The European Commission has backed a new wireless development platform that will make it easier and cheaper for service providers and users to develop and adopt mixed wireless technologies.
The Commission has put £1.2m into the Generic Open Link-Layer API for Unified Media (Gollum) project, which involves several European universities and suppliers.
Gollum has the support of Aachen University, ST Microelectronics, Microsoft, Materna, Telefonica, and Toshiba, among others.
The European alliance has already presented the first implementation of an embedded, open operating system-independent link-layer application programming interface (API) to support various wireless access technologies.
As a separate programming interface exists for almost every wireless technology, there is complexity in trying to get them to work with different mobile devices and servers.
Gollum’s Unified Link Layer API has already been prototyped on a variety of wireless platforms, including IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi platforms, 3G and GPRS mobile systems, and the Bluetooth, Zigbee, and WiMax solutions.
