CHICAGO-Motorola Inc.’s Messaging Systems Products Group has introduced three second-generation decoder chips and related software drivers to support the recently announced FLEX G1.9 high-speed, one-way paging protocol upgrade.
The new one-chip solution integrates digital FM demodulation functionality that previously was available only through off-chip, multiple component technology, the company said. Texas Instruments Inc. and Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector will be the first chipset manufacturers to sell the new FLEX decoders.
Motorola also licensed its FLEX Stack software to provide complete FLEX decoding solutions and make it easier to incorporate FLEX technology into devices using Microsoft Corp.’s Windows CE operating system, allowing them to receive personal, group and broadcast wireless messages. Atmel Corp. and Socket Communications Inc. have licensed the software.
The MSPG’s FLEX Enabling Operations group, at a press conference in Chicago last week, said the point of simultaneously releasing both the new protocol and the decoder chips was to give developers all the tools necessary to add FLEX-enabled wireless connectivity to whatever applications they create. When the FLEX protocol was first introduced, developers had to wait about a year before the first generation of decoder chips became available.
“People in the industry are more creative and innovative as a whole,” said Omid Tahernia, director of FLEX Enabling Operations. “To let them play with (the protocol upgrade) is the only way to find further value in the technology … Application development is what we’re after.”
In particular, Motorola said it wants to see more non-traditional uses for the enhanced paging technology, called “off-the-hip” applications. To achieve this goal, the company is providing a package that would allow developers unfamiliar with paging technology to add wireless capabilities to their applications. They don’t need to know how FLEX technology works, they just need to know what it can do and how it can enhance their applications.
“We’re not just talking about traditional pagers and devices that reside only on your belt,” Tahernia said. “To provide wireless capabilities to applications never wirelessly enabled before,” is the idea. Sort of a “FLEX-for-Dummies” approach.
FLEX G1.9 gives one-way pagers several added benefits. The decoder chip alone increases battery life by up to 25 percent, which can be increased to 50 percent if synchronous with the network.
The upgraded protocol also will allow a one-way FLEX pager to determine its geographic location, Motorola said. The receiver will be able to determine what region it is in by the Simulcast System Identifier of a given area’s network. Tahernia said this capability has several advantages. For instance, when a traveling paging subscriber with a FLEX G1.9-enabled pager enters a different time zone, the pager automatically will display the new time. If carriers choose, they then could page the subscriber with a message welcoming him to the particular city, along with a list of events and attractions in that city, local traffic updates, local headlines, etc.
Another capability of the new protocol is its dynamic group messaging ability, which allows for over-the-air programming to set message groups. This comes as good news to carriers looking for a low-cost way to offer subscribers customized, value-added information services.
For instance, all Paging Network Inc. alphanumeric subscribers receive CNN headlines. PageNet transmits one message that everybody receives. But the carrier wants to allow subscribers to customize their information, such as daily horoscopes. But if 30,000 customers want the horoscope for Libra and another 25,000 want the horoscope for Cancer, and so on, the carrier would have to send each subscriber an individual page with that information, regardless of how many share that interest.
With FLEX G1.9, a carrier can combine all Libras into one group and all Cancers into another and send just one page to each group that all in the group will receive.
“It allows users to subscribe to services and wirelessly enable or disable what he or she subscribes to,” Tahernia said.
These benefits apply to off-the-hip applications as well, Tahernia said. One could equip billboards in three states with the equivalent of a large alphanumeric display and send different messages to each, based on location and group, without needing to send each an individual page.
The FLEX Enabling Operations group has made possible recent FLEX-enabled products such as the integration with Windows CE operating system platform, the PalmPilot Pager Card, AirMedia Live’s NewsCatcher, the CreataLink module introduced for automobile and other uses, and the Beepwear watch in conjunction with Timex Corp.
