CellPort Selects Lucent Technologies' Hands-Free Phone Chip

Boulder, Colorado-based CellPort Systems will use Lucent's digital signal processor (DSP)-based chip set in the company's universal hands-free system, scheduled to be introduced by in the first quarter. Motorola's Telematics Communications Group will use the chip set in its hands-free phone systems slated for use in the company's embedded telematics systems, which it expects to be available by 2001.

Advantages
The chip set helps eliminate manual dialing of cellular phone numbers while driving. It also enables drivers using cellular phones to be heard more clearly without the need to speak loudly into their phones and frees them to turn up the volume on their cell phones to hear more clearly.

Targeted for use in the range of hands-free markets, including automotive telematics, embedded wireless phone hands-free kits, and completely portable hands-free kits, Lucent's DSP operates at 100 million instructions per second. On one DSP chip, Lucent can simultaneously enable voice recognition; hands-free, full-duplex speakerphone functions, including adaptive acoustic echo cancellation, line echo cancellation, and noise suppression; simultaneous voice and data; and voice memo recording functions.

Because of its DSP horsepower, Lucent reduces the chips typically required for such functions from three to one, thereby reducing overall circuit board and component costs.

The Advanced Communications Technology Center of Bell Labs developed several key software algorithms for the Lucent DSP offering. The algorithms were fine-tuned for the hands-free application, tapping Bell Labs' extensive experience in speech, audio, and other communications technologies.

Safety aspect
There is worldwide momentum driving the hands-free cellular phone market. Twenty countries, including Australia, Brazil, and England currently have laws requiring use of hands-free cellular phones in automobiles; Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and 11 other U.S. states have introduced legislation to implement hands-free cellular phone laws. Brooklyn, OH, has already passed a local hands-free law.

Lucent's offering consists of the DSP1627 and DSP1629, both of which operate at 100 MIPS and 2.7 volts. The DSP1627 has 32 kilowords of Read Only Memory (ROM) and 6 kilowords of Random Access Memory (RAM). The DSP1629 has 48 kilowords of ROM and 16 kilowords of RAM on chip. A complementary part of the offering is Lucent's CSP1027 coder/decoder (codec) chip.

Both chips can be used in the various global wireless standards including Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Time Division Multiple Access, and Advanced Mobile Phone System.

Edited By Ellen Jensen