BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J.-Lucent Technologies Inc. announced three South Korean wireless communications equipment manufacturers are including Lucent’s digital signal processor-based compression and decompression (codec) technology in their Code Division Multiple Access wireless handsets and base stations.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd. and LG Information & Communications Ltd.-three major vendors of CDMA equipment in Korea-are manufacturing their new CDMA handsets with Lucent’s DSP 1627 chip and Enhanced Variable Rate Codec software. LGIC and Hyundai also are using Lucent’s EVRC chip in their
CDMA base stations. EVRC is a new global standard for compressing and decompressing voice signals.
“Lucent is the first integrated circuits manufacturer to ship an EVRC-equipped DSP to the Korean market, and Korea is the biggest CDMA market in the world,” said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a DSP market research firm.
In a CDMA phone, Lucent’s EVRC chip can serve as a coprocessor, interfacing with CDMA chipsets from other manufacturers, said the company. As a result, manufacturers can use the chip to add EVRC capability to their existing terminal designs with minimal re-engineering. Lucent said its chip comes equipped with all necessary software to enable EVRC.
EVRC uses a lower bit rate than existing CDMA speech coders, while providing significant improvements in voice quality, noted Lucent. The lower bit rate-8 kilobits per second-translates into increased network capacity for wireless service providers. Korean manufacturers will supply their EVRC-based products to Korean wireless service providers. Korean cellular carriers SK Telecom and Shinsegi Telecomm Inc. currently use 13 kbps vocoders, but also plan to use the EVRC by the end of the year. The country’s three new personal communications services carriers say they have launched service using the EVRC.
Lucent’s EVRC software deployment in Korea marks the first of several deployments of the technology around the world. Use of EVRC technology for CDMA applications is expected to expand in the United States, China, Japan, Germany, Peru, Thailand and Hong Kong.
