Green radio partnership

Samsung Electronics has signed an agreement to collaborate with IMEC on technologies for green radios.

The research collaboration topics will include cognitive, reconfigurable radio baseband and millimetre-wave wireless communications technologies.

The new technologies developed with IMEC could be incorporated into Samsung’s next-generation mobile devices.

IMEC, a Belgium-based nanotechnology research centre, has conducted significant research in the past on software-defined radios that support the major standards for wireless communications.

The hope is to push this research one step further towards cognitive radios, which are ICs with a radio that adapts itself to the changing communication standard, available communication frequencies and conditions such as indoor/outdoor, signal strength and movement.

IMEC is working on the control algorithms that take into account these changing environment parameters and user needs.

Researchers at the centre already develop radio ICs for the wireless communication of massive data streams, such as uncompressed high-definition television streams.

These data streams require a high throughput in the order of Gbits per second.

A suitable bandwidth for that communication is available at around 60GHz.

Therefore, IMEC works on cost-effective, low-power 60GHz radio ICs in standard CMOS, targeted at the consumer market.

Samsung joined IMEC as core partner in the sub-32nm CMOS research platform in 2004, followed by a core partnership in IMEC’s multimode multimedia research programme in 2005 and in IMEC’s ubiquitous embedded systems research in 2007.

With this collaboration on cognitive radio and millimetre-wave communications, researchers from Samsung will work with IMEC’s research team to build up fundamental understanding and develop robust systems for the future wireless terminals supporting multi-standards.

‘We are excited that Samsung is contemplating extending its collaboration with us towards cognitive radios and millimetre-wave communications,’ said Gilbert Declerck, chief executive of IMEC.

‘We have been collaborating very successfully for five 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 its mobile terminals of the future.’