ICL teamed up with Infineon for bluetooth development

( Feb.12, '01)

The Computer and Communications Research Laboratories (CCL) of ITRI announced its agreement with Infineon Technologies of Singapore to jointly develop bluetooth applications. The two organizations will incorporate the advanced chipsets manufactured by Infineon with CCL's technical know-how on bluetooth module design to facilitate the development of Bluetooth-enabled products in Taiwan. This collaboration will stimulate an integration of notebook computers, computer peripherals, cellular phones, and other relevant products to create another boom for domestic wireless communications industry.

CCL has been involved in the development of wireless communications, particularly in bluetooth module design technology for many years. It has pursued R&D on global satellite mobile communications (GSM), digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (DECT) widely used in European countries as well as wireless local area network (LAN) in compliance with IEEE802.11 standard. It has also invested in fundamental research on low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) for over five years. With over ten patents in LTCC design, CCL has won international recognition in this area. Following the agreement with MKE of Japan in November 2000 for reciprocal technology licensing, the CCL-Infineon alliance shows one more step further that CCL has taken in international collaboration for the development of wireless communications technology.

With its headquarters set in Germany, Infineon, formerly Siemens Semiconductor, is the world's first semiconductor firm to have its bluetooth chips assessed and certified by Bluetooth Qualification Bodies (BQB), and is the world's leading supplier in Bluetooth solutions. It has approximately 29,000 employees worldwide encompassing all the regional bases in the U.S., Asia-Pacific, and Japan.

As Dr. Teddy Huang, deputy general director of CCL, pointed out, "CCL's cooperation with Infineon of Singapore, the Asia-Pacific base of the company, provides an excellent opportunity for domestic high-tech development in the 21st century. Combining the chipsets from Infineon with CCL's bluetooth module design technology will make the PCMCIA module design tallying with bluetooth specifications, and its high quality performance is expected to bring positive impacts to domestic industry."

According to Mr. Jung-Kuen Chen (³¯ºa©[), Asia-Pacific Vice President of Infineon, the firm has excellent chipset system technologies. It has manufactured over 30 million receiving/transmitting chipsets with working bandwidth similar to Bluetooth for DECT phones and worldwide digital cordless telecommunications (WDCT) systems. He welcomes the collaboration with CCL and expects the deal will reduce the module cost effectively. He also believes that adopting CCL's LTCC design technology will further pave the foundation for Taiwan manufacturers in developing bluetooth products.

For more information, please contact Mrs. Margaret Chen at Tel:+886-3-5917921; email:margaret@itri.org.tw.