May 13 2009
Samsung Electronics today signed a Memorandum of Understanding with IMEC to lay down their intent to collaborate on technologies for green radios. The research collaboration topics will include cognitive reconfigurable radio baseband and millimeter-wave wireless communications technologies.
Building on its expertise in software-defined radios that support the major standards for wireless communications, IMEC pushes its research one step further towards cognitive radios (ICs with a radio that adapts itself to the changing environment, not only to the communication standard, but also to the available communication frequencies and conditions such as indoor/outdoor, signal strength, movement). IMEC is working on the control algorithms that take into account these changing environment parameters and user needs. As another cornerstone of its research into wireless communication, IMEC develops radio ICs for the wireless communication of massive data streams, for example for uncompressed high-definition television streams. Such data streams require a high throughput, in the order of Gbits per second. A suitable bandwidth for that communication is available around 60GHz. Therefore, IMEC works on cost-effective, low-power 60GHz radio ICs in standard CMOS, targeted at the consumer market,
Samsung has been a strategic partner of IMEC since many years. In 2004, Samsung joined IMEC as core partner in the (sub-)32nm CMOS research platform followed by a core partnership in IMEC's multi-mode multimedia research program in 2005 and in IMEC's ubiquitous embedded systems research in 2007.By joining both research programs on cognitive radio and millimeter wave communications, researchers from Samsung will closely collaborate with IMEC's research team to build up fundamental understanding and develop robust solutions for the future wireless terminals supporting multi-standards.
"We are excited that Samsung is contemplating on extending its collaboration with us towards cognitive radios and millimeter-wave communications;" said Gilbert Declerck, CEO of IMEC. "We have been collaborating very successfully since 5 years and have learned from each other in many ways. This extension proves that our wireless communications research gives valuable knowhow to the industry to develop their mobile terminals of the future."
"We are expecting the differentiated technologies developed together with IMEC to be the key ingredients of Samsung's next generation mobile devices." said Dr. Kim, Head of Digital System Research Center of SAIT.