article - Philips Research

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Philips Research technology magazine - issue 26 - February 2006 

“ Entertaible – a 21 st century 

tabletop gaming platform 

that marries the best of 

electronic and traditional 

board games in a natural and 

simple way.” 

Making electronic games more sociable 

“ Software-defi ned radio offers 

advantages for users, 

service providers and 

manufacturers in dealing 

with the plethora of 

transmission standards.” 

Re-imagining radio 

“ The selection of the Penn-State 

Philips (PSP) model as the new 

standard compact device 

model is a clear step forward 

for the semiconductor industry.” 

Joining forces to create better transistor models 

“ Industry collaboration is the 

only viable way forward to 

migrate existing 

media center product offerings 

into a harmonized, 

universal solution.” 

An open heart to the digital home

Main article 

An open heart to the digital home 

Media centers represent the convergence of PCs and 

consumer electronics (CE) products such as DVDs, settop 

boxes and MP3 players into a single ‘digital hub’. While 

the leading current generation of media centers is exciting 

and offers universal compatibility, keeping them that way is 

going to be an enormous challenge – even for the largest 

companies. Therefore, Philips proposes an ‘Open Media 

Center’ platform. 

Password is a quarterly magazine 

published by Philips Research. 

Philips Research, part of Royal Philips 

Electronics, has fi ve main laboratories 

in three continents where 2100 

researchers investigate promising 

options for innovation. 

Editor-in-chief 

Peter van den Hurk 

E-mail: 

peter.j.van.den.hurk@philips.com 

Production management 

Claudia van Roosmalen 

Erica Schrijvers 

6 

Distribution management 

Cees Jan Mol 

Erica Schrijvers 

Editorial Board 

Prof. Dr Emile Aarts, the Netherlands 

Dr Tobias Helbig, United Kingdom 

Dr Peter Wierenga, the Netherlands 

Dr Thomas Zängel, Germany 

Ellen de Vries, the Netherlands 

Dr Satyen Mukherjee, USA 

Design and Art Direction 

Storm Scott, Eindhoven 

6 

Printer & Lithography 

Roto Smeets Services, Eindhoven 

In this issue Editorial 

Main article 

6 An open heart to the digital home 

Features 

16 Technology 


24 Lifestyle 

Entertaible – Making electronic games more sociable 

Further in this issue 

4 What’s new 

12 Another perspective 

Joining forces to create better transistor models 

14 Technology news 

20 Joint contribution 

Expanding boundaries - Creating a world of seamless 

connectivity 

Other contributors to this issue 

William Third 

More information 

and subscription 

Philips Research Public Relations Dept 

Prof. Holstlaan 4 

5656 AA Eindhoven, the Netherlands 

Tel. +31-40-27 43403 

Fax +31-40-27 44947 

E-mail: 

prpass@natlab.research.philips.com 

See also 

www.research.philips.com 

© KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS 

ELECTRONICS N.V. 2006 

All rights reserved 

Articles may be reproduced in whole 

or in part provided that the source 

‘Philips Research Password’ is 

mentioned in full; photographs and 

illustrations for this purpose are 

available via the above-mentioned 

website. The editor would appreciate a 

complimentary copy. 

As Bob Dylan so famously sang “For the times, they are a-changin’”, 

and that was 42 years ago. There has been no let up since. 

Change is continuous and it is now taking place at an even 

faster pace than we could have ever imagined. Change, and making 

choices has become an integral part of our everyday lives, 

all the time, everywhere. 

“ Change, and making choices has become 

an integral part of our everyday lives, all 

the time, everywhere. ” 

For example, the increasing number of coexisting, competing and 

evolving standards in mobile communications can sometimes make 

life more complex rather than easier – which choice should you 

make? New approaches in an apparently mature area such as radio 

communications lead the way towards greater simplicity: with 

software-defi ned radio technologies, using a combination of 

software and controllable hardware to cover multiple standards, 

we are still fi nding new ways of making mobile communication 

easier to use. 

At home, consumers currently often face a number of choices 

when attempting to organize their collection of digital content 

– photos, songs, videos - and accessing an ever-expanding number 

of digital media channels. Innovative home media centers seem to 

Continuous 

change is a 

way of living 

be the answer for now, but even with these, a growing number of 

standards will make it diffi cult to keep fi nding the right, simple 

solutions in the future. Industry collaboration is a viable way 

forward to migrate existing product offerings into harmonized, 

universal solutions. 

On January 5th, 2006, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 

we showed a prototype of ‘Entertaible’, a new vision on electronic 

gaming. It is a tabletop gaming platform that marries traditional 

multi-player board and computer games in a uniquely simple and 

intuitive way, allowing players to engage in a new class of more 

sociable electronic games. This is true change and innovation - to 

take two ‘older’ concepts, and combine them into something 

completely new that may alter your perception of a table forever. 

In December last year, the joint PSP (Penn-State Philips) 

transistor model was chosen by the CMC (Compact Model 

Council) as the industry-wide standard for future nanometer chip 

design. This again shows that continuously thinking and acting 

beyond our own boundaries and choosing best-in-class partners in 

a spirit of Open Innovation really moves us forward. 

Rick Harwig, 

CEO Philips Research 

2 Philips Research Password 26 l February 2006 Philips Research Password 26 3 

l February 2006

Double-layer LCD technology 

brings clarity to radiology images 

Scientists at Philips Research have developed an 

advanced double-layer LCD technology that 

drastically enhances the clarity and detail visible in 

radiology images. This technology offers patients 

the prospect of earlier, faster and more reliable 

diagnosis, improved treatment and a better 

prognosis. The benefi ts are expected to be 

particularly signifi cant in the diagnosis of diseases 

such as cancer (particularly breast cancer) 

and arteriosclerosis. 

Based on two LCD screens sandwiched together 

with intermediate polarizers and an enhanced 

backlighting system, Philips high-contrast dual-layer 

More information: www.research.philips.com/newscenter/archive/2005/051129-lcd.html 

LCD technology dramatically increases the 

displayable grey-scale range, and allows almost 

100% blocking of the backlight to achieve a much 

better black level. Coupled with the high-intensity 

backlighting already fi tted to FIMI Philips 

medical-grade LCD displays, the result is a 

high-brightness, high-contrast display that maintains 

a high contrast ratio even when viewed at 

a very wide viewing angle. Philips Research’s 

demonstrator for the technology is a 

1.3-megapixel (1280 x 1024) 18.1-inch DICOM 

compatible grey-scale display with 750-cd/m2 peak 

brightness, 0.005-cd/m2 black level and a contrast 

ratio in excess of 100,000:1. 

New techniques for faster 

molecular-imaging applications 

Philips is currently developing fast quantitative 

Magnetic Resonance (MR) acquisition and 

data-analysis techniques for molecular-imaging 

applications. Evaluation of the new techniques in 

collaboration with luminary clinical sites, such as 

the University Hospital Münster, Germany, the 

National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, 

More information: www.research.philips.com/newscenter/archive/2005/051129-mri.html 

What’s new What’s new 

USA, and the Washington University in St. Louis, 

USA, has shown that quantitative MRI is indeed a 

powerful tool for the early assessment of diseases 

and for monitoring the effects of therapy in 

follow-up studies. Moreover, by non-invasive 

measurements of drug effects, quantitative MRI can 

speed up the development and approval of drugs. 

Examination of an X-ray image on a 

high-brightness, high-contrast LCD prototype 

Quantitative measurement of contrast agent 

concentration in Magnetic Resonance Imaging 

(MRI) 

Heart modeling system speeds up 

cardiac care 

New powerful image analysis and modeling 

software from Philips Research to reveal detailed 

heart function will save cardiologists a great deal 

of time and effort in extracting the information 

they need for the accurate diagnosis of heart 

disorders. As a result, patients will benefi t from 

faster and more reliable test results, more effective 

and personalized therapies and speedier recovery. 

Using advanced image analysis techniques 

combined with detailed clinical knowledge about 

the structure and function of the human heart, 

scientists at Philips Research have developed an 

innovative cardiac modeling system that extracts 

a large number of morphological and physiological 

measurements from multi-slice CT (computed 

tomography) images. In more than 90% of the 

cases it does so entirely automatically, saving 

cardiologists a great deal of costly time and effort. 

Although Philips has used cardiac CT as an initial 

application and proof of concept, Philips believes 

that this new modeling technology will be 

applicable in other areas of radiology and other 

imaging modalities as well. 

More information: www.research.philips.com/newscenter/archive/2005/051129-heartmod.html 

Philips introduces new Blu-ray Disc 

products and media at CES 2006 

On January 4th , 2006, Philips Electronics 

announced the introduction of a Blu-ray Disc 

consumer electronic player (BDP 9000), an all-inone 

PC Writer (TripleWriter) and new Blu-ray 

media (BD-R and B-RE, single-layer 25 GB and 

dual-layer BD-R and BD-RE 50 GB) at the 2006 

Consumer Electronics Show (CES). 

Both the BDP9000 consumer player and the 

TripleWriter (SPD7000) will be available in the 

second half of 2006. 

More information: www.ces.philips.com/downloads/Blu-ray_Release.doc 

Philips’ new Blu-ray solutions offer consumers the 

ultimate storage platform for high-defi nition (HD) 

entertainment and digital archiving, providing consumers 

the ability to store massive amounts of content 

on a single disc. Additionally, Blu-ray Disc is the 

next-generation platform for HD playback of video 

content and is supported by more than 160 of the 

world’s largest gaming manufacturers, movie studios, 

consumer electronics and PC manufacturers. 

Philips researchers working with Philips’ new 

cardiac modeling software that automatically 

matches its heart model to the patient’s 

multi-slice CT scan, and then creates a highly 

detailed patient-specifi c 3D model from 

which a wide range of morphological and 

physiological measurements can be extracted. 


l February 2006

An open heart to 

the digital home 

Not a week seems to go by without yet another ‘media center’ product being launched that claims 

to be qualifi ed to become the ‘center of our digital lives’. Media centers represent the convergence 

of PCs and consumer electronics (CE) products such as DVDs, set-top boxes and MP3 players into a 

single ‘digital hub’. However, there is a cloud on the horizon. While the leading current generation of 

products, such as the Philips Showline Media Center (MCP9350i), is exciting and offers universal com- 

patibility, keeping them that way is going to be an enormous challenge – even for the largest 

companies. Therefore, Philips proposes an ‘Open Media Center’ platform based on a shared 

development (and thus distributed cost) open middleware model. A universal model that would 

ultimately allow participating companies to gradually migrate – yet still fully differentiate – 

their existing standalone products through proprietary, plug-in applications. 

By Andrew Woolls-King and Steven Keeping 

Illustrations/photography: Philips, Storm Scott 

Main article media centers 

Right now, the personal computing (PC) and consumer electronics (CE) worlds are engaged 

in an epic race that promises to transform electronic home entertainment for hundreds of 

millions of consumers. The potential prize for the winner is to sell the products that deliver 

all manner of digital content to the home for the next several decades. But it could be a prize 

beyond the reach of any single company. 

The phrase ‘media center’ essentially refers to a centralized, on-line digital hub – compatible 

with any number of portable data and media storage devices – feeding content to a user 

interface front-end. This content – such as video and audio – is transported through the home 

via a high-speed, hard-wired (e.g. Ethernet) or wireless network. While the concept might 

sound attractive, transforming it into a compelling product for everyone from grandparents to 

teenagers is a daunting challenge. 

Simplicity and convenience are critical. If the success of the original Philips Compact Disc and 

today’s digital MP3 players and music libraries have taught us one thing: users love products 

that give them simple, convenient and customizable access to their content via a delivering 

mechanism that, frankly, just makes sense. Equally critical is the ability to handle any existing 

or future content streams and formats. The current list includes high-defi nition TV, Internet, 

Main article media centers 

digital (including Internet) radio, MP3 music, audio and podcast downloads, pictures, home 

videos and games. 

Notable product examples to date include the Philips MCP9350 iMedia Center introduced at 

IFA 2005. This delivers TV, Internet, music, video, photos and more to any room in the home. 

In another example of innovative product development, Philips has released a wireless music 

center, dubbed the WACS700, which enables consumers to store their entire CD collection on 

a 40-GB hard disk and listen to it in any room via wireless streaming. Yes – it’s only for music 

at present, but it represents a very realistic vision of the media center concept in action. 

“ The harsh market reality is that in the world of 

the 21 st century digital consumer, the content is king.” 

Eric Kaashoek, Philips Comsumer Electronics 

While both these products lead the way when it comes to contemporary media center 

functionality – including the use of advanced, easy-to-use interfaces – nobody is claiming they 

are yet genuinely universal solutions. But a comprehensive solution that is compatible with 

absolutely anything the end user could throw at it, is what tomorrow’s consumer will both 

demand and expect of their media centers. 

Philips Research, Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Semiconductors are rising to the 

challenge by developing the roadmap for next-generation media centers. Exactly what these 

second or possibly even third-generation devices will be like is still to be decided. What’s 

certain is that the hardware, middleware and software will need to handle a proliferation of 

digital media and deliver it to the consumer, quickly, conveniently and to the highest quality. 

Frank van Tuijl (Philips Research) showing a prototype 

of an Open Media Center. 


l February 2006

WACS700 music center 

Main article media centers Main article media centers 

“The harsh market reality is that in the world of the 21st century digital consumer, the content 

is king,” says Erik Kaashoek, responsible at Philips Consumer Electronics (CE) for 

migrating Philips Research projects into viable commercial products for CE. “Therefore any 

future consumer media center product – if it is to enjoy universal success – needs to put the 

needs of the consumer and their desire to intuitively access and organize this digital content 

fi rst, and allow the implementation to follow second. Mass-market consumers simply 

won’t buy into tomorrow’s media centers if they don’t continue to make their lives 

dramatically easier and can accommodate every form of digital media and content 

without introducing complexity.” 

Together we can achieve more 

“The problem is that the engineering and fi nancial resources required to sustain media center 

innovation at its current rate is growing exponentially,” notes Frank van Tuijl, R&D project 

leader for media centers with Philips Research. 

In fact, it is a massive challenge, even for companies the size of Philips, and not without a 

huge element of risk. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. By working together, CE companies 

could distribute the technological development and fi nancial burden and achieve far more 

for the consumer. 

“Recent evolutions of many traditional PC and consumer electronics products are beginning 

to encroach on each other’s territories,” illustrates van Tuijl. “Both the games console and PC 

products offer video and music playback, and hard drive set-top boxes provide secure on-line 

MCP9350i media center 

shopping, pay-per-view video and TV programming. And there are even hard drive-based 

audiovisual products that include PC operating systems with digital hub-like multi-room 

interface capabilities.” 

“However, all these products have evolved along separate paths to deliver certain specifi c 

functionality supremely well, and have then been adapted – almost as an afterthought,” explains 

van Tuijl. “This inevitably compromises the product for attempting to do more than was 

originally intended by conventional re-use or re-cycling of established software and standards.” 

“That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with software re-cycling and sharing – it’s 

commercially vital and actually what the Open Media Center aims to conserve and promote. 

But it’s at the multiple – rather than single – PC/CE vendor scale that we’ll see the whole 

market migrating in a new direction and developing new software better suited to the universal 

media center ideal.” 

Indeed, that the current products have successfully evolved from previous products is 

testament to the pragmatism and design skill of the PC and CE manufacturers. But it also 

suggests that no one is willing to risk developing a bespoke universal media center solution 

alone – it’s just too expensive. 

“It would demand tens to hundreds of millions of Euros in R&D investment – particularly on 

the software side,” says van Tuijl. “And individual companies would have to master unfamiliar 

technology if they hoped to create a media center that was truly all things to all users. 

Even a company the size of Philips cannot be an expert in all the required disciplines.” 

Towards an Open Media Center approach 

Frank van Tuijl’s research team has already spent several years of exhaustive investigation 

within Philips Research into media centers. “We realize we will fi nd it very challenging to 

develop universal next-generation media centers on our own,” van Tuijl says. “Yet media 

centers are an enormous part of the future of consumer electronics that simply cannot be 

ignored. Industry collaboration is the only viable way forward to migrate existing product 

offerings into a harmonized, universal solution.” 

This is how the Philips ‘Open Media Center’ idea was born. “It’s a concept centered around a 

strategic, industry-wide collaboration involving an open source type of approach that we want 

to openly propose to the world’s consumer electronics companies,” explains Erik Kaashoek. 

“It’s a completely new paradigm. One built from the ground up to meet the needs of the end 

application and that – who knows – could one day be extended to encompass a thriving open 

source community as well?” 

But it’s early days yet for the Open Media Center. “It’s a vision with no predetermined 

architecture or technology road maps,” says Kaashoek, “but a vision that we believe is of 

paramount importance to the CE sector. It will encourage the strategic migration of the best 

features of each area of the industry into a new common, unifi ed framework for the future.” 

The operating system for an Open Media Center (OMC) product would also likely be based on 

a non-proprietary OS such as Linux, with the joint development middleware in the center, and 

major proprietary application plug-ins on top that could possibly be extended to include opensource 

products as well (perhaps like shareware and freeware software in the PC world sits 

The ‘mythical’ 

set-top box 

At the recent Consumer Electronics 

Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Philips 

demonstrated a tablet TV front-end 

wirelessly streaming SDTV 

(Standard-Defi nition TV) digital video 

from a so-called ‘MythTV‘ hub using the 

latest state-of-the-art, low-power Philips 

Semiconductor technology. A second TV 

front-end has also been developed that 

receives HDTV (High-Defi nition TV) 

streams from the same hub over 

Ethernet and displays them on a HDTV. 

Nexperia is the Philips brand for a unique 

group of products that streamline 

development of next-generation, 

connected multimedia appliances. 

MythTV is a General Public License 

(GPL) based, but proprietary ’plug-in‘ 

software product that allows developers 

to create an experimental ’home media 

convergence box‘ using open-source 

software and operating systems. 

“MythTV’s capabilities include pause, 

fast-forward and rewind of live TV; 

installation of multiple video capture 

cards to record more than one program 

at a time to different hard disks, and 

support of multiple front-end clients 

each with a common view of all 

available programs,” explains Eric 

Persoon of Philips Advanced 

Semiconductors Laboratories. “The 

software also includes other useful 

functionality such as a picture-viewing 

application, a DVD viewer and a music 

playing application that supports MP3.” 

The CES application was based on the 

Nexperia STB810 semiconductor system 

solution. This combines the Philips 

PNX8550 home entertainment engine, a 

Linux operating system and all required 

AV codecs. The result is a unit that 

can provide video telephony, time-shift 

recording, DVD playback, personal video 

recording, network connectivity and 

Voice-over-IP. 


l February 2006

OMC reference 

architecture 

Application 

Plugin 

Application 

Plugin 

OMC framework 

OMC Middleware API 

Communication 

... 

Database 

Media player 

Graphics 

Application 

Plugin 

AV API + OS API 

AV Streaming Linux OS 

Audio 

Figure 1 

Overlay 

Video 

Storage 

Network 

CPU 

OMC Application Plug-ins 

OMC framework 

Required Support Libraries 

AV Streaming Platform 

Basic OS Functionality 

Open source and proprietary software in harmony 

An example of where Philips has incorporated its proprietary software 

alongside open-source middleware (in this case Linux) is its Active Block 

I/O Scheduling System (ABISS). This technology – which essentially enables 

real-time hard disk access at low power for reliable data intensive streaming 

(e.g. high-density video) – will be critical to ensure a media center can provide 

seamless broadcast capabilities. Particularly when asked to 

multi-task due to access requests made by other applications and users 

during operation. 

The ABISS system architecture is shown in fi gure 2. A set of modifi cations 

to the Linux kernel provides the basic ABISS framework. The scheduler itself 

can be implemented as a Loadable Kernel Module, which interfaces with the 

framework using the standard Linux module interface. Philips wanted to 

allow any application to use the ABISS functionality and allow third parties 

to provide proprietary schedulers with the ABISS framework, while protecting 

the IPR in its own scheduler. 

Main article media centers Main article media centers 

alongside major applications from established vendors), as illustrated in fi gure 1 on the left. 

Philips already has a number of proof-of-concept applications where proprietary solutions run 

on open-source software such as Linux in a commercially protected product. Examples are the 

Linux OS-based Nexperia STB810 system solution (see box ‘The ‘mythical set-top box’) and 

the ABISS system architecture (see box ‘Open source and proprietary software in harmony’. 

Both products adapt low-cost, open-source Linux software from the PC world to fi t the needs 

of the CE space without sacrifi cing intellectual-property right (IPR) protection. Such an ‘open 

source’ and CE alignment could prove invaluable to the development of a true media center, 

whether a Linux or proprietary OS was used. 

The global aim would be to produce a single, modular, standard platform that really does offer 

the best of all worlds (which will be crucial to consumer acceptance). This would be able to 

support each individual company’s proprietary solutions as almost ‘plug-in’ type products that 

will have gradually migrated over time from their standalone contemporary cousins. 

For its part, Philips has already developed some illustrative plug-in software applications 

designed to customize the output of a media center (whether existing or in the future) to suit 

an individual’s precise needs. (See box “Your personal Clint Eastwood Channel”.) 

Protecting IPR 

Despite the optimism, turning the Open Media Center vision into a reality in the fi ercely 

competitive world of consumer electronics won’t be easy or risk-free. There will be enormous 

competitive constraints; chief among which is how CE fi rms will protect their intellectualproperty 

rights (IPR) within such a vast and far-reaching, essentially software-based program. 

“One way an Open Media Center could approach this is by breaking down the application into 

a common middleware platform upon which customized and IPR protected proprietary plug-in 

applications can be supported,” explains Arnoud Engelfriet, a patent attorney and IPR specialist 

within Philips Intellectual Property and Standards (IP&S). 

Application Library Daemon 

Linux 

kernel ABISS 

Scheduler 

Policy 1 

Policy 2 

Figure 2 

“What format the common middleware – i.e. joint development software stack – would take, 

would have to be carefully considered. That said, the joint development model would in my 

opinion be entirely capable of supporting a robust IPR protection mechanism for the plug-ins,” 

Engelfriet adds. “The challenge would be ensuring that this IPR plug-in mechanism maintained 

a properly secure distance between the open and proprietary components, but did not inhibit 

their ability to freely communicate with the middleware during operation.” 

“ Industry collaboration is the only viable way forward to migrate 

existing product offerings into a harmonized, universal solution. ” 

Frank van Tuijl, Philips Research, 

Chasing the big prize 

In the longer term, Philips believes the Open Media Center vision is a viable way for the CE 

market to meet market expectations for what next-generation, universal media center 

solutions could and should be. While it does not intend to aggressively thrust the concept on 

the world’s major CE vendors, it does intend to begin tentative discussions and to highlight why 

it would be the best solution for CE. 

“According to our research, 80 percent of the profi ts from a next-generation open media 

center product would come from the plug-ins,” says van Tuijl. “This means companies could 

concentrate their product differentiation efforts there, while minimizing commercial risk on the 

middleware by collaborating. There would be absolutely no competitive advantage for any fi rm 

to develop the middleware on its own.” 

“This means the Open Media Center concept is about as perfect a win-win for CE companies 

and consumers as can be expected in the real world,” summarizes Kaashoek. “It will create the 

kind of competition that will drive the on-going development of continually improving and new 

innovative applications, but at the same time give consumers enormous choice and value. This 

means the CE fi rms get access to what could be the largest consumer electronics market the 

world has ever seen, at a migratory pace that is technically achievable and commercially low 

risk, and in a way that will give consumers ever widening access to products that exactly meet 

their needs at a price level they can afford. That is what the Philips Open Media Center vision 

is all about.” 

Frank van Tuijl l Philips Research l frank.van.tuijl@philips.com 

Extra info www.research.philips.com/password l media centers l open invention network 

Your personal ‘Clint 

Eastwood’ channel 

Imagine how compelling it would be 

for Clint Eastwood fans if their media 

center could scan the channels for 

Clint’s fi lms and collate them into a 

special ‘Clint Eastwood Channel’. 

With the Philips Flexchannels plug-in 

– designed to run on an open, Linux 

OS-based media center – they could do 

just that. Flexchannels is a way to create 

personalized TV channels. 

The system records the TV content that 

matches the profi le of the user-defi ned 

channel (e.g. “fi lms starring or directed 

by Clint Eastwood”), creates a sequence 

for replay, and deletes content when it 

has been viewed. It is also possible to 

supplement the recorded material with 

on-demand content. 

Other illustrative plug-ins for the Open 

Media Center include ‘Distributed 

Collaborative Recommender’ and 

‘Movie-in-a-Minute’. The Recommender 

gathers personal TV program ratings 

from users around the world using a 

technique called ‘collaborative fi ltering’ 

and suggests personalized 

recommendations from users with 

similar viewing profi les. Movie-in-a- 

Minute is an automatically generated 

short preview of a recording. It helps 

the user to select a program by showing 

sample video fragments in a quick and 

entertaining way. 


l February 2006

Some of the latest silicon chips already 

contain around 250 million interconnected 

transistors and next-generation chips are set 

to exceed the billion transistor mark. With 

a distinct possibility of the entire chip being 

rendered inoperative by a design fl aw that 

leaves a single transistor operating outside 

the required performance limits, the need 

for simulation models that accurately predict 

transistor and circuit performance 

is imperative. 

In practice, it is not possible for the circuit 

simulators used by chip designers to use the 

highly detailed ‘fi nite-element analysis’ 

simulation models used by transistor 

designers. The computing power required 

to extend the detailed simulation of a single 

transistor to the collective performance of 

millions of interconnected transistors is 

simply beyond that of affordable 

EDA (Electronic Design Automation) workstations. 

Practical circuit simulators therefore 

require ‘compact’ transistor models 

that nevertheless refl ect all the essential 

elements of transistor behavior that affect 

circuit performance. 

Another perspective Another perspective 

Joining forces to create 

better transistor models 

One of the most important rules of modern engineering is that you don’t construct 

anything until you are confi dent it is going to work. The tremendous cost 

associated with silicon chip design and fabrication, and the impact on profi tability 

of not getting chip designs right fi rst time, makes this rule especially relevant to the 

semiconductor industry. 

By Peter Harold 

Photography: Philips, Pennsylvania State University 

Such compact models are not new. They 

have been accurately predicting the performance 

of digital CMOS (Complementary 

Metal Oxide Semiconductor) chips for 

many years. 

However, the latest CMOS chips typically 

contain more than digital circuitry. They 

increasingly include analog and RF (Radio 

Frequency) circuits as well as digital logic. 

While existing models adequately describe 

the ‘on’, ‘off’ and ‘switching’ characteristics of 

the CMOS transistors used in digital chips, 

they fail to accurately describe the linear 

(neither on nor off) operation required 

in analog and RF circuits. A new compact 

model that addresses both the switching and 

linear performance of CMOS transistors is 

therefore needed. In order to ensure 

compatibility of this new model with as wide 

a range of EDA tools as possible, it is also 

important for it to be adopted as a standard 

within the EDA industry. 

The task of selecting this standard falls to 

the Compact Model Council (CMC) – a 

group of leading semiconductor companies 

and EDA vendors that came together in 

Philips Research 

Gert-Jan Smit Dick Klaassen 

Andries Scholten Ronald van Langevelde 

The PSP team from the Device Modelling group of 

Reinout Woltjer at Philips Research. 

The implementation in circuit simulators was done 

by Marjan Driessen and co-workers from Electronic 

Design & Test, while Maarten Vertregt from the 

Mixed-signal Circuits and Systems group played a 

critical role in the connection with the circuit 

design community. 

Pennsylvania State 

University 

Gennady Gildenblat 

Hailing Wang 

Weimin Wu 

Xin Li 

The PSP team at Penn State. Contribution of Ten.-Lon 

Chen (SP model) is gratefully acknowledged. The 

compact modeling research program at Penn State 

was initiated and defi ned with active participation of 

Peter Bendix of Xpedion Design Systems and Colin 

McAndrew of Freescale Semiconductor. 

1996 with the specifi c objective of 

promoting the standardization of compact 

model formulations. The CMC selects suitable 

models by a process of peer review 

and member ballot. 

“In each case, we work with the developer 

of the model and a range of industrial 

users to provide feedback to the developer 

regarding areas where the model needs 

to be enhanced,” says Joe Watts, Chairman 

of the CMC and senior engineer in the 

CMOS Modeling and Characterization 

Group at IBM (Vermont, USA). 

From seven compact transistor models 

put forward, the CMC last year choose 

four for fi nal consideration as the next 

industry standard. Of these, the models 

put forward by Philips Research and The 

Pennsylvania State University (Pennsylvania, 

USA) where suffi ciently similar that 

both companies quickly realized that a 

combination of the best features of each 

model would create a winning 

combination. Out of that realization was 

born a cooperation between Pennsylvania 

State University and Philips that resulted 

in the PSP (Penn-State Philips) compact 

model, which in December last year was 

chosen by CMC ballot as the 

preferred compact model for all future 

CMOS chip design. 

“When comparing predicted device data 

from the PSP model with measured data 

from real 0.13-mm and 90-nm CMOS 

transistors, it was clear that the PSP model 

did the best overall job across the entire 

spectrum of CMOS applications,” says Joe 

Watts. “In particular, it was superior at 

predicting 2nd and 3rd order derivatives of 

the transistor current that are 

important in the RF circuits increasingly 

being integrated into CMOS system- 

on-chip solutions in order to provide 

consumer products with wireless 

connectivity.” 

“The selection of the PSP model as the 

new standard compact device model is a 

clear step forward for the semiconductor 

industry,” says Paul Packan, Compact Device 

Modeling Manager at Intel Corporation. 

“Innovative solutions from 

Pennsylvania State University and Philips, 

as well as Philips’ willingness to share their 

work, knowledge and industrial experience 

were instrumental in delivering it.” 

For Dr. Gennady Gildenblat, Professor of 

Electrical Engineering at The 

Pennsylvania State University, deciding to 

pool his group’s expertise with that of the 

team at Philips Research was not a diffi cult 

choice. 

“Despite approaches from other 

research groups, it was clear to me from 

the beginning that the Philips team had all 

the advantages, not only in terms of the 

quality of their model but also in terms of 

their experience with RF circuits and their 

willingness to share information,” he says. 

The resultant collaboration was an informal 

one, with many progress meetings 

simply taking place in hotel lobbies during 

technical conferences and most exchange 

of information being done via e-mail. 

“One of the best things about the 

collaboration was that solutions were 

based purely on technical arguments, 

without any politics getting in the way,” 

says Gennady Gildenblat, “which meant 

we were all able to remain clearly focused. 

As a result, we met every deadline we set 

ourselves.” 

It was not only Philips and The 

Pennsylvania State University that 

contributed to the PSP model. The CMC 

provided valuable input on industry 

requirements and future directions, and 

continues to do so. 

“ Innovative solutions from Pennsylvania State University 

and Philips, as well as Philips’ willingness to share 

their work, knowledge and industrial experience were 

instrumental in delivering the PSP model.” 

Paul Packan, Intel Corporation 

“The PSP compact model may have been 

selected as the future industry standard, 

but there is still work for Philips and 

Pennsylvania State University to do on it,” 

says CMC Chairman Joe Watts. 

“During the evaluation phase, several 

CMC members identifi ed improvements 

that could still be made, and we all need 

to work together to incorporate and test 

those improvements. If the cooperation 

continues to go as well as it has in the 

past, I think we stand a good chance of 

getting the fi nal standard approved by the 

middle of 2006, which means that 

future CMOS chip designers can look 

forward to a very high proportion of 

right-fi rst-time designs.” 

Extra info www.research.philips.com/password l 

PSP compact model l IC design 


l February 2006

Technology 

news 

For more information 

www.research.philips.com/password 

Pocket MM receives ‘Jean 

Pierre Noblanc award for 

excellence 2005’ 

On November 21st , 2005, the European 

project ‘Pocket Multimedia’ received the 

‘Jeanne Pierre Noblanc Award for 

Excellence 2005’ in Barcelona (Spain). This 

project, which was led by STMicroelectronics, 

ran from 2001 to 2004 with the 

aim of creating a common development 

environment for low-power, highly 

portable multimedia applications. The 

award commission recognized the highly 

innovative level, the good 

cooperation and the high business 

potential of this project, which was part 

of MEDEA+, the pan-European Program 

for advanced cooperative Research and 

Development in Microelectronics. Philips 

and Silicon Hive, a Philips’ Technology 

Incubator, made valuable contributions 

in cooperation with the other partners, 

ARMINES-CMM, Cambridge Display 

Technologies and Thomson. 

Technology news Technology news 

Partnership MiPlaza 

and Innos 

On November 24th , 2005, Innos, the UK’s 

leading research and development 

company for innovations in nanoscale 

technology, announced that it had signed 

a partnership agreement with Philips. This 

provides Innos engineers with access to 

the world-class Philips Microsystems Plaza 

(MiPlaza) R&D clean room facilities and 

services, located at the High Tech Campus 

Eindhoven, the Netherlands. A fi re at the 

University of Southampton (Sunday, 

October 30th , 2005) had affected 

Innos’ ability to complete processing and 

production. Procedures were immediately 

started up to ensure that business 

continues as usual. Innos engineers were 

given direct and full access to the 

equipment and facilities housed within the 

2650-m2 clean room of MiPlaza. A fi rst 

batch has already been processed 

Philips Research contributes to ‘DVB-H opportunities 

in China’ seminar 

Philips Research made signifi cant 

contributions to the seminar ‘DVB-H 

opportunities in China’ that was held 

in Beijing (China) on December 8th 2005 as a round up of the PHENIX 

Initiative, which ran during 2005. 

PHENIX is a commercial, 

industrial and R&D cooperation 

launched by a consortium of Chinese Jefferey Zhang (right) and Natasha Kravtsova at the DVB - H 

seminar in Beijing 

and European partners, led by France 

Telecom. It received the support of the EU-China Working Group on Digital Olympics, of 

the MOST (Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology), the BOCOG (Beijing 

Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad), and was co-fi nanced by 

the IST FP6 program of the European Union. 

Philips Research (Europe and East Asia) participated in this project, which aimed at 

studying the commercial potential in China for mobile interactive services, analyzing the 

DVB-H positioning in China, and developing innovative concepts in the area of mobile 

services, particularly targeting the upcoming Olympic Games, which will be held in 

Beijing in 2008. 

At the seminar, Jefferey Zhang and Natasha Kravtsova and the project team from 

Philips Research showed advanced user scenarios for applications on DVB-H enabled 

mobile phones during the Olympics. 

Rick Harwig appointed 

as new Chief 

Technology Offi cer 

On December 15th 2005, Philips announced 

that, as planned, Ad Huijser will retire from 

Philips’ Board of Management, effective April 

1st 2006. Mr. Huijser combined his 

membership of the board with the role of 

Chief Technology Offi cer. 

“Ad Huijser has made a signifi cant contribution 

to Philips during his 35-year career with 

the company - in particular overseeing the 

company’s research activities that form the 

cornerstone of the advanced technologies we 

bring to market. We’ll miss his contribution 

on the board, and wish him all the best for his 

retirement,” Mr. Kleisterlee added. 

In his role of Chief Technology Offi cer, Mr. 

Huijser will be succeeded by Rick Harwig, 

currently CEO of Philips Research. The 

appointment will take effect as of 

April 1st 2006. In his new capacity, Mr. Harwig 

will also be a member of the Group 

Management Committee. 

Best Paper Award for Fons 

Bruls and Calina Ciuhu 

At the 2006 International Conference on 

Consumer Electronics (ICCE), held on 

January 9-11 in Las Vegas (USA), 

Fons Bruls and Calina Ciuhu, both from 

Philips Research, received the 2005 Best 

Paper Award for their paper ‘Bridging the 

interlace and progressive controversy 

using a progressive enhancement stream on 

top of the interlace stream and a new 

de-interlace algorithm’. 

Fons Bruls Calina Ciuhu 

iCat showing its expressive face 

IEEE Certifi cate 

of Appreciation 

During the IEEE 802.11 November 2005 

meeting, Amjad Soomro of Philips 

Research North America, Briarcliff Manor 

(USA) was awarded a Certifi cate of 

Appreciation by the IEEE Standards 

Association for outstanding contributions 

to IEEE 802.11e. This is an amendment to 

enhance the legacy IEEE 802.11 standard, 

also known as Wi-Fi, and is considered 

of critical importance for delay-sensitive 

applications. Amjad Soomro made major 

technical contributions to the IEEE 802.11e 

standard with regard to a protocol related 

to scheduling and power saving, and he had 

a leading role in the approval process. 

Amjad Soomro with the IEEE Certifi cate of Appreciation 

iCat ‘Coolest Invention 

of 2005’ 

In November 2005, Time magazine selected 

iCat as one of the ‘Coolest Inventions of 

2005’. iCat, which was created by Philips 

Research as an experimentation platform 

for human-robot interaction research, is the 

world’s fi rst available plug-and-play desktop 

user-interface robot with mechanically 

rendered facial expressions. It uses 

multi-modal interaction including speech, 

vision, touch and emotional feedback through 

animated motion, light and sound. According 

to Time Magazine: “The notion of robot as 

home companion is nothing new, but iCat 

adds a human dimension to the job: an 

expressive face. Tell her to go away, and iCat 

will look sad. Praise her, and she will beam.” 

iCat has been made available by Philips 

Research Eindhoven, the Netherlands, to 

stimulate research topics such as social 

robotics, human-robot collaboration, jointattention, 

gaming, and ambient intelligence. 


l February 2006

Feature technology Feature technology 


Measuring the electrical performance of RF (radio-frequency) ICs. 

Five or more years ago, a mobile phone let you telephone or send an SMS over the 

local transmission standard. Today many mobile phones have tri-band GSM and UMTS 

for telephony and data, Bluetooth for connecting to headsets and other devices, 

wireless LAN (WLAN) for voice-over-IP, FM radios, television and global positioning 

systems (GPS). More coexisting and competing standards arrive all the time. 

By David Hegarty 

Illustrations/photography Philips, Storm Scott, Michel Klop 

In the next fi ve to ten years the number of consumer radio standards (for cellular 

communications, inter-device connectivity, and broadcasting and positioning 

systems) will be overwhelming. Mobile phones, TV set-top boxes and car radios will 

have to deal with combinations of 30 or more standards, sometimes with multiple, 

simultaneous radio ‘pipes’ (as when hands-free telephoning, while navigating). The 

nightmare of devising, developing and delivering inexpensive, conveniently sized 

equipment (including on mobile devices with a long battery life) is further 

complicated by having to support the evolution of these standards. 

Software-defi ned radio (SDR) tackles these problems using software and 

controllable hardware to cover multiple standards. The most immediate application 

is in cellular telephones. But low costs and high performance should make SDR 

attractive for many types of equipment. 

Software-defi ned radio offers advantages for users, 

service providers and manufacturers in dealing with 

the plethora of transmission standards. 

Adaptable hardware 

An SDR receiver has the same building blocks as a conventional radio. However, 

instead of dedicated circuitry for each radio-frequency (RF) band, SDR handles 

different bands using the same hardware. This affects the design of the whole radio, 

starting with the antenna. 

Normally, antennas are designed to perform effi ciently over a narrow range of frequencies. 

However, to work over multiple frequency bands, SDR antennas must be 

tunable. If handsets need to support more than one radio link simultaneously – for 

example, using a Bluetooth headset for a telephone call – there needs to be more 

than one antenna. The unavoidable interaction means the multiple tunable antennas 

and their circuitry need to be designed as a fl exible unit to support the pipes likely 

to be used in parallel. The RF transceiver, which recovers the voice or data from 

the RF carrier signal or encodes it onto the RF carrier, must also be able to provide 

the necessary performance (for example, sensitivity and linearity) for different 

frequencies and different wireless standards. Despite the name ‘software-defi ned 

radio’, connecting a purely digital transceiver to an antenna is still many years away. 

Analog-to-digital (AD) converters for RF signals are still too expensive and power 

hungry. The solution is to make a reconfi gurable transceiver under software 

control. The RF circuitry can then be altered to support different standards. 

The antenna issue 

An antenna works by resonating at 

radio frequencies. If a signal is present 

close to the resonant frequency, 

the antenna picks it up. The following 

signal processing fi ne-tunes the 

antenna’s selectivity, for example, to 

focus on the relevant frequency in the 

80 MHz band around 2.4 GHz used by 

a Bluetooth connection. 

A current smart phone may have 

antennas for GPS, Bluetooth and 

tri-band GSM. These are designed to 

match the form factor of the phone and 

to meet the specifi cations for 

connection to the RF circuitry. 

However, antennas are infl uenced by 

their electromagnetic environment. 

Placing antennas close together so that 

their interactions do not degrade 

performance is a big design problem. 

As radio functions are added, adding 

more antennas becomes unfeasible – 

particularly if the device is to remain 

a convenient size. 


l February 2006

Powerful processing 

Until affordable, low-power AD and DA (digital-to-analog) converters are fast 

enough, the part of the radio implemented purely in software is confi ned to the 

processing of the baseband signal – the voice or data. This includes modulating 

and demodulating, encoding and decoding according to the transfer protocol 

– roles that are hard-wired in application-specifi c integrated circuits (ASICs) today. 

Because software algorithms can adapt to different standards, such a ‘software 

modem’ makes effi cient reuse of the hardware platform. 

The heart of the software modem is the embedded vector processor (EVP). 

In the late 1990s, Philips researchers started looking at what a software modem 

needed to achieve. This resulted in the fi rst communications vector processor 

(CVP), which was key in developing the hardware and software architectures that 

led to the more powerful EVP. Unlike traditional processors that manipulate one 

number at a time, the EVP operates on multiple vectors of 16 numbers each in 

parallel. This lets it manipulate vast quantities of data quickly. 

To prove and fi ne-tune the concept, Philips Research is currently concentrating on 

UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) telephony, WLAN (Wireless 

Local-Area Network), DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting), and the TD-SCDMA (Time 

Division – Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) data standards. This 

selection covers the major challenges for designing SDR, and over the next year 

or two should help fi nalize the software and hardware architectures. Then an 

application programming interface (API) should make it possible for software 

Antenna 

system 

RF signal 

processing 

Analog/ 

digital 

conversion 

Receiving 

Transmitting 

Baseband 

Signal 

Processing 

Feature technology Feature technology 

Generic radio architecture Software-defined radio (SDR) architecture 

Protocol 

Media 

Access 

Control 

Radio 1 

Radio 2 

Radio N 

A new medium for 

radio-frequency (RF) 

design 

CMOS (complementary metal-oxide 

semiconductor) technology makes 

it easy to integrate RF and digital 

circuits on a single chip 

(and reap the advantages of the rapid 

developments in coming CMOS 

generations). However, implementing 

RF on CMOS is not straightforward. 

For example, the inductors needed 

by RF circuitry take up a lot of silicon 

‘real estate’, and their size is absolute 

(because it is determined by the 

operating frequency). As CMOS 

technology shrinks further, the cost 

per unit area increases, so the 

inductors not only become relatively 

bigger, they also become more 

expensive. The challenge for RF 

designers is to provide all the 

fl exibility and adaptivity needed 

by SDR, with the smallest possible 

number of inductors. 

Virtual 

Machine 

Monitor 

(VMM) 

SDR manager 

Hardware 

Abstraction 

Layer 

(HAL) 

Interconnect 

(buses, 

bridges, etc.) 

An overview of the components of a software-defi ned radio architecture, capable of handling 

multiple standards and multiple channels. For example, for a cellular handset, Radio 1 

might be a UMTS transceiver, Radio 2 a WLAN transceiver, and Radio 3 a GPS receiver. 

RF 

frontend 

timers 

EVP 

SWcodec 

accelerator 

ARM 

shared 

RAM 

suppliers to set up other radio standards. 

Running different radios simultaneously on the same, generic hardware is the 

ultimate goal of the current research. This minimizes the hardware cost and the 

power consumption of the overall device, but it means ‘virtualizing’ the radios so 

they can run independently. Virtualization has been around since the 1960s, but 

SDR needs to allocate the shared hardware and processing blocks used to emulate 

the radio, from the antenna to the user, while isolating the various incoming and 

outgoing signals from one another. Encapsulating the radio pipes and switching 

between them every few microseconds has to guarantee uninterrupted real-time 

performance – not a trivial matter. 

Industry implications 

SDR will roll out slowly, taking over slowly from existing technology as this reaches 

technical and economic obsolescence. The fi rst generation of SDR mobile phone 

products is expected around 2008. Using a minimum set of parallel, softwarecontrolled 

bi- and tri-standard RF blocks with a single processor block, these 

should be able to cover standards from cellular telephony to networking to radio 

and TV. Signifi cantly, they should be able to do this at close to the same cost as 

today’s devices. 

A major goal of SDR is to serve many markets, many customers, and many 

standards with a minimum number of architectures and chips. This will not only 

reduce R&D costs, but also greatly simplify logistics for both the semiconductor 

manufacturers and handset makers. But it is a big step. So big that no party can go 

it alone. The established companies are already talking together about open designs 

that should ease programming specialized applications. Apart from Philips, other 

major players include Infi neon, Samsung, Benq and Nokia. For handset 

manufacturers in particular, the greater fl exibility will shorten development cycles 

and make it easy to patch performance or upgrade algorithms, and through this 

reinforce the positive value of their brand. For operators, SDR makes it easier to 

provide new, fashionable and above all competitive services. Reconfi gurable 

handsets also have longer useful lifetimes – an important consideration in Europe 

where operators subsidize most handsets. Open, industry-standards for 

SDR APIs (application program interfaces) could open up a whole new market for 

radio software. 

By reducing development effort and component costs and by improving fl exibility, 

responsiveness and ease of product diversifi cation, SDR should benefi t everybody, 

not least the end-user. Even before it fi nds applications in other, and yet 

unthought-of areas, SDR will be a key technology in how we communicate 

in the future. 

Dr Neil Bird l Philips Research l neil.bird@philips.com 

Prof dr ir Kees van Berkel l Philips Research l kees.van.berkel@philips.com 

Dr ir Albert van der Werf l Philips Research l albert.van.der.werf@philips.com 

Extra info www.research.philips.com/password l software-defi ned radio l RF IC design 

Philips’ unique 

position 

Philips’ expertise in the various areas 

touched by SDR places the company 

in a uniquely favorable position for 

developing the fi rst generation of SDR 

equipment. Philips Research has already 

designed and simulated an antenna 

for use over fi ve cellular bands, and 

demonstrated a multimode receiver for 

GSM, UMTS and CDMA2000 standards. 

The DSP Innovation Centre (Philips 

Semiconductors) has developed an EVP 

capable of 100 parallel operations at 

speeds of 300 MHz. Also, Philips 

Semiconductors have already developed 

and productized a multi-standard 

baseband chip for WLAN and DVB-H, 

based on the predecessor of the EVP. 

This established position on both sides 

of the RF divide places Philips ideally to 

make the most of SDR. 

Researchers are working closely with 

Philips Semiconductors to make sure 

their designs are not just functional, but 

also feasible, and, of course, attractive 

for Philips customers of both complete 

radios and chipsets for further software 

development. 


l February 2006

Joint contribution 

Expanding boundaries 

Creating a world of seamless connectivity 

With the incredible amount of audio-visual material available today, 

people expect to have access to this material anytime, anywhere and in 

anyway that suits them. To address this challenge, Philips initiated the 

ITEA Nomadic Media project to develop ideas with partners on ways of 

expanding the boundaries of our personal space, whether in the home or 

on the move, and create a world of seamless connectivity. 

By Ian Crick 

Illustrations/photography Philips, Storm Scott 

Enabling the connected planet 

Philips Applied Technologies, in cooperation with Philips Research, initiated the 

Nomadic Media project in June 2003. The project, completed in November 2005, 

was part of the ITEA (Information Technology for European Advancement) program. 

The Nomadic Media consortium of 12 partners included leading European mobile 

phone manufacturers, service providers, research organizations and universities. 

Primarily it addressed the overlap between infrastructure technologies (internet, 

GSM, LAN networks etc.), media services and content, the users of those services, 

and their media devices such as home media servers, personal media players, PDAs 

and mobile phones. 

“Consumers today are confronted with too many restrictions in the way they can 

use their media and the devices on which they can enjoy it,” says Nomadic Media 

project leader Ian McClelland of Philips Applied Technologies. “For a real 

nomadic-media experience, people should enjoy seamless transition between the 

different network infrastructures as they move from place to place, and should be 

able to access interactive services as and when needed.” 

People also want to be able to use their preferred media device. In the home environment, 

for example, they may have a home-media server, 

Nomadic Media usage scenarios 

The usage scenarios investigated during the 

Nomadic Media project all had different 

requirements with regard to information 

needed by the user and the network 

infrastructure through which services 

would be provided. 

The At the Airport scenario, led by 

Nokia Research and SysOpen, featured 

Robert – the central persona in the usage 

scenarios – arriving in the departure area 

where his mobile phone is automatically 

recognized and logged into the airport’s 

services. He is welcomed with his fl ight 

details on his mobile phone and invited 

to check-in electronically, again using his 

mobile phone. On entering the departure 

lounge, his phone automatically informs him 

of special offers that correspond to his personal 

profi le available in the airport shops, 

and tells him that a friend with whom he 

plans to travel is already in the departure 

lounge. The friends meet up and pass the 

time before boarding their fl ight by playing 

a computer game using their respective 

handheld media devices and a large public 

screen within the departure lounge. 

The On the Go scenario, led by Philips 

Applied Technologies, Leuven, featured 

Robert on vacation in a city, sharing media 

fi les stored on his handheld media storage 

device with two of his friends. In this case 

sharing meant all three simultaneously 

listening to the same music. The music was 

shared using a short-range private wireless 

network – the Ensation wireless audio link 

system of Philips Semiconductors – that 

enabled Robert to give conditional listening 

access to his private audio collection. 

Joint contribution 

Robert was also able to synchronize the 

content on his handheld device with that 

of his home media server using a secure 

Internet connection that directly connected 

him to his home without the need for a 

third-party service. The scenario included 

also voice control by means of an 

innovative headset developed by Philips 

Applied Technologies, Leuven. The headset 

featured microphones integrated into each 

earphone capable of identifying the voice 

of the wearer by means of advanced audio 

processing algorithms. 

The At Home scenario, led by Philips 

Applied Technologies, Eindhoven, centered 

on friends watching a slide show of their 

recent vacation using a home media server 

at the home of Robert. The aim was to 

investigate ways in which people could contribute 

to a media show without disrupting 

their enjoyment of the social occasion. 

The At Home scenario team developed an 

application – the Collaborative Media Show 

– to explore various ways in which the 

friends could spontaneously add 

photographs to the slide show as it 

progressed. In one instance this was done 

from a mobile phone using a simple ‘throwing 

gesture’ with the wrist, and in another 

using the standard Bluetooth protocol to 

transfer a picture from the mobile phone 

directly into the slide show. The Home 

scenario team also developed the ‘Watch 

with Me’ application. 

This enabled the mobile storage device 

belonging to one of the visiting friends to 

automatically monitor the meta data embedded 

with the photographs in the slide 

show and use this data to extract similar 

photographs from its own database that 

might be interesting to the participants. The 

aim was to use the underlying technologies 

including, in this instance, an accelerometer 

integrated into the phone to detect the 

throwing gesture and the combined use 

of GSM and WLAN home networks, to 

produce an interesting, engaging slide show 

with everyone participating. 

The Healthcare scenario was led by Atos 

Origin. In this scenario Robert, a diabetic, 

was taken ill while on holiday and needed 

to contact his doctor urgently using his 

PDA. His doctor was in conference and out 

of reach for general calls but Robert could 

make contact through a ‘Selective Presence 

and Availability’ messaging service. This enabled 

his doctor to set access permissions 

for particular categories of patient. The 

message was routed to his doctor’s PDA 

and requested him to call Robert urgently. 

His doctor contacted Robert and retrieved 

his fi les to review his recent medication. 

He concluded that a further examination 

was urgently required and arranged an appointment, 

using a Semantic Web Services 

Discovery application, for Robert at a local 

clinic. The results of the examination indicated 

a change of medication was required 

for which Robert’s doctor needed further 

advice. His doctor used his PDA and the 

same Services Discovery application to 

search for specialist consultants who could 

help him make the best choice of medication 

and arranged an on-line consultation 

with one group. Robert fi nally received an 

on-line prescription and electronic 

authorization to collect his medication 

from a local pharmacy. 


l February 2006

At the airport 

1 

Welcome! 

Sending 

flight 

and 

check-in 

gate 

Robert enters the terminal 

and is recognized as a passenger... 

2 

Joint contribution Joint contribution 

Electronic 

check-in 

Counter 5 

Check-in 

Robert uses his device to access 

personalized airport services. 

whilst relying on a handheld device when on the move. So the user interface must 

be capable of automatically adapting to particular device and service combinations 

without sacrifi cing any critical functionality. 

“ For a real nomadic-media experience, people should enjoy seamless 

transition between the different network infrastructures as they move 

from place to place, and should be able to access interactive services as 

and when needed. ” 

Ian McClelland, Philips Applied Technologies, Nomadic Media project leader 

Would you 

like to join 

this game? 

No 

Yes 

Robert participates in a game with other 

travellers using a public screen. 

Exploring underlying technologies 

“Nomadic Media focused specifi cally on investigating technologies in the areas of 

situational awareness, user interaction and interfacing between different network 

infrastructures,” says Boris de Ruyter, head of Philips Research’s Intelligent User 

Interfaces cluster. “Since our target was implementation in 2006-2009 we confi ned 

ourselves to the technologies available today that could, with some innovative 

improvements, be reasonably quickly industrialized.” 

3 

Philips Applied Technologies investigated technologies dealing with interoperability 

between home-based devices and portable devices in terms of both communications 

and applications. Technologies that enabled the intuitive sharing of media, conditional 

access to media and secure access to a home server over public networks 

were also investigated. For Philips Applied Technologies, Eindhoven, the focus was on 

an enclosed social context in a private setting – people at home. For Philips 

Applied Technologies, Leuven, the focus was on an enclosed social context in a 

public setting – friends together in public spaces. Philips Research cooperated 

closely with both parts of Philips Applied Technologies mainly contributing in the 

area of user interface development and media synchronization technologies. 

To explore the underlying technologies, the project adopted a user-centric view 

focused on four usage scenarios: On the Go, At the Airport, At Home, and 

Healthcare. “These scenarios were developed by drawing on the knowledge and 

experience of the Marketing Intelligence departments of the respective partners,” 

stresses Ian McClelland. “The usage scenarios envisaged the way people would use 

these technologies in the future and were used as ‘the common theme’ throughout 

the project.” 

An eye on the future 

The results of the Nomadic Media project were presented as proof-of-concept 

demonstrations to the ITEA Review Board in Bilbao, Spain, on November 17. 

The demonstrations showed how the scenarios could be realized in practice and 

received a very positive reaction. In the case of Philips, Philips Applied Technologies 

supported by Philips Research is currently engaged in discussions with Philips 

Consumer Electronics to investigate how the technologies and applications 

developed during the project might be commercially exploited in the period 

2006 to 2009. 

Nomadic Media partners 

Industrial Organizations 

Philips Research the Netherlands 

Philips Applied Technologies the Netherlands, Belgium 

Nokia Finland 

Euskatel Spain 

Atos Origin Italy 

Vodafone Omnitel Italy 

Small & Medium-sized Enterprises 

Cybelius Software Finland 

SysOpen Finland 

Research Institutes and Universities 

VTT Finland 

University of Oulu Finland 

Cefriel Italy 

University of Paderborn Germany 


l February 2006 

4 

Your flight 

has been 

delayed! 

Please 

confirm 

Robert is informed of a flight delay. 

5 

Your seat 

number is: 

Ian McClelland l Philips Applied Technologies l ian.mcclelland@philips.com 

Boris de Ruyter l Philips Research l boris.de.ruyter@philips.com 

Extra info www.research.philips.com/password l Nomadic Media project l 

user-centered design l Ambient Intelligence 

7A 

Robert receives his seat number. 

6 

Log out 

from: 

‘airport’ 

Robert enters the aircraft. 

ITEA is a strategic, pan-European Program that 

was launched in 1999 and will end December 31, 

2008. It is now building on its success with a 

follow-up program, ITEA 2. ITEA 2 aims to 

further strengthen Europe’s position in the area 

of embedded software-intensive systems and 

services by stimulating and coordinating 

industry-driven, pre-competitive R&D.

Feature lifestyle Feature lifestyle 

Making electronic 

games more sociable 

Philips unveils the Entertaible – a 21 st century tabletop gaming platform that 

marries the best of electronic and traditional board games in a natural and 

simple way. Sitting comfortably around the game table, people can enjoy both 

the shared experience of playing together and the excitement of being able to 

directly interact with an electronic game. 

By Andrew Woolls-King 

Photography Michel Klop 

“We wanted to see if we could make electronics games more sociable by using our 

knowledge of displays and user interaction in a new way,” recalls Tom Bergman. 

“Although the project initially started as a fun experiment on the side, as the concept grew, 

so did our enthusiasm and the amount of obvious fun we were having. This attracted the 

attention of more and more fellow research colleagues, as well as our management.” 

“ The Entertaible could be used to invent brand new games 

offering unprecedented levels of user interaction – games 

that would never become predictable or ever quite ‘feel’ 

the same twice, however often you played them. ” 

Tom Bergman, Philips Research 

Tom Bergman, a principal scientist within the Visual Experiences group of Philips Research in 

Eindhoven, the Netherlands, is talking about what is now known as the Philips ‘Entertaible’. 

This was recently demonstrated as a fully functioning working concept at the Consumer 

Electronics Show (CES2006) in Las Vegas, USA, and subsequently made the front cover of 

ElectronicsWeekly (11th January 2006 issue). 

In the Entertaible, the features of computer gaming – such as dynamic playing fi elds and gaming 

levels – have been combined with the social interaction and tangible playing pieces – such 

as pawns and dies – of traditional board games. In this sense, the Entertaible can be regarded 

as a 21st century equivalent of the traditional board game. In reality, however, it is much more 

than that. 

“The Entertaible’s capabilities could not only breathe new interactive life into multi-player 

board and electronic games, but also support new game and accessory classes,” says 

Bergman. “These may include, for example, using a portion of the touchscreen to allow 

private tactical information to be shown to specifi c players only.” 

Entertaible comprises a 30-inch tabletop-mounted LCD, sophisticated touchscreen-based 

multi-object position detection, and all supporting control electronics. The current prototype 

is based on a PC platform, but any gaming platform would be suitable to drive the Entertaible. 

“The concept of a multi-user, digitally interactive table is not new and other companies have 

developed comparable products that offer this kind of functionality,” explains 

Gerard Hollemans, a senior research scientist for User Interaction in the Media 

Interaction group at Eindhoven. Hollemans was involved with the development of 

Entertaible from an early stage and leads the research project team. 

“Where the Entertaible does uniquely differ, however, is in its simplicity.” Other approaches, 

for instance, have utilized complex arrangements of overhead cameras and dimmed lighting 

that detract from the user experience. In contrast, the Entertaible is based on a series of 

infrared LEDs and photodiodes discretely mounted around the perimeter of a 


l February 2006

standard LCD screen. “It requires no special lighting conditions or other equipment and is 

entirely ‘hand’ operated by touch alone,” continues Hollemans. “The Entertaible can 

simultaneously detect dozens of objects, including fi ngers and pawns. As a result, players 

can give ‘input’ to the playing surface simultaneously while a game controller determines 

which actions are appropriate. What this means is that the players do not need to learn how 

to operate the system, they simply sit down and play the game.” 

More than just a game … 

The Entertaible’s full potential could stretch far beyond electronic board games in the longer 

term. “The intuitive nature of the product means multiple users can interact with digital data 

and programs in a simple yet physical, ‘hands-on’ manner,” says Hollemans. “A manner that 

is not beyond comparison with the impact of mice, keyboards and Windows to single-user 

interfaces in the PC arena.” 

“ The intuitive nature of Entertaible means multiple users 

can interact with digital data and programs in a simple yet 

physical, ‘hands-on’ manner. ” 

Gerard Hollemans, Philips Research 

As such, the Entertaible concept could be extended into other domains. “For business or 

educational users, this might take the form of an interactive desk where several colleagues 

or students gather round a single workstation to work on a project or cooperatively create 

new ideas and learn together,” Hollemans explains. 

Feature lifestyle Feature lifestyle 

The Entertaible uses an innovative 

multi-touch sensor design that can detect 

several pawns and fi ngers simultaneously. 

This allows players to intuitively interact 

with the virtual world as if – by magic – 

it were actually real. 

… but let’s play fi rst 

Today, however, one of the most obvious and immediate applications of the Entertaible 

technology will be the game market, including the opportunity to reinvigorate established 

board game classics. “Entertaible could be used to invent brand new games offering 

unprecedented levels of user interaction – games that would never become 

predictable or ever quite ‘feel’ the same twice, however often you played them,” 

states Bergman (see box ‘Running the red light’). 

Other enhancements to the gaming experience could include ‘play-based’ rule explanation 

and feedback tips; the ability to electronically store large numbers of games – which could 

include rekindling those of the past without requiring large amounts of physical storage space 

for conventional boxes; instant retrieval of part-played games; on-line access to new or trial 

games; and a fast, simple set-up. 

With the world premiere in Las Vegas, the capital of gaming, Philips Research got valuable 

consumer feedback. Moreover, the Entertaible will be subject to extensive user tests – 

initially in the Philips Research HomeLab in Eindhoven – to verify the performance of the 

product and explore further enhancements. 

The fi rst application is initially aimed at the out-of-home gaming market and for this, Philips 

Research is looking for partners to bring the Entertaible to the market. Moreover, when 

produced in high volumes, the Entertaible could potentially reach consumer price levels and 

become a welcome addition within many homes. 

Tom Bergman Philips Research 

tom.bergman@philips.com 

Gerard Hollemans Philips Research 

gerard.hollemans@philips.com 

Extra info www.research.philips.com/password 


l February 2006 

Entertaible

Philips Research 

today 

Buying a ticket for public transport, 

a concert or a movie still involves 

exchanging money or a credit or pin card. 

tomorrow 

With an NFC (near fi eld communication) enabled 

mobile phone, you pay for concert or movie 

tickets at the box offi ce simply by holding your 

phone next to the payment terminal.

article - Philips Research

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