The world's leading licensor of silicon intellectual property (SIP) DSP cores and platform solutions for the mobile handset, portable and consumer electronics markets, CEVA, Inc. (News - Alert), announced that the Israeli Smart Grid (ISG) Consortium has received the backing of the Israeli Chief Scientist under its MAGNET R&D Program.

The MAGNET Program has been designed to sponsor innovative industry-oriented technologies to strengthen Israel's technological expertise and enhance competitiveness. It supports both industrial companies and academic research groups to facilitate its vision of synergetic collaboration to develop new and innovative products.

CEVA, which helped spearhead the consortium, announced in a press release that it will use the funding for a three to five year development program. Consisting of seven industrial partners and five academic institutions, the consortium will be focused on the development of new technologies and algorithms for the emerging smart grid market, including communication technologies, demand response and consumption forecasting.

In addition to CEVA, other industrial partners include Motorola (News - Alert) Solutions Israel, ECI Telecom, Yitran Communications, Ruggedcom, Control Applications and Powercom; and five Israeli academic institutions, including Tel-Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University and Bar-Ilan University. The Israeli Electric Company (IEC (News - Alert)) is also supporting the Consortium's activities.

With a strong background in DSP-based wireless and wired technologies including PLC, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, LTE and WiMAX (News - Alert) , CEVA is going to offer its communications expertise to meet the needs of smart grid applications such as smart meter modems and smart home appliances. CEVA already has several licensees using its DSP technologies for smart grid, PLC and other intelligent energy use products. The consortium’s activities will be focused on delivering highly energy efficient, mass market smart grid technologies. 

“The use of smart grid technology is essential worldwide as we look for more efficient energy solutions. Communications and intelligent processing of information are critical requirements and CEVA's expertise through our programmable DSP solutions plays a key role in the development of these products. The market opportunity is extremely large and, as it develops, it is also important to have a flexible architecture to be able to support evolving standards and future market requirements. We are pleased to have founded the ISG Consortium together with leading members of the Israeli technology industry and academia, and are thankful for the backing of the government's Chief Scientist through its MAGNET R&D program,” vice president of marketing at CEVA Eran Briman noted in a statement.

Last month, CEVA announced the availability of fully optimized HSPA+ software libraries for the CEVA-XC DSP. The addition of these new libraries to the CEVA-XC Software-Defined Radio (SDR) reference architecture enables the implementation of a software-based multimode HSPA/HSPA+/LTE/LTE-A solution. Support for HSPA and HSPA+ is essential to provide mandatory backward 3G compatibility for mobile applications.

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