Wireless platform

In a bid to speed development of new wireless protocols and networking standards, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the

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has begun distributing for alpha testing a hardware-and-software platform for wireless research and development.

Called CalRadio 1.0, the open-source device gives academic and corporate researchers freedom to develop new radio frequency (RF) solutions.

"CalRadio 1.0 is a software-defined radio platform that allows researchers to test out new algorithms and new techniques for wireless communications," said Douglas Palmer, principal development engineer at Calit2.

"The first generation of this platform is based on the 802.11b Wi-Fi standard, but we are developing future generations that will make it possible to use CalRadio in other wireless standards or even design entirely new ones."

Several companies cooperated in the development of CalRadio, which took nearly two years to develop.

Symbol Technologies contributed the RF module and early media access control (MAC) code, and Texas Instruments donated the development system. The first version of CalRadio is powered by a TI TMS320VC5471 ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) + DSP (Digital Signal Processor). The ARM processor runs ucLinux for software development, and the DSP implements the MAC for the 802.11b Wi-Fi standard in C code.