[India Focus] Alereon Sets Up India R&D Facility for UWB Chipsets

Jul 23, 2007 10:19 Nikkei Electronics Asia

Alereon Inc, which develops USB technology for mobile ultra-wideband (UWB) WiMedia, recently announced the opening of Alereon Semiconductors, a product-oriented research and development facility in Pune, India.

Alereon is a fabless semiconductor company using UWB radio technology to develop high-bandwidth, low-power, low-cost wireless USB and WiMedia UWB chipsets for portable products, such as digital cameras, MP3 players and cell phones. Its chipsets are aimed at simplifying networking, enabling the removal of cables and easy connection between PCs, peripherals, mobile devices and so on.

At Alereon's India operation, the main focus will be on the company's patented UWB chipsets, such as the AL4000, for the next generation of products. Alereon claims to be the only UWB company offering embedded device-to-device connectivity that is certified by the USB-IF.

India Center
Alereon's India operation is the company's first R&D center outside the US. It is expected to work in close collaboration with the Texas-based headquarters on next-generation products for the global market.

"The expansion of our development efforts to include a new facility in Pune will strengthen our role in bringing new UWB solutions to the market," said Eric Broockman, CEO of Alereon. "We are currently the only UWB company offering embedded device-to-device connectivity that is certified wireless USB from the USB-IF, and we are committed to leveraging that competitive advantage by investing in continued development of new technology."

The India center will work on projects considered challenging from the implementation point of view. Today with bandwidth becoming a key driver in almost all applications, Alereon has geared up to provide high data rates with its complete UWB silicon solution, including a wireless USB and WiMedia-compliant MAC, a baseband processor and an RF transceiver.

"Made in india" Goal
"Alereon's product-oriented nature provides exciting opportunities for the strong technical and skilled resources available here in India. As a result of existing Alereon partnerships, our work will continue to be highly innovative and challenging as we set out to develop UWB RF CMOS integrated circuits for the next generation of certified wireless USB products," said Dr Rajesh Zele, managing director of Alereon's Pune facility.

While the US center is working on the first and second generation of design, the third generation - which targets cell phone applications - is currently being done. "Not many engineers are working here in India on RF and analog mix of chips. We are one of the pioneers in this, and our goal is to have UWB chipsets coming out of India with a 'Made in India' tag," Zele added.

Alereon is focused on certified wireless USB products, which help to eliminate the tangle of USB cables found around PCs, making it easy and convenient to make data transfers, such as uploading photos from a digital camera to a PC, viewing photos on an HDTV, synchronizing a PC and PDA/smart phone, and downloading music to an MP3 player.

"Today, it's applications like taking a high resolution photograph, or recording a short clip on one's cell phone and seeing it appear on a friend's phone - that's a cool application for many teenagers; or, for instance, getting a quick printout from a digital camera. These are some of the end applications we are looking at. We are partnering with Kodak for such kinds of innovative applications too," Zele said.

by Sufia Tippu, Bangalore

From Nikkei Electronics Asia India edition July 2007 issue

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