Philips, Cingular Wireless complete field trial of SAIC chips

Royal Philips Electronics and Cingular Wireless have successfully completed a commercial network field trial of Philips' single antenna interference cancellation (SAIC) chips for next-generation GSM/GPRS mobile phones.

This new semiconductor technology is expected to provide improved voice quality, decreased download times for data, and an increased number of calls supported on the network. The technology will be part of Philips' cellular semiconductor baseband and system solutions offered to cellular handset manufacturers globally. The Cingular trials were conducted on cellular prototypes from Philips.

"Several operators, especially in North America - where there is a transition to a GSM-based infrastructure - have shown a great interest in this feature," said Thierry Laurent, EVP business unit mobile communications at Philips Semiconductors. "In the future, mobile handset designers and network operators will undoubtedly require technology of this nature to be a standard option from their handset suppliers to ensure that they are delivering QoS [quality of service] to their customers."