Skyworks Offers Licenses To Selectable Mode Vocoder Technology

Patented and proprietary Selectable Mode Vocoder (SMV) improves voice quality for CDMA handset applications while increasing network system capacity by up to 75%

Woburn, MA -- Skyworks Solutions, Inc. today announced that licensing rights for the patented and proprietary Selectable Mode Vocoder (SMV) technology incorporated in mobile handset applications, are immediately available on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.

Adopted by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP2) as the next-generation vocoder for CDMA wireless networks, SMV is a technology that is capable of increasing subscriber capacity by up to 75%, while improving the quality of wireless voice communications for the consumer. In independent tests of voice call quality, SMV has consistently outperformed existing vocoders, including the GSM network's Adaptive Multi Rate (AMR) vocoder, in a variety of environments including car, street and office backgrounds.

"The capacity and quality improvements made possible with SMV will have a significant impact in the CDMA wireless industry," said David J. Aldrich, Skyworks' president and CEO. "Users will notice a marked improvement in the voice quality of their communications, especially under less-than-perfect conditions, while service providers can enjoy increased network capacity. The industry's standards boards have already ratified this breakthrough technology. Skyworks' pricing strategy for SMV licenses is designed to proliferate the technology as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible."

"SMV technology provides significant capacity and quality gains on cdmaOne and CDMA2000 systems," said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDMA Development Group, which supported 3GPP2 in its development of the SMV algorithm's specification and release. "The state-of-the-art technology utilized in SMV will allow CDMA subscribers to enjoy superior quality while allowing service providers to increase capacity as needed."

About SMV Technology
In contemporary wireless communications systems, speech from a handset is digitized and encoded prior to transmission in order to reduce the number of data bits needed to faithfully represent the original sound. Upon reception, the signal is decoded and returned to spoken word for the listener. The coding and decoding operations are performed by a vocoder, with the number of simultaneous conversations that can be accommodated on an operator's valuable and finite bandwidth limited by the data rate consumed during each conversation. Vocoders that provide high voice quality while simultaneously offering the lowest data transmission rates are of considerable value to operators, as they provide the best customer satisfaction and also provide increased system capacity. SMV is a breakthrough algorithm technology that provides these significant capacity and quality gains.

SMV employs powerful, dynamically variable speech encoding algorithms that automatically select the optimal encoding rate based on speech characteristics. Depending on the speech pattern, successive bits of speech are rapidly digitized at one of four different baseband bit rates -- 9.6 Kbps, 4.8 Kbps, 2.4 Kbps and 1.2 Kbps. SMV then allows the network provider to select their preferred operational modes in order to achieve their target voice quality and capacity goals on a dynamically adjustable basis. This provides network operators with the flexibility to make trade-offs between voice quality and capacity at any point. For example, a network provider might increase capacity in one sector to cope with a sudden, unpredictable increase in user demand, such as rush hour. Alternatively, the operator may want to offer business users a premium package guaranteeing the best voice quality.

Unique noise reduction and cancellation mechanisms are also built into SMV's speech pre-processing and multi-level classification modules to ensure a very high level of voice clarity and fidelity under typical noisy cell phone environments such as in a car, on the street or in an office.

SMV is a proprietary technology that was developed by Dr. Huan-Yu Su and his team while at Conexant Systems, Inc. With the spin-off of several of Conexant's businesses over the last several years, the SMV intellectual property rights have been distributed as follows: Skyworks is the exclusive licensor for mobile handset applications; Mindspeed Technologies is the exclusive licensor for high density wireless infrastructure products (eight or more ports), and Conexant is the exclusive licensor for low density wireless infrastructure products (seven or fewer ports).

Source: Skyworks Solutions