Pradeep Shah, TI Fellow, Texas Instruments R&D Labs, Personal Systems Laboratory.
Abstract: Wireless communication systems are experiencing a period of explosive growth. It is sometimes difficult to say whether this growth is driving technology advances or whether such advances are enabling this whole industry. This talk takes the position that technology is the enabler but that industry trends are setting the direction. Sustained growth opportunity however is critically dependent on the challenge of cost effective solutions of terminals, networks and applications to extend the services beyond current voice to data and multimedia in ubiquitous mobility and connectivity environment. Several key trends are highlighted for handsets including the three key issues: cost, battery life, and system versatility and in personal information devices such as notebook computers and peripherals for the mobile professionals in the context of semiconductor integration as well as merging of computing with communication
Biography: Pradeep Shah is a TI Fellow, and currently manager of the COMMUNICATION INTERFACES in Personal Systems Laboratory of the Texas Instruments Corporate Research and development. He is coordinating development and integration of technologies for enhanced mobility and connectivity of notebook computers and personal productivity products. Earlier activities include coordination of Wireless Core Competency team and development of technologies for RF integration for cellular telephones and wireless systems applications, development and productization of CMOS technologies and nonvolatile memory products.
Dr. Barry M. Leiner, Vice President, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), West Coast Laboratories.
Abstract: In the late 1970's and early 1980's, there was a considerable amount of ongoing research into mobile and wireless communications. Most notable was the research into packet radio networks, networks that would extend the technology began with Arpanet into the mobile and wireless environment. This research resulted in a number of technical advances in such areas as spread spectrum signalling and management and dynamic mobile packet networks, and in fact was a prime motivator for the initial research into internetworking. In many ways, though, the research was ahead of its time. Terrestrial wired network bandwidths typically used 64 kbps links compared to 45 Mbps and above today. Internet was an initial experiment rather than the ubiquitous information infrastructure it is today. And perhaps most significantly, microprocessor and related microsystems technology provided a small fraction of the capabilities available today. Thus, while many of the ideas in the packet radio research were promising, it is only today as the underyling microsystems technology has matured that they can be realized. In this talk, some of these early packet radio networking ideas will be outlined. The impact of today's microsystems technology on their realization will be discussed and the tremendous future potential of the technology addressed.
Biography: Dr. Leiner recently joined the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) as Vice President, responsible for its newly formed West Coast Laboratories. He is leading MCC's efforts in distributed system and networking technology. From 1992 to 1996, Dr. Leiner was a Senior Scientist with the Universities Space Research Association. He spent the last two years on loan to the Advanced Research Projects Agency where he was Assistant Director of the Information Technology Office. He was responsible for the area of Networked Systems, developing the information technologies required to support widely distributed operation. Particular areas of focus were mobile information systems, high performance networking, and the technologies required to facilitate distributed applications that exploit the emerging ubiqitous network environment. Dr. Leiner has spent the last 15 years working in the area of packet switched networking technology and its applications.
Dr. Bernd Girod, Professor, Telecommunications Institute, University Erlangen_Nuremberg, , Germany.
Abstract: Mobile channels cannot provide guaranteed QoS parameters. This poses severe problems for the transmission of motion video, using compression schemes such as described in the ITU-T H.263 draft international standard due to temporal error propagation. In this talk, I will discuss compatible extensions of H.263 that utilize a feedback channel for robust transmission. In conjunction with FEC and ARQ, an intelligent source coder control can provide excellent robustness at bit error rates worse than 10-2. Finally I will discuss the current state of joint source channel coding of video.
Biography: Prof Bernd Girod has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Telecommunications Institute at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg since 1993. Previous academic appointments incude the University of Hannover and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published over 80 papers on image coding, computer graphics and computer vision and holds several international patents. He is also cofounder and Chief Scientist of Vivo Software, Inc. , Boston.
Philip P. Carvey, Division Engineer, Bolt, Berenek and Newman, , Cambridge, MA
Abstract: A wireless LAN technology has been developed which is intended to provide interconnection between Personal Electronic Accessories (PEAs) and a wearable basestation worn by a user. Applications areas enabled by this BodyLAN technology include Personal Inertial Navigation, Medical Monitoring, Sports Training, and Virtual Reality.
PEAs require small size and weight, protocol robustness, and especially ultra low power consumption. By exploiting the short maximum interconnect distance, BodyLAN reduces the analog/RF section power consumption to 3-5 nanojoules per bit. This talk will focus on the DSP requirements for control of the LO, filters, PLL, power management, TDMA event control, FEC encoding & decoding, matched filters, and a few PEA transducers.
Biography: Philip P. Carvey received a B.S.E.E degree with honors from IIT in 1965, and an M.S.E.E from MIT in 1967. Fields of work include computer graphics, vision systems, parallel processing, high speed communications, and VLSI design. Recent work has been in the development of low-power wearable systems where he is designing BodyLAN modems for the Tactical Information Assistant and Personal Inertial Navigation projects. He is currently a Design Engineer with Bolt, Berenek and Newman, Systems and Technology Division.