corp.

Cambridge Consultants can be found on Booth 215 at WiCon Americas, 9th-10th November 2004 in Santa Clara, California.

Renesas Technology can now supply a trusted reader platform for Finread card readers.
Renesas Technology can now supply a trusted reader platform for Finread card readers. This architecture is based on the Renesas EPOS (electronic point-of-sale) reference platform, a secure, scalable hardware and software reference design board that allows financial transaction terminals to be equipped with the most advanced security. The new Renesas Finread trusted reader platform will be presented publicly for the first time in the Renesas booth (3B1) at the Cartes show in Paris, France, from 2nd to 4th November 2004.

The platform is based on an H8S/2215 microcontroller and an AE Series security IC.

The platform is packaged in a compact form factor and is supported by middleware meeting the high level of security defined by the Finread guidelines for authenticating the device and the applets.

This hardware/software combination comprises the best possible solution for developing highly secure PC-connected, USB-powered products.

The platform supports Visa Smart POS, the GlobalPlatform and EMV (Europay/Mastercard/Visa) standards, and the STIP, Finread and Jeff software and middleware.

The Renesas ePOS platform provides a development environment that facilitates the creation and customisation of applications that work across a diverse range of payment and identification products, including classic payment (EFTPOS), terminals, PC-connected payment terminals, PIN pads and embedded readers.

According to William Vanobberghen, Finread Co-ordinator: “Finread is pleased that the new secure card reader platform from Renesas Technology will share the spotlight at the Cartes show”.

“This platform helps promote the forthcoming ISO/IEC JTC1/SC17 standard for a secure and interoperable IC card transaction device”.

“The solid, secure and easy-to-implement solution will accelerate the adoption of Finread technology onto the global market”.

Jim Lee, Senior Vice President, Product Technology and Standards, Visa International, says: “Visa has been leading initiatives to standardise and streamline the payment industry infrastructure’s support of the EMV specifications for smart card technology”.

“The Renesas ePOS platform being shown at Cartes in Paris is well-timed and brings a new level of uniformity in terminal system implementation”.

Texas Instruments and Xilinx have developed an FPGA-based deserialiser reference design that deserialises bitstreams from TIs ADS527x ADC family.
Texas Instruments and Xilinx have developed an FPGA-based deserialiser reference design. This new reference design, which deserialises bitstreams from TIs ADS527x ADC family, and accompanying application note provide a quick and easy solution for designers to integrate a serial, high-speed LVDS receiver into the Xilinx Virtex-II series, Virtex-II Pro and Spartan-3 FPGAs. Systems designers can now effectively leverage the serial-to-parallel processing capabilities and software programmability of FPGAs to accelerate operations for specialised, high-performance processing functions.

The ability to achieve much higher levels of overall system performance is especially important for multi-channel applications such as ultrasound, instrumentation and wireless communications.

The deserialiser reference design accepts up to eight channels simultaneously and provides automatic deskew and clock alignment functions.

Each ADC output is serialised and transmitted through a separate LVDS serial pair.

An independent frame clock and serial data clock are provided to allow for easy deserialisation.

The Xilinx reference design provides the necessary timing to accept these extremely fast input signals and translate them into commonly used parallel output busses.

The serial LVDS interface format provides several distinct advantages to the system manufacturer.

Lower pin count, both on the ADC and the FPGA, means less routing lines and lower cost boards.

The LVDS interface itself is a differential current mode interface that provides both immunity to external noise and extremely low crosstalk injection of noise into the printed circuit board.

These advantages translate to lower cost and higher system reliability.

New configurable analogue starter kits include ready-to-use EDA files and extensive step-by-step instructions for implementing the circuit in a field programmable analogue array.
In a move to give designers a range of prepackaged solutions for building complex analogue circuits, Anadigm today launched the first of a series of configurable analogue starter kits that include ready-to-use EDA files, source code for dynamic configuration, and extensive step-by-step instructions for implementing the circuit in a field programmable analogue array (FPAA). Three new starter kits are available now from the new download centre on the Anadigm website. The Subwoofer Signal Conditioner starter kit presents three examples of potential single-chip FPAA subwoofer signal conditioning circuits.

Each example contains a subsonic filter, lowpass filter and compressor.

The filter corner frequencies can be dynamically controlled and compression characteristics can be arbitrarily defined.

Also included are a spreadsheet tool to help calculate typical compression characteristics and a sample Microsoft Windows C-code application demonstrating dynamic C-code control of the circuit.

The Audio Effects Phaser starter kit describes a reference design for implementing a simple audio phase shifter using a single AN221E04 FPAA.

In addition to guitar effects, its time-base-controlled software implementation provides users with a set of techniques that can be used for implementing a number of circuit types that work on the basis of preset delays or a known time constant.

The downloadable software includes source code for dynamic reconfiguration, which is presented in a Windows GUI.

The Dynamic Programming Guide Low-Frequency Filter Design Kit explains how to build any type of low-frequency filter using the AnadigmDesigner2 EDA software and a single FPAA device.

Complete instructions show how to use C-code automatically generated by AnadigmDesigner2 to control all the attributes of the filter dynamically.

This starter kit also introduces a new AnadigmDesigner2 feature that allows direct interfacing with Microsoft C++ or Microsoft.NET to produce a lab version of a dynamic control tool very quickly.

In addition to these complete starter kits, the new download centre includes: an “AnadigmDesigner2″ page where customers can register for and download a copy of AnadigmDesigner2; a “Customer CAMs” page from which users can download individual configurable analogue modules, which prepackage basic analogue circuit functions; a “Design Guides” page that allows the user to access technical files; and a “Literature Library” page where all documentation is available for download.

A complete evaluation kit with a development board, entry-level software, and updated documentation is now available at a promotional price of $199.

Pricing for the FPAA family of silicon products ranges from $4.95 to $7.69 in 10,000-piece quantities.

The AudioBlue2 reference design makes the development of an ultra-low-power Bluetooth headset simple.
The AudioBlue2 reference design makes the development of an ultra-low-power Bluetooth headset simple. The small form factor reference design targeting the cellphone headset market is based on Xemics’ XE1431 Bluetooth application MCU and the CX72303 radio. The Audioblue2 is designed for a Li-ion or Ni-MH rechargeable battery, and provides up to 10 hours talk time with a 120mAh capacity.

It includes both hands-free and headset profiles and supports numerous features to answer, terminate, pick up, reject, or place a call, to control volume, to activate the phone’s voice recognition, to redial the last number, to put calls on hold or toggle, and to connect two calls.

The distance between the handset and headset can be up to 10 meters.

The design comes as a small 38 x 18mm PCB that fits in the smallest plastic housing.

It has multipurpose pushbuttons for control, as well as LED indicators.

The creation of this reference design was driven by the objective to provide ultra-low-power and easy-to-use solutions for everybody.

The embedded Bluetooth controller in the XE1431 independently executes significant parts of the Bluetooth protocol stack and allows the development of application layer software without the need to validate the Bluetooth protocol stack integrity.

A tiny serial Flash memory is used to store the customers’ application layer software.

“With its small form factor, the AudioBlue2 can be re-used as-in by OEMs, and Xemics provides full support to help them during the ID design and production ramp-up phase”, said Remy Pache, VP Marketing of Xemics.

“This allows our customers to quickly ramp-up production volume without difficulty”.

“Moreover, the design does not need tuning during manufacturing which results in stable high yield”, he added.

The true 1.8V design in combination with the ultralow current consumption guarantees Xemics’ leadership in providing the lowest power Bluetooth solutions on the market.

By combining the XE1431 with the CX72303 Bluetooth radio, a “Flash” based headset can be built for under US $10 BOM cost in volume and consuming less than 12mA at 1.8V when used in a HV3 link.

Due to the on-chip audio codec and power management unit, the XE1431 is a perfect fit for any headset/audio application where continuous software updates of the higher layers are vital to keep up to date with the latest Bluetooth implementation inside the various mobile phones on the market.

Ateme and Texas Instruments have developed a new network video development kit (NVDK) based on TI’s TMS320C64x 1GHz digital signal processors (DSP).
Easing the creation of higher performing networked video end equipments, Ateme and Texas Instruments have announced availability of a new network video development kit (NVDK) based on TI’s TMS320C64x 1GHz digital signal processors (DSP). The NVDK, designed by Ateme, is an optimised development platform for the creation of broadcast head-end equipment and advanced digital media and video applications, such as video infrastructure, which requires superior processing performance and streaming features. The NVDK is made of a rich-featured hardware board and all foundation software required for developing imaging and video applications, particularly those requiring network connectivity.

The NVDK includes several expansion connectors along with the board to provide access to a wide range of the DSP’s I/O resources and to enable custom digital interfaces as well as networking and audio/video I/Os.

The analogue TMS320AIC23 on the board converts audio from analogue to digital.

A full software package comes with the kit, including drivers and BSL, DSP terminal, TCP/IP stack, API and technology demos as JPEG, H.263, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.

The NVDK may be used in stand-alone mode with its own power supply or operate in a PC using its PCI interface.

In its 1GHz version, the NVDK kit from Ateme now includes essential software tools for evaluating H.264 decoding.

The board decodes H.264 files and run them on a monitor that also displays information on the decoded streams.

The H.264 decoder evaluation tool allows evaluating video quality and checking performance statistics of H.264 baseline and main profiles decoder on DSP up to HD format.

“C64x-based DSPs are ideal processors for implementing advanced video encoders”, said Marc Guillaumet, Marketing Director, Ateme.

“The additional performance of the 1GHz enables customers to achieve higher performance and even better video quality thus making it possible to have pre- and post-processing and more demanding algorithms, such as advanced codecs for this DSP, as substantiated by the performance benchmarks from the H.264 decoder evaluation tool”.

Customers developing with the C64x DSPs running at 1GHz can take advantage of all of Ateme’s catalogue products, including audio and video compression algorithms and Kompressor, Ateme’s C64x-based encoding solution for broadcast.

The 1GHz clock rate boosts the efficiency of existing optimised audio/video compression systems from Ateme.

This combination of technologies not only brings higher performance, which achieves higher resolution and faster frame rates, but it also leaves more headroom to integrate several functions in a single chip.

For example, audio and MPEG-4 video compression, RTP/RTSP streaming and other features related to a specific application can be integrated on a single 1GHz C64x DSP.

“By working with Ateme, we are able to offer our customers highly optimised development tools that allow them to speed their development process for digital media applications”, said Yvonne Cager, Video Solutions Marketing Manager, TI.

Ateme has continually provided leading-edge products based on the latest technologies from TI.

TI’s 1GHz DSP allows Ateme to run advanced audio and video codecs at high resolution, like H.264 which is of prime importance for the streaming server and IPTV industries and video surveillance.

This offering complements ATEME’s current algorithm portfolio that includes WMV9, H.264, MPEG-4, SP, ASP, MPEG-2, JPEG and their associated audio (MPEG audio, MP3, AAC).

Those libraries are optimised for TI’s 1GHz DSPs.

TI offers a full suite of production qualified products for video and audio applications including the DSP-based TMS320DM64x generation of digital media processors, which are appropriate for a range of client video products, and the 1 GHz C64x DSPs which are suited for video broadcast and infrastructure applications.

iKonvergenz has launched a 20in integrated digital TV reference design based on its Polaris chassis for manufacturers looking to enter the growing LCD TV market.
iKonvergenz is the first Singapore-based, R and D centre to offer complete, ready-for-production, integrated digital TV designs for manufacturers looking to enter the growing LCD TV market. Now the company has launched a 20in IDTV based on its Polaris chassis. Unlike typical reference designs on the market, iKonvergenz provides ready-to-produce designs which any manufacturer can immediately adopt and apply on a mass production scale.

Anyone interested in the LCD TV market can save large amounts of investment, time and resources, while providing the latest LCD TV with iKonvergenz’s complete hardware and software solutions.

The chassis addresses the global DVB-T TV markets, where digital TV services are gaining importance.

The TV is equipped with a universal tuner and can be directly connected to any VHF/UHF source.

DVB reception is based on the Micronas DRX 3975D DVB-T COFDM demodulator IC and the MDE 9518D single-chip DVB compliant digital audio, video and graphic controller IC for decoding and processing of the digital MPEG-2 signal.

A unified memory interface allows cost-effective, flexible memory architectures.

The complete software package for customers includes drivers, middleware and an application layer for standard digital television reception functionality.

The DVB middleware includes channel list management, common interface (CI) support, DVB Teletext decoding, VBI Teletext reinsertion, and DVB subtitling.

In addition as part of the software package, a customisable standard graphical user interface (GUI) and the iKonvergenz “Image Automiser” solution, where video signals are automatically optimised, are also provided.

“With the DVB-T market gaining momentum, many TV manufacturers are looking for cost-effective solutions that will allow them to immediately migrate from the analogue to digital TV market”, said Torsten Frings, Managing Director of iKonvergenz.

“We are focused on helping our customers stay competitive by providing them with that solution, that is, a ready-to-produce cost-effective quality IDTV solution that allows them faster time to market”.

iKonvergenz provides its LCD TV solutions in PCB assembly and original design manufacturing (ODM) format.

This allows any company to distinguish its own brand from the competition through its TV design.

LCD TV chassis are available with digital or analogue solutions.

TTPCom and Asustek Computer are showcasing Asustek’s first 3G handset on stand 1504a at the 3G World Congress this week in Hong Kong.
TTPCom and Asustek Computer are showcasing Asustek’s first 3G handset on stand 1504a at the 3G World Congress this week in Hong Kong. The compact candybar handset is based on TTPCom’s dual mode 3GSM technology and application suite and features exciting multimedia services such as video streaming, 3D games and music downloads. Asustek is also developing a clamshell 3G phone which will feature video telephony.

Asustek has licensed TTPCom’s entire technology suite including dual mode 3GSM protocol software, development tools and Ajar Platform, TTPCom’s applications framework, which delivers a pre-integrated suite of messaging, multimedia, gaming, browser and Java technology.

The Ajar platform enables Asustek to easily customise the user interface (UI) of the phone to suit the branding requirements of different operators worldwide and with an easy to use PC-based development environment it increases the productivity and flexibility of handset development teams enabling manufacturers to develop differentiated handsets with open OS style functionality, rapidly and economically.

“We’ve been very impressed with the speed with which we’ve been able to develop the 3G handset using TTPCom’s technology and the on-site support offered by their technical team has also assisted greatly with reducing development times”.

“Our intention has always been to develop a 3G handset that is as compact as the 2.5G handsets that users are familiar with today and with TTPCom’s integrated approach we’ve been able to do this”, stated HC Hung, Vice President of Asustek Computer.

“In particular TTPCom’s Ajar platform allows us to quickly customise the user interface and applications set for individual operators round the world and we have had very positive feedback from those operators that have already seen the device”.

“Asustek’s new 3G handset, which is a compact and advanced multimedia device, is a validation of our software development philosophy”, stated Richard Walker, Managing Director of TTPCom’s Software Business Unit.

“First of all our dual mode approach, which fully integrates the 3G and GSM/GPRS protocol stacks, enables developers to minimise the size of their handsets and to maximise battery life”.

“Secondly, by developing the Ajar applications platform, which extracts the maximum performance from the hardware, our customers can deliver phones with smartphone type functionality but without the need for a separate applications processor, which again results in smaller, more cost effective devices”.

“Today’s mobile phone users have high expectations of their 3G devices and we are enabling our customers to deliver exactly what the market wants just when demand is starting to grow sharply”.

In order to facilitate the development of competitive 3G handsets, which are equivalent in terms of size, power consumption and reliability to today’s mobiles, TTPCom has pioneered a fully integrated dual mode approach from the start.

This complex approach concentrates on maximising the integration of common elements between 3G and GSM/GPRS, minimises the memory requirements and enables devices to use a single baseband chip, and therefore keeps cost, size and power consumption to a minimum.

In addition a fully integrated approach improves the user experience as the phones are able to handover seamlessly between 3G and GSM/GPRS networks.

To complement its protocol software TTPCom has developed a flexible and portable applications platform that enables handset manufacturers to develop feature phones and smartphones based on any combination of 3G, GPRS and GSM protocols.

For feature phones, TTPCom’s applications platform, Ajar, delivers a pre-integrated suite of messaging, multimedia, gaming, browser and Java technology, plus secure download and tools to easily customise the user interface and create new applications.