Prototyping mobile technology

Prototyping mobile technology

Written by: Björn Ekelund, Bernd Moeller and Claes von Scheele

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In the world of mobile telecommunications, early availability of terminals has often been an important factor for the success of new technology. To manifest its leadership role in radio access technology and advanced wireless multimedia concepts, Ericsson demonstrates complete end-to-end (E2E) solutions from network system to terminals. Accordingly, it invests in specific mobile phone prototype projects that are based around mobile phone technology from Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP).

The goals of the projects are to strengthen Ericsson's innovative capabilities, accelerate testing of new technology, and enable the company to prove and demonstrate its end-to-end solutions.

Representatives from Ericsson's radio and core networks, multimedia services, and mobile phone platforms actively participate in end-to-end technology prototype programs. In this respect, Ericsson is probably one of few companies worldwide with sufficient in-house technical capability to facilitate end-to-end demonstrations and to push technology in a rapid and efficient way.

Prototyping, early functionality, product
Prototypes are used to demonstrate, test, and verify concept technology at an early stage. This calls for overdimensioned but not fully optimized hardware. Prototyping facilitates the testing and analysis of different implementations at an early stage. Flexible designs make it possible to add and modify hardware according to needs. Obviously, this is not possible in commercial product development cycles.

Although ideal for proof-of-concept applications, prototype terminals are typically too expensive for high-volume production and cannot be optimized for other features, such as low power consumption and small size. For this reason, they cannot be turned into a commercial market solution even when they excel at demonstrating functionality.

Ericsson's prototype projects typically lie 12 to 18 months ahead of commercial roll-out of handset platforms and infrastructure products.

EMP product technology
After having used a prototype to prove a concept, the next step is to transfer functionality to real products via EMP's mobile phone platform offerings.

The use of prototypes also helps developers to identify and resolve potential problems, which significantly shortens the development time of commercial platforms. The idea is to elaborate the solution with a prototype, make tests, and integrate the proven concept into an Ericsson infrastructure implementation. After the basic solution has been predeveloped in a prototype environment, the new functionality is designed into an ASIC.
One can thus bring a compact, cost-effective platform solution to market by moving the functionality from a software solution on overdimensioned hardware to a slim ASIC implementation.