picoChip powers next generation small cellular basestations
A chip and software from picoChip in Bath are being used for a new next generation small cell basestation developed by Airspan of the US.
The picoArray technology has been used to implement LTE and other wireless processing in Airspan’s new multi-standard ‘small cell’ basestation, the AirSynergy. This provides high-performance data capacity to densely populated urban hotspots for the next generation LTE phones and is easy to deploy in metropolitan areas on buildings, strand-mounted from utility poles or on lamp posts.
AirSynergy is designed for deployment at “non-telco” locations such as city centers and business districts. With a small size and embedded wireless backhaul/relay through Airspan’s iBridge system, AirSynergy is aimed at rapid and cost-effective deployment in sites where traditional base stations cannot deliver the capacity required.
“LTE carriers need to fill service gaps in their networks with small cell base stations, such as AirSynergy, to deliver the promised download speeds and capacity to their customers. Picochip is helping us to make this possible,” said Paul Senior, CTO, Airspan. “We needed a cost-effective solution with low power consumption and high RF performance; Picochip, as a leading technology supplier for small cells, was the obvious choice.”
Picochip recently also made the first announcement of end-to-end interoperability between an LTE femtocell and commercially available user equipment (UEs), in partnership with Wavesat and Continuous Computing.
“This year will see the femtocell market expand from its foundations in residential applications, to include metropolitan and rural deployment, in 3G and LTE,” said Nigel Toon, CEO of Picochip. “Airspan’s selection of Picochip for LTE is a strong validation of our leadership and a continuation of our long standing relationship. For LTE to deliver its potential, the network must be optimized around high performance small cells, with a dense deployment of cost-effective solutions like AirSynergy.”
Related articles
- Airspan Air4G base station integrates WiMax and LTE connectivity into one device (slashgear.com)
- A Cell-Phone Tower for Your Pocket (technologyreview.com)
- SouthWest electronics firms shine in Barcelona (swinnovation.co.uk)
Bristol appoints its first Business Fellows to build links with industry
Research and Enterprise Development at the University of Bristol has announced its first Business Fellows – five research scientists at Bristol who will take the lead in supporting a culture of collaboration between academics and industry.
The first Business Fellows are:
Dr Jenny Jennings in Veterinary Pathology and Infection and Immunity, Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences
Simon Mcintosh-Smith in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering
Dr Tom Scott in the Interface Analysis Centre, Faculty of Science
Dr Bo Su in the School of Oral and Dental Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Dr David Matthews in the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences
Fellows are expected to commit half a day a week to the role, supporting their colleagues and stimulating business collaborations in ways that do not impact on their teaching, research and administrative work. The University has been working with London Technology Network (LTN) which has experience in helping science-based university researchers to increase their interactions with business. The new Fellowships involve intensive training and mentoring provided by LTN, who will also facilitate interactions with industry around specific projects.
Bristol Fellows will take part in training programmes and activities alongside researchers from other universities in the spring of 2011.
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- Bristol engineering students receive prestigious awards from Boeing (swinnovation.co.uk)
- Imaging beauty down to 1nm in Bristol (swinnovation.co.uk)
- Reader in Neuroscience Imaging : Bristol United Kingdom – Nature.com (nature.com)
- University of Exeter joins SETsquared (swinnovation.co.uk)
- Bristol: Europe’s Silicon Gorge (swinnovation.co.uk)
Work starts on Large Animal Centre
Work is starting on a state-of-the-art surgical facility for the treatment of large animals such as sick horses and farm animals, which will be unique to the region and will provide the best possible medical and surgical treatment for all patients as well as researching new procedures and approaches.
The Large Animal Centre, to be known as the Alborada Building, is part of the University of Bristol’s School of Veterinary Sciences at Langford. The Donkey Sanctuary, a UK based charity working to improve conditions for donkeys and mules internationally, have provided the funding for the internal work of the Large Animal Centre.
The new surgical facility, as well as treating sick horses and farm animals, will also provide space for teaching advanced clinical techniques to an increasing number of undergraduate and postgraduate students. The investigation, diagnosis and treatment of patients at the Large Animal Centre have several important welfare considerations and the collective clinical expertise provides a central referral service to practitioners.
“The Large Animal Centre will house surgical and treatment facilities that will be unique to the region and confirm the University’s Veterinary School as a centre of excellence for the treatment and care of horses and farm animals, the training of undergraduate and postgraduate veterinary surgeons, and the development of welfare research,” said Professor Jo Price, Head of the School of Veterinary Sciences. “The wider horse and farm animal population also has much to gain from the development of clinical facilities and expertise at the new centre.”
University of Exeter joins SETsquared
A key strength of the Southwest, the SETsquared Partnership of the Universities of Bristol, Bath, Surrey and Southampton, has been joined by the University of Exeter.
SETsquared is one of the UK’s most successful and long-running university-enterprise collaborations and runs innovation and enterprise centres across the region, developing routes to market for academic research, raising investment and creating jobs through its support for high-tech, high-growth early stage companies – both university spin-outs and companies in the wider community. Over the last five years the Partnership has supported around 650 companies, helped raise more than £150m in capital and created over 1,000 new jobs.
Exeter already has solid links with Bristol and Bath. Its activity in climate change, functional materials, systems biology and translational medicine adds strength to the Partnership’s research base. Exeter also has strong networks and support facilities for high-tech companies and will be a proactive partner in SETsquared’s incubation and business-creation agenda.
The SETsquared Partnership has nearly 7,500 academics at the five universities, which are jointly responsible for nearly nine per cent of the UK’s research budget.
“In these difficult times, the contribution universities make to the economy is key. The SETsquared Partnership has been very effective and expanding our membership will strengthen the role we can play. Exeter is an outstanding research-based university and is strongly engaged with the business community. It is an excellent fit with SETsquared’s existing members,” said Neil Bradshaw, Director of Enterprise at the University of Bristol and a member of the SETsquared Management Group.
“It is excellent news that the University of Exeter has now decided to become a member. It produces outstanding research and is strongly engaged with its regional business community,” said Ron Humphreys, Director of Bath Ventures. “We look forward to working together to bring further beneficial impact to the economy and wider society through our business support facilities and our combined research portfolio.”
Bristol engineering students receive prestigious awards from Boeing
Six students from the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Engineering have been awarded prizes from global aerospace giant Boeing for their innovation in integrated aerospace systems.
Bridget White and Joshua Shimmin both received scholarships for their final year of study whilst James Wilcox, Samantha Huntley, Sky Sartorius and Ben Buxton all received awards for their final projects which ranged from intelligent vehicles to fluid mechanics, helicopter design and ultrasound radio echoes.
“These students have excelled and are worthy winners of these awards. They have demonstrated the significant prerequisites for becoming the engineering leaders of the future,” said Shane Bennison, Director of Engineering for Boeing Defence UK and the company link for the University of Bristol.
One of the winners, James Wilcox, was awarded the best MEng project in Electrical and Electronic Engineering for his project entitled ‘Fully autonomous Scalextric vehicle using MEMS inertial sensors’.
Dr Mike Barton, project supervisor and Senior Lecturer in Microelectronics in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, said: “James designed and built instrumentation to be mounted inside a Scalextric car to allow it autonomously to negotiate a track at optimum speed while transmitting telemetry data via Bluetooth – and he achieved a working demonstration on time.”
Professor Nick Lieven, Dean of Engineering, added: “Once again our students have shown that they are highly capable individuals who have demonstrated a talent for engineering. They are without doubt amongst the best engineering graduates in the world and it is to their credit that they have been recognised for their achievements during their studies.”
The awards were funded by Boeing along with a contribution to support the student robot test arena and the University of Bristol Aeolus wind powered car project. The support to these students, facilities and projects are hugely important to help inspire the interest of future students and ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of advanced engineering.
Related articles
- Boeing unveils new, bigger 747-8 jet to cool response (telegraph.co.uk)
- Bristol students make biotechnology enterprise competition final – University of Bristol (news.google.com)
- Winners of the University of Bristol’s 2010 Art of Science Competition (telegraph.co.uk)
SW company drives mobile multimedia on the new Samsung Galaxy tablet
A chip and system developer in Chippenham is providing the technology for a new generation of mobile multimedia on the latest smartphones and tablet PCs from Samsung being shown at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
IPWireless, which has over 100 engineers in the region, has teamed up with US company AmDocs to run various multimedia applications on the Samsung Galaxy S phone and Galaxy Tab tablet PC, which are both running the Android operating system.
The technology, called Integrated Mobile Broadcast (IMB), has been endorsed by the GSMA and means mobile operators can use dormant 3G spectrum by overlaying a highly economical content delivery network on top of their existing 3G network. IMB-enabled networks bypass increasingly congested and allow popular content and applications to be streamed simultaneously to an unlimited number of devices: approximately 40,000 short form videos, 44,000 full length music tracks, 1,700 TV shows, or over 100,000 video advertisements can be sent in a single day. However, it needs a new generation of technology to do this, and IPWireless is working with companies such as Amdocs and ST-Ericsson, which has chip design in Bristol, to develop the whole system. Meanwhile operators Vodafone in Newbury and Orange in Bristol and O2 in Slough are running trials of the technology which could allow video to be sent to phones and tablets more cost effectively.
The company has some good connections already – last month it launched a ‘dongle’ for the Apple iPhone and iPad to connect to such services. It also last year set up a research lab in Chippenham with Sony America.
“IMB has the potential to deliver the multimedia experience consumers want at an economic model that makes sense for operators,” said Rebecca Prudhomme, vice president of product and solutions marketing at Amdocs. “Amdocs and IPWireless bring advanced application features that enable service providers to move beyond Mobile TV and offer innovative and intelligent new broadcast services that will lead to an enhanced consumer experience.”
Related articles
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (P7100) Dual-Core Android 3.0 Honeycomb Tablet (mydigitallife.info)
- Samsung announces slimmed down Galaxy S II smartphone and upsized Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet (gizmag.com)
- IP Wireless enlists ST-Ericsson to design in mobile TV (go.theregister.com)
- SouthWest electronics firms shine in Barcelona (swinnovation.co.uk)
SW grants re-open
The Grant for Business Investment (GBI) scheme has reopened to applications in the SouthWest after an announcement that they would close to new applications from 1st February.
The Grant for Business Investment is a discretionary grant that supports businesses with investment projects which will increase productivity, skills and employment. It is specifically targeted at those businesses with high skills and salaries that contribute above industry average benefits to the economy and does not support projects which offer a purely local consumer-type service, so should be aimed at innovative technology projects, although the focus seems to be more on capital equipment.
In the South West GBI grants are funded by the European Regional Development Fund (which is also backing the iNets), and the outgoing South West RDA has applied for and received its own State Aid notification enabling it to continue to receive applications for the time being. This is not the case anywhere else in the country, says SWRDA
“We have worked hard and very closely with the Department for BIS and the European Commission and the decision to reopen GBI is a real boost to the region and will be supported by many small and medium sized businesses throughout the South West,” said Richard Hoskin, SWRDA’s Business Investment Manager.
For most of the SouthWest outside Cornwall, applications are for 20% of the capital costs of the project for a small company (under 50 people) and 10% for a medium sized company (up to 250 people) and can range from £10,000 to £1m. Details are here.
Related articles
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Ubiquisys drives femtocells forward
Ubiquisys in Swindon is providing the technology behind 20 new femtocells at this year’s Mobile World Congress. The new femotcells – small 3G basestations that can be used in the home and to help improve coverage – include home units with integrated Wi-Fi and applications, units for the office that form self-organising networks (SON), and outdoor models that can bring coverage to rural areas via satellite and extra capacity in metropolitan environments.
They all use the Ubiquisys Femto-Engine system which allows hardware makers to produce many different designs based on the same software, and the technology is now deployed in volume by several mobile operators across the world, including SoftBank Mobile in Japan and by SFR in France.
“The key value in femtocells is their intelligence, not their miniaturisation. This intelligence, the ability to listen and make autonomous decisions in real-time, opens the door to a new generation of low-cost cells of all sizes that actively complement traditional macro networks,” said Chris Gilbert, CEO of Ubiquisys. “By encapsulating that intelligence in software, we have released a wave of innovation from leading device manufacturers as they work with operators on new femtocells for new environments. This is just the start of the proliferation of intelligent femtocell technology.”
Public Wireless in the US is demonstrating six outdoor small cell platforms with the Femto-engine, while Ubiquisys partner and investor SerComm has developed 15 distinct models, covering residential and integrated devices, enterprise, metro and rural. Femtocells developed by the two companies have already been commercially deployed in hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. The range includes 8-call standalone residential models, femtocells integrated into home gateways, USB clip-on femtocells and 16-call enterprise versions with extended range. Another box maker, Tecom in Taiwan, has shown the first model in its femtocell roadmap. The FT1020 residential femtocell supports eight individual calls and high speed data up to 14.4Mbit/s while using less than 5W of power.
Related articles
- Ubiquisys announced the world’s first attocell [Boost your phone’s signal, laptop required] (intomobile.com)
- Nokia Siemens, Ubiquisys Join Forces on Femtocells (pcworld.com)
Spacecraft that think for themselves
The world’s first control system that will allow engineers to programme autonomous satellites and spacecraft to think for themselves has been developed by scientists from the University of Southampton.
Professor Sandor Veres and his team of engineers have developed a cognitive software agent control system called ‘sysbrain’ that uses natural language programming (NLP) to ‘read’ special English language technical documents on control methods. This gives the vehicles advanced guidance, navigation and feedback capabilities to stop them crashing into other objects, as well as agent-based control with mission execution capabilities and the ability to recognise and reconfigure faults. This approach can be applied to other automated systems.
“This is the world’s first publishing system of technical knowledge for machines and opens the way for engineers to publish control instructions to machines directly,” said Professor Veres, who is leading the EPSRC-funded project. “As well as spacecrafts and satellites, this innovative technology is transferable to other types of autonomous vehicles, such as autonomous underwater, ground and aerial vehicles.”
To test the control systems that could be applied in a space environment, Professor Veres and his team constructed a unique test facility and a fleet of satellite models, which are controlled by the sysbrain cognitive agent control system. The ‘Autonomous Systems Testbed’ consists of a glass covered precision level table, surrounded by a metal framework, which is used to mount overhead visual markers, observation cameras and isolation curtains to prevent any external light sources interfering with experimentation. Visual navigation is performed using onboard cameras to observe the overhead marker system located above the test area. This replicates how spacecraft would use points in the solar system to determine their orientation.
“We have invented sysbrain to control intelligent machines. Sysbrain is a special breed of software agents with unique features such as natural language programming to create them, human-like reasoning, and most importantly they can read special English language documents in ‘system English’ or ‘sEnglish’,” said Professor Veres. “Human authors of sEnglish documents can put them on the web as publications and sysbrain can read them to enhance their physical and problem solving skills. This allows engineers to write technical papers directly for sysbrain that control the machines.”
Related articles
- British scientists develop control system to allow spacecraft to think for themselves (scienceblog.com)
MITIE launches £10m fund for entrepreneurs
Support for innovation can come from unexpected places. Bristol-based outsourcing conglomerate MITIE has launched a £10m fund to help entrepreneurs with good ideas get customers.
Better known for cleaning windows and hospitals and gritting roads, the company has helped create 90 business over the last 23 years with only five failures, says John Telling, group corporate affairs director and nephew of the founder. MITIE takes a 51% share and the businesses can access the groups 26,00o customers. The group is particularly targetting information technology and new systems to increase the efficiency of managing the different companies.
Related articles
- Rebalancing the economy: Private sector jobs and growth (number10.gov.uk)
- Entrepreneurs Hold Key To Economic Growth (news.sky.com)
Welcome
Welcome to SW Innovation News, gathering all the innovation news from the technology clusters in and around the SouthWest UK. Find us on Twitter at @SWtechNews
