The WAVE Report on Digital Media
3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
---Published by 4th Wave, Inc.---
Issue #0341------------------12/15/03

 

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0340.1 Hot Topics

0340.2 Story of the Issue

0340.3 SIP

0340.4 3D

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0340.1 Hot Topics

***Ericsson introduces Bluetooth interoperability testing of consumer products
(December 9)

Ericsson Technology Licensing has instituted a Bluetooth interoperability testing program to verify products from a user perspective. This focuses on determining the interoperabiltiy that different Bluetooth products exhibit and the user scenarios they implement.

http:/www.ericsson.com/bluetooth


***ON Semiconductor Introduces Overvoltage Protection IC for Portable Charging
(December 9)

The ON Semiconductor NCP346 is an overvoltage protection circuit for use with an external ac-dc adapter, a car charger accessory and/or a battery recharger. This is to protect charging electronics from high-voltage input spikes. The NCP346 causes the adapter to be disconnected. The BiCMOS NCP346 enables a turn off time of less than 1 microsecond (usec) and withstands up to 30 volts (V) of overvoltage transients (or 25 V steady state). The chip works with detection thresholds of 4.45 V or 5.5 V which are present in most ac-dc adapters used to charge Li-Ion or Li-Polymer batteries. Further, the devices can be adjusted to other voltage levels with the use of an external resistor divider.

http://www.onsemi.com/tech.
http://www.onsemi.com.


***China Telecom Selects Alvarion Solutions
(December 8)

Alvarion Ltd. has been selected by China Telecom Corporation for deployment in four provinces: Liaoning, Shandong, Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang. This is for BWA networks at 3.5 GHz. There are four recommended vendors, two of which are Alvarion's OEM partners in China, BISC and Datang Telecom. To date, four of China Telecom's Northern provinces have placed initial orders for Alvarion solutions. In addition, Alvarion has already delivered to four of China's telecom service providers of fixed and cellular lines: China Telecom, China Netcom, China Mobile and China Unicom.

http:/www.chinatelecom.com.cn/
http:/ www.bisc.com.cn/
http:/ www.catt.ac.cn/english/
http:/www.alvarion.com/

0340.2 Story of the Issue

***CEATEC 2003
By John Latta

October 7-10
Makuhari Messe
Tokyo, Japan

CEATEC is a unique conference. It is a Japanese event mostly for Japanese buyers. A key value for a non-Japanese audience is that it provides an advance preview of technologies and designs that will migrate into electronics and consumer products. Thus, we use CEATEC to look into the future of electronics. It is also a large event. A total of 667 companies and organizations opened 2,522 booths, including 193 exhibitors from 17 countries. The exhibition drew 191,528 registered visitors in five days. Here are our highlights.

Sony

Sony attracted the Japanese press in droves for its roll out of the hard disk version of PS2 - PSX.

In a nutshell PSX is:

PS2 + GUI + Hard Disk

The options are:

Model DESR-7000 – 250GB
Model DESR-5000 – 160GB

The PSX does not support HD or higher resolution television – only NTSC and assumed PAL.

Although the unit supports DVD+RW it was claimed that a future software upgrade would support DVD-RW. The front logo indicates that DVD-RW will be in place.

In a corner of the booth were three exhibits:

Media PC
iLINK
Airtact

The Media PC was not being demonstrated and largely ignored by the attendees. Sony’s RoomLINK, the wireless technology using 802.11a, was also not used. Next to the Media PC was an iLINK system, aka 1394. It was showing how a wired system could be used to take content from a video camcorder and move it around a network of devices. Thus, the positioning of this high bandwidth connection was as an interface and transport between fixed devices.

Next to this was Airtact, which is an 802.11a control panel for the assembly of components in the simulated high end family room, but it was more than just a control panel. The screen is about 5” diagonal. Airtact has a built in antenna that also serves as the stand. On Airtact it is possible to see the equivalent of picture in a picture display but on this panel.

Fujitsu

In a demonstration Fujitsu showed a color scanner which plugs into a PDA using the CF Card Type II interface. The scanner is quite small and covers 48mm in width. It supports 24 bit color. An A8 size scan is done in 1.7 seconds.

It takes 10sec to stitch two scans together on a PDA , which is seen as too slow. Stitching is done by matching the “textures” of the two adjacent scans together.

It will run on any Pocket PC so long as there is a CF Card Type II slot. The demonstration was being done on a Fujitsu Look Pocket PC.

Another new technology being shown in was u Pocket which looks much like a PDA. This has 2 CMOS cameras, a SVGA (800 X 600) screen and 802.11b connection. The OS is CE.NET 4.2.

Sanyo

Xacti, DMX-C1(s), is a palm held MPEG-4 movie and still camera. It has 3.2Mpixels, 5.8X optical zoom, and stereo sound. The viewing screen, when shooting, just folds out from the case. The specifications include:

Movie mode - 21m @ 640 X 480 with 512MB of storage
Picture mode - 491 pictures @ 2048 X 1536 with 512MB of storage

Mitsumi

The PCM-CP001 is a panoramic camera module that is no more than 50mm X 60mm X 40mm. The top of the module is a panoramic lens. The resolution is 768 X 494 which covers 360 degrees.

Also being shown was a linear fingerprint scanner, Model FPA-Y0001, Fingerprint Authentication Module. It unit is about the size a large pen but lies flat on a desktop surface. There is an exposed portion, which includes the scanner.

NEC

Showing for the first time, NEC had an 802.11a AV solution. This is a set of chips for the transmitter and receiver that attach to the respective 11a RF and Baseband modules. The NEC set allows for the direct input of Line in Audio and NTSC S-video and the output of the same on the receiver.

Taiyo Yuden

They were actively promoting ceramic devices for Bluetooth, 802.X and UWB. They claimed to have a Band Pass and Stop filer for UWB.

Panasonic

They are now promoting a line of hand held imaging devices called D-Snap. This includes a very thin camera and a video camera similar but smaller than the eWave seen at CES 2003.

Toshiba

Toshiba combined a digital television with OLED. They called this the Mobil Broadcasting Receiver. The whole unit was the size of the display and approximately 4” in diagonal.

HJL

This is a design firm that was showing a reference design for a handheld video camera. One of the smallest we have seen. The display is on the back of the camera. It is called Che-ez.

Sharp

Most impressive was an 8bit microprocessor on a glass substrate. Shown for the first time was a 15” portable display which uses 2.4GHz. They called it wireless TV, free from antenna or power connection.

Pioneer

For the third year in a row Pioneer was showing the Cyberboard. This is a PDP with virtual writing enabled on the surface. The improvements this year include a camera mounted on top of the Cyberboard and multiple video-in-a-window displays on the screen. As before the user interface is quite good. They claim that the system takes only 256Kb/s over a LAN and multiple sites can be linked. However, H.323 is not supported and this is only a LAN device. The communications integration is poor. The product is now called Cyber Conference System EV.

3M

They were showing the Digital WallDisplay. This is similar to the Pioneer Cyberboard but the image is projected onto the surface. The projection system is novel and folds out from the top of the screen. The software is Sony’s ContentAuthor. It operates using an IR pen which writes onto the surface that makes up the display. The tip of the pen has the IR emitters and there are detectors in the corner of the display to determine the location of the pen. We noted a lag of ½ s from the time of writing to the visible indication on the display. Another disadvantage of this unit is that it is possible to block the display surface by being in front of the back projector.

SMX

In a first, that we have seen, this company is making a hand held controller for WindowsXP Media Centers.

NTT DoCoMo

A cell phone, model F2102V was shown that could display 4 independent video images at the same time.

OLED

OLED is getting real. One of the best booths in the past has been Pioneer and in the last two years they had OLED clothing. Other than clip on badges Pioneer was showing OLED in applications. Sony has had large screen OLEDs and last year Sanyo Koday was showing a 15” HD OLED television. No OLEDs were present in the Sony booth. There are many examples of OLED in the Sanyo booth but one would hardly know that Kodak is a part of the effort. Thus, across the board, the OLED products shown have small screens and positioned to sell into product designs.

ECHONET

This consortium is to foster the development of specifications for the next generation of home networking systems. The emphasis is on low power for appliance control. The hand out materials claims that 2003 and 2004 are the period of market creation. However, I have seen little progress in the three years at CEATEC. I asked them in the booth how ECHONET compares to the Korean initiative of HDS. Only got blank stares.

Wave Comments

This is the third year running for coverage and we continue to come way amazed at the depth of innovation, in spite of a terrible Japanese economy. CEATEC covers component technology, results of product research and final products, mostly CE. Thus, it provides a unique window into Japanese R&D and resulting products. What was different this year is that we saw less future products and more real ones. At the same time there was maturity in products such as OLED, small panels, emerged to focus on real products and LCD panels are making their entry as a mass market purchase. One technology we were especially impressed with was Sharp’s CPU on glass the beginning of the merger of high density logic circuits with displays.

The market numbers have been predicting that the largest digital camera market would be on cell phones. Now we see why the cell phone, in Japan, at least, is becoming a personal media device. It not only collects media but transmits it. Further, with the emphasis by a number of companies, the cell phone is also doubles as a personal television. We are just beginning to see how the cell phone is being morphed into ones personal connection device and beyond.

0340.3 SIP

***SIMPLEt Interoperability Session Tests New Presence Applications, Security Features, IPv6 Capability
(December 10)

At SIMPLEt, the SIP interoperability event, applications were tested based on presence, presence security and compatibility with IPv6. The SIMPLEt sessions showed the interoperability of 13 different presence and availability implementations from nine companies. This included SIMPLE over transport layer security.

The testing verified that presence information and instant-message content can be encrypted and protected against tampering as they cross the network. In addition, implementations could run on IPv6 networks. There were also presence applications for business based on open-source software, including GAIM, an open-source messenger client.

SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) is an extension to the SIP protocol that enables the secure use of presence and availability information.

http://www.sipforum.org/

0340.4 3D

***Ansoft Introduces ePhysics; New Thermal and Stress Analysis Tool
(December 9)

Ansoft Corporation has released ePhysics which improves the capabilities of HFSS and Maxwell 3D. The software incorporates three-dimensional steady-state thermal, transient thermal and linear stress analysis into the existing electromagnetic-based design flows. Coupling ePhysics with Maxwell 3D provides the tools for the design of electromechanical devices. Applications include the analysis of electric machines, power-generation systems, transformers, microelectromechanical systems and solenoids.

HFSS with ePhysics can be used for applications such as high-speed packages, antennas, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, high-power microwave devices, military and broadcast communications and biological heating with radio frequency (RF) sources.

ePhysics' features include:

-- Electromagnetic-centric coupled analysis
-- Graphical user interface
-- Automatic, adaptive meshing
-- Automated mapping of all electrical losses to thermal sources
-- Automated mapping of all electrical forces to stress analysis
-- Interactive post-processing for field visualization

http://www.ansoft.com
http/www.ansoft.com/ephysics

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