A Maynooth researcher hopes to make mobile phones even more mobile utilising a new kind of electronics, writes Dick Ahlstrom.
Wireless is the word at a new €4.5 million research institute at NUI Maynooth. Its goal is to make mobile phones and other communications devices with "smart" electronics that can change itself as you move from one country to the next.
This would produce a truly international mobile or wireless device that doesn't worry about the local telecommunications network. Like a chameleon changes colour, this new "soft" hardware can alter itself by adapting to local communications conditions.
This fourth-generation communications vision is under development at Maynooth's new Institute of Microelectronics and Wireless Systems. Its aim is to develop all kinds of wireless technology based on electronics that can reconfigure itself automatically, explains its director, Dr Ronan Farrell.
The Institute was announced last December and received significant funding from Science Foundation Ireland and from Enterprise Ireland. Led by Farrell, it currently has 26 researchers, eight senior researchers and 18 postgraduate students.
"We are exploring wireless systems and what it is possible to do with them using new kinds of hardware," he says. It involves developing a "new hardware architecture" using electronics and microprocessors that work with embedded software to adapt to any communications environment.
"It is the integration of hardware and software. It is an area that is exploding with applications and opportunities," he says.
New, more versatile mobile phones are a natural outlet for this research, he says, but there are other applications based on wirefree technology.
Wireless sensors is one, for use in "active" clothing or food tags that give information about the item to which they are attached, in medical applications to monitor a patient's vital signs or in remotely monitoring the movement and activity of elderly at home. This approach goes against the traditional notion of inflexible hardware. "Hardware doesn't like to be changed, that is why they call it hardware," says Farrell.
His research team wants to change this however, allowing the hardware to work with embedded software so it can adapt itself to a variety of local conditions.
The Institute has joined with the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research at Trinity College Dublin to achieve this. Maynooth works on the hardware while Trinity works on the software, says Farrell.
The goal is to develop different kinds of devices that utilise "software defined radio" as a means of wireless communications. "Software radio is a single device that can go through the world and use the best communications service available at the time," explains Farrell.
The device automatically grabs hold of the best local 2G, 3G or Wifi signal to communicate, adjusting its hardware and software to adapt to whatever system it finds, he says.
"You want to be able to have the software to see what is out there and then reorganise the hardware and reconfigure the software."
The approach is not the same as the current generation of triband or quadband mobile phones, he says. These have a single antenna but have three or four separate radios inside that pick up only the four frequencies they are designed to receive.
He and his team want to achieve "dynamic spectrum management", the ability to process whatever frequency is available at the time. "We are looking at hardware that can capture all the radio signals and process them dynamically," says Farrell.
"To do that you will need very agile software programmes, but how do you make sure the hardware can transmit?" he asks. This is the research challenge, he says.
The new Institute will work closely with industry to develop research programmes.
"We are an applied research institute and we work closely with companies. If they come in with problems we will help them, but our core activity is to ensure we have a centre of excellence in wireless technology."
"The role of the university is not to be too close to market," he adds. It will always be some years technologically ahead of the products currently on the market. This does not preclude co-operative ventures however. "If we can prove a concept, they can take it away and develop a product," says Farrell.