Saturday 2 April 2011
April fool jokes...in case you missed
Friday 25 March 2011
Interesting M2M Video by ETSI
Machine-to Machine Communications - David Boswarthick (15/02/2011) from ETSI – World Class Standards on Vimeo.
ETSI M2M: Building the Internet of Things
Presented by: David Boswarthick, ETSI Technical Expert
Live Presentation during MWC 2011: ETSI stand, Monday, 15 February 2011
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About the presenter:
David Boswarthick, Technical Officer, ETSI
David has been extensively involved for over 10 years in the standardization activities of mobile, fixed and convergent networks in both the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). He is currently involved in the M2M standards group which is defining an end to end architecture and requirements for multiple M2M applications including Smart Metering, healthcare and enhanced home living. David holds a Bachelor's Honours Degree in Telecommunications from the University of Plymouth, and a Master's Degree in Networks and Distributed systems from the University of Nice and Sophia Antipolis, France.
Thursday 24 March 2011
Video: The Social Web of Things
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Five quick videos from Mobile World Congress 2011
Friday 11 February 2011
Smarter Cars of the Future
Monday 7 February 2011
'EU-Alert' in Release-11
Wednesday 2 February 2011
Making small purchases simpler with Ericsson IPX
Saturday 29 January 2011
Making of the Qualcomm Museum
Sunday 23 January 2011
Saturday 22 January 2011
Wilson Street: What can femtocells do - the next big thing!
The latest (3rd) episode is available on the Wilson Street Website here.
Friday 24 September 2010
Mozilla Seabird – A Community-driven Mobile Phone Concept
In response to our open call Billy May, in early 2009, produced a throw-away concept for an “Open Web Concept Phone”. Working directly off of that community feedback, Billy has since finished the exploration with his concept “Seabird”.
The following write-up is by Billy May and explores what an Open Web phone might look like:
The Mozilla Seabird, part of the Mozilla Labs’ Concept Series, is an experiment in how users might interact with their mobile content as devices and technology advances. Drawing on insights culled from the Mozilla community through the project’s blog, a focus quickly developed around frustrating physical interactions. While mobile CPUs, connectivity and development platforms begin approaching that of desktops, the lagging ability to efficiently input information has grown ever more pronounced.
More details here.
Thursday 23 September 2010
Friday 3 September 2010
Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) launches Qi
The WPC has chosen the Qi logo as the international symbol of wireless charging compatibility. Qi—pronounced “chee”, meaning “vital energy” in Asian philosophy—represents an intangible flow of power. Qi is the sign of interoperability between power transmitters and power receivers. All Qi receivers will work with any Qi transmitter. Every electronic device bearing the Qi symbol can be charged on any charging pad or surface marked with the same Qi logo.
In a post last year I mentioned about the wireless chargers. There were few that were released but they are expensive and not sure about the reliability.
The following is from eWeek:
The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) has launched version 1.0 of its specification for charging handsets and other devices wirelessly, to be marketed under the name “Qi”, and has certified initial products for Blackberry and iPhone devices.
The product announcements come a year after the consortium announced version .95 of the spec. The products, including chargers for iPhone and BlackBerry devices, are to be demonstrated at a WPC meeting later this month.
Qi is based on inductive power transmission, already used in products such as the Touchstone charging dock used by the Palm Pre and the charging station for the Wii gaming console remote control. Such chargers allow a device to charge when placed on a flat surface or in a sleeve or dock. They eliminate the need for the connection of a metal contact connection, such as is found in standard cordless phone chargers.
The consortium, which includes Samsung, Sanyo, Olympus, Philips and Texas Instruments, aims to standardise inductive power charging technology so that chargers can be used with any device bearing the Qi logo. The specification is suitable for devices using up to 5 Watts of power, which the WPC said should cover “the majority of handheld mobile devices”.
“Qi can now be integrated into products. All ingredients for growing the market are now on the table,” said WPC chair Menno Treffers, in a statement.
Initial Qi-certified products are to include a charging sleeve for the iPhone 3GS and 3G and a charger for the Blackberry Curve 8900, both to be launched by Energizer this autumn. Sanyo, ST-Ericsson, National Semiconductor and others said they are working on Qi products.
Prototypes are to be demonstrated at a WPC meeting in Eindhoven, Belgium, from 15 to 16 September. The WPC said it has now begun work on a wireless charging specification for devices requiring more power, including netbooks, laptops, tablet computers and power tools.
The consortium said it chose the brand Qi (pronounced “chee”) to refer to the concept of energy flow in traditional Chinese medicine, not the cult quiz show QI (for “quite interesting”) hosted by Stephen Fry on British TV.
The technology is less ambitious than the system demonstrated this summer by Witricity, which operates at a distance of a few metres, using resonance, which the company claims has green benefits through replacing disposable batteries
From ZDNet:
"It took us only 18 months to develop the Qi standard, and less than one month to see the first products certified. Qi is now the industry's choice for wireless power," said Menno Treffers, chairman of the WPC, in a statement.
Three sets of specifications — for interface definition, performance requirements and test procedure — were handed over to consortium members in July. The only standard released publicly as Qi 1.0 is the interface definition, with the others being restricted to consortium members. The WPC has grown from 27 members in July to over 55 members, including Nokia, LG, Research In Motion, Duracell, Energiser and Texas Instruments.
Wireless charging has great potential to make charging easier for consumers", said Petri Vuori, Nokia's director of mobile solutions research, in the WPC announcement statement. "For full user benefit, a standard ensuring cross-compatibility between different manufacturers' products is required. Qi low-power standard specification release 1.0 is a significant milestone into this direction."
The Qi standard uses inductive charging to transfer up to 5W of power between devices and chargers. There are already products on the market that support inductive charging, but these are tied to particular products, rather than being universal.
The WPC said that it now plans to begin work on a wireless power standard for medium power devices such as netbooks, laptops, tablet computers and power tools.
The group expects the technology to boost the market for wireless battery charging from 100,000 units to 100,000,000 units annually. "Qi can now be integrated into products. All ingredients for growing the market are now on the table." said Treffers.
You may also be interested in the video below:
Saturday 28 August 2010
T-Mobile's HSPA+ advertisement
Saturday 21 August 2010
Video: Huawei LTE Trial in Austria
Thursday 19 August 2010
Everyone is talking NFC
Its been over couple of years since I blogged about what NFC is. In fact successful trials in London occurred around that time but it seems the operators always had doubts.
Couple of months back, Nokia announced that from 2011, it will roll out NFC in all it phones. Here is an extract from the Register:
Nokia has announced that from next year every Nokia smartphone will have NFC, regardless of fact that the technology lacks a business model or any market demand.
The commitment was made during a speech by Nokia's VP for markets, Anssi Vanjoki to the Moby Forum, as reported by NFC World. Vanjoki wouldn't be drawn on the company's smartphone plans, but did explain that every smartphone launched by Nokia would have an NFC component supporting the Single Wire Protocol (SWP) and MicroSD security, and probably a Nokia secure module too.
Once NFC is in a handset then one can do some interesting things with remote control of home electronics and Bluetooth pairing-by-tap, but none of that is the killer feature that NFC needs to make it viable.
Of course, the mobile industry isn't used to waiting for customer demand – no one ever requested a camera, or Bluetooth, those were pushed into punters' hands by operators (to sell MMS) and retailers (to sell headsets) respectively. But those were done by the network operators (which explains the popularity of Bluetooth in Europe, where operators own retailers).
Nokia, which has extensive IP in NFC, has spent a fortune trying to convince operators to back the technology, funding extensive trials and backing supportive research, but no matter how hard it tries, NFC just isn't desirable (at least until Apple puts it into an iPhone).
That was till last week. This week the news is out that Apple is testing NFC in iPhones. The following news from CNET:
Apple raised some eyebrows over the weekend when news spread it had hired an expert in mobile payments.
But now there's a report that says the company is already testing a prototype iPhone with near-field communication (NFC) chips inside, which could pave the way for using future iPhones as a mobile wallet.
TechCrunch heard from an unnamed source that on Tuesday Apple is testing an iPhone with NFC chips it's ordered from NXP Semiconductor. It's not clear what kind of tests, and it could be very preliminary in nature. But coupled with the hire of Benjamin Vigier from mFoundry as mobile payments product manager, it does seem possible that Apple could be planning to open up its premier product to the world of commerce outside of iTunes.
In fact you may be able to do much more than mobile payments if Apple gets its way. You may be able to sync devices by touching each other. You can sync your MAC to iPhone or iPod. Here is a video showing some iPhone RFID demo, courtesy NFC world.
iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.
In case you want to find difference between RFID and NFC, see here.There is also an interesting article i read sometime back about when NTT DoCoMo will move to NFC. See here.
Saturday 14 August 2010
Thursday 5 August 2010
Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP): Unresolved problems
- Address root causes of gaps between academia and current feedback schemes
- Need for improved Channel State Information (CSI) feedback resolution
- Need for improved frequency domain precoding granularity
- Apply CoMP where most needed and/or theoretical gains can be approached
- Heterogeneous networks
- Interference problem is more severe than in macro-only deployment
- Especially for Femto Closed Subscriber Group and Pico Cells employing large cell extension
- Lower delay spread and low mobility can be expected in Femto and Pico cells and reduce performance loss from feedback impairments
- Relay Backhaul Channel (RBC)
- More accurate CSI feedback from stationary relay station is possible enabling advanced non-linear precoding schemes.
- High rank MIMO transmission will not be effective due to higher probability of Line of Sight (LOS) channel from Macro to Relay