The holiday shutdown in the IT industry was almost complete, but a
few vendors and standards bodies remained busy.
Broadcom buys WLAN patents
Network and communication chip
maker Broadcom has paid Unova $24m (£15m) for patents covering
wireless LAN and other technologies.
The deal covered around 150 domestic and foreign patents covering
wireless LAN, wireless communication, dual-radio access points,
hierarchical networks, dynamically switchable power supplies and
personal video recorders, according to a Unova statement.
Unova holds more than 700 patents, and its smart battery power
management technology has been licensed to many major notebook
computer makers.
Standards bodies drive forward MPEG-4 based video
system
The technical design for a new video compression
system based on the MPEG-4 standard that promises better quality
digital video was agreed at a meeting in Japan last week, said the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Members of a joint video team of the ITU, the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) agreed on the technical base for
the system, which the ITU has named H.264/AVC and the ISO/IEC has
named 14496-10/MPEG-4 AVC.
The system promises to reduce significantly the amount of bandwidth
required to send a video image and should mean better quality video
from a range of technologies such as digital satellite broadcasts,
digitally stored video or Internet streaming.
D-Link unveils high-speed WLAN line
Users of IEEE 802.11b wireless LANs who want higher speed over the
same radio spectrum will have a chance to jump toward the next
generation of wireless technology next month.
D-Link Systems has launched a hardware client and access point
designed from a draft of the coming 802.11g specification, which is
designed to offer a maximum 54Mbps (bit-per-second) carrying
capacity on the same radio spectrum used for 802.11b.
The AirPlus Xtreme G line will use a dual-mode system so users can
integrate the new products with existing 802.11b networks, which
deliver up to 11Mbps, according to a D-Link statement.
The new standard is expected to complete in March. Products are
already shipping that deliver up to 54M bps using another
relatively new standard, 802.11a, but they use a different part of
the radio spectrum (around 5GHz) and require a typically more
expensive dual-band radio if combined with 802.11b.
New laser should mean 16X DVD writers by
2004
Mitsubishi Electric has developed a more powerful
semiconductor laser that should pave the way for 16X DVD writers to
be commercially available from 2004.
The new laser is able to deliver pulses of light at a power of 200
milliwatts, which is double that of lasers used in today's 4X DVD
writer drives, Mitsubishi said.
Samples of the new laser will be available from June.