The Next Generation Wireless Chips
University of Cologne (11/04/08) Kollner, Raphael

Europe’s Integrated Circuit/Electromagnetic Simulation and design Technologies for Advanced Radio Systems-on-chip (ICESTARS) project will enable the development of low-cost wireless chips that can operate in a frequency range of up to 100GHz.

“In the future, mobile devices will provide customers with services ranging from telephony and Internet to mobile TV and remote banking, anytime, anywhere,” says University of Cologne professor Caren Tischendorf. “It is impossible to realize the necessary, extremely high data transfer rates within the frequency bands used today.”

ICESTARS project leader Marq Kole says that by the end of the project in 2010, project participants hope to have accelerated the chip development process in the extremely high frequency range with new methods and simulation tools. ICESTARS is funded by the European Commission and is led by NXP Semiconductors.German semiconductor company Qimonda will develop advanced analog simulation techniques for the project.

Other partners include Finland-based software developer AWR-APLAC, which will focus on frequency-domain simulation algorithms, and Belgium’s MAGWEL, which will focus on electromagnetic simulations.

In addition to the University of Cologne, university partners include Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, Germany’s University of Wuppertal, and the University of Oulu in Finland. University partners will focus on modeling questions, algorithmic problems, and simulations issues that need to be solved for testing analog circuits with digital signal processing in the extremely high frequency range.