Electronics

Industry veteran Jamie Urquhart, ARM Holdings co-founder, serial investor and the ESCO report chair, has been honoured with the contribution to industry award at the annual NMI Electronic Systems Awards.

NMI also named McLaren Electronic Systems, a world leading designer of control and data systems for motor sport, including Formula One, Nascar and Indycar, as company of the year.

Derek Boyd, NMI CEO and presenter of the awards said: "The ESCO report, which outlines what's needed for significant growth to create a £120 billion industry in the UK by 2020, has made 2013 a key year for the electronic systems community.

"In his role as chair of the report, Jamie stepped up to the mark to bring this community together. That sounds simple enough but in practice it is incredibly difficult as can be seen by previous attempts. It is only fitting that we honour Jamie's effort and achievement for the industry here tonight. Jamie is a very deserving winner."

In awarding Company of the Year to McLaren Electronic Systems, the judges cited the company's technology provision for all F1 teams and, significantly, the growth into new, high-value and high-reliability market sectors.

In giving the award, Derek Boyd said: "Tonight we honour a relatively small company with big ambition, a company that has been successful not only in the market they are readily identified with but one that is also seeking out opportunities in new areas both nationally and internationally."

McLaren's technology can also be found in hospitals, undertaking real time monitoring of children's health in primary care; rail transport, undertaking real time video, data and internet systems; and in electric sports cars, with both the McLaren P1 production hybrid road car and the Formula E electric race cars.

The full list of winners is:

·    Contribution to Industry            Jamie Urquhart

·    Company of the Year            McLaren Electronic Systems

·    Young engineer of the year        Adam Malpass

·    Innovation                Coveritas

·    Innovation in Power Electronics        Anvil Semiconductor

·    Semi360                Lime Microsystems

·    Product Excellence            Frontier Silicon

·    Collaborative R&D Achievement        Infineon

·    Automotive Electronics Innovation    Freescale

·    Low Power Green Design        CamSemi

·    Environmental Management        Seagate Technology

·    Manufacturing Site of the Year        Xaar

·    Manufacturing Supplier of the Year    Memsstar

·    Training & Development            Dialog Semiconductor

·    University Department of the Year    Heriot Watt

The awards promote practices conducive to the long-term health of the UK's electronic systems community. 2013 is the Awards' 12th outing, with this year's event being held on the 21st November at the exclusive Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, London.

Over 400 guests from throughout the UK and around the world attended the sell-out event. The celebrity speaker was the automotive journalist and former Top Gear presenter, Quentin Willson.

NMI  

www.nmi.org.uk

National Instruments and the University of Edinburgh are jointly developing a test bed to drive forward indoor wireless communications capacity. Professor Harald Haas, lead researcher at Edinburgh has pioneered a next-generation massive multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) technique, referred to as spatial modulation, to power a highly energy efficient capacity increase in another step on the path toward fifth-generation (5G) wireless communications.

Haas and Professor Cheng-Xiang Wang, head of the Advanced Wireless Technologies Lab at Heriot-Watt University, recently used NI PXI Express hardware and NI LabVIEW system design software to create the first working prototype showing spatial modulation techniques over a wireless RF channel. Previously Haas demonstrated a concept, nicknamed LiFi, using visible light communication over a single-channel, point-to-point link. He now plans to combine these technologies to create even higher density optical wireless networks—called optical attocell networks—that will harness massive MIMO gains in both the optical and RF domains for energy-efficient indoor wireless communications.

“We’ve known for a long time that decreasing cell size can significantly increase cellular capacity and user data rates, but it’s not been clear how we could facilitate that given current spectrum, energy and interference limitations,” said Haas.

“RF wireless and optical wireless networks that work together using spatial modulation and massive MIMO approaches could allow us to effectively mitigate interference and significantly increase energy efficiency, coverage and capacity using existing infrastructure.”

The Edinburgh team is extending its research capabilities with the NI’s LabVIEW reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture for rapid prototyping. Using the company’s FlexRIO Software Defined Radio Bundle with reconfigurable FPGAs and interchangeable I/O adapter modules, the team is building prototypes that operate beyond the rates of a commercial RF wireless system. The team recently achieved 3.5Gbit/s from a single colour LED, allowing them to create an ultra-realistic test bed.

National Instruments

uk.ni.com