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Feb. 4, 2010

Today Alcatel-Lucent said that it will expand its R&D presence in Ireland as part of a government program to increase the country's high-tech industry. Alcatel-Lucent's expansion will create more than seventy technology jobs in the company's Bell Labs over the next 5 years. Bell Labs was first established in Ireland in 2005, when Alcatel merged with Lucent.

Bell Labs will begin to contribute to the recently launched Green Touch Initiative, which aims to make networks 1,000 times more energy efficient than they are today.

Since Bell Labs was first established in Ireland, the company has researched several different areas of network technology. Bell Labs was one of the pioneers of the femtocell, devices which have been deployed by global wireless operators to improve building coverage for subscribers.

"Bell Labs plays a significant part in the Irish research eco-system," said Ireland's Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan T.D. in a statement. "Its uniquely open approach to innovation and the sharing of ideas will advance technological development and accelerate growth amongst Irish companies, bolstering our long-term economic expansion."

Energy management has been a key area of research for the R&D lab. Some of its more notable contributions include a novel 3D heat sink design that reduces the energy required to cool communications systems by more than 25 percent and a low-cost, high-efficiency hardware technology to increase capacity and reduce power consumption in mobile base stations.

"We are also looking forward to expanding our research activities in Ireland and generating innovative technologies by taking advantage of the close relationships we have developed with the business and academic community," Bell Labs President Jeong Kim said in a statement.

"Through these and other efforts we strongly believe that Bell Labs will be able to contribute to the local knowledge economy and have a beneficial impact on the lives of people around the globe."

Alcatel-Lucent also introduced a new converged radio module that allows operators to simultaneously support 2G GSM, 3G W-CDMA/HSPA+ and LTE services. The module is available for new deployments and is compatible with the more than 700,000 Alcatel-Lucent base stations currently in use by wireless carriers and operators.

The R&D lab also helped redesign Alcatel-Lucent's supply chain and was instrumental in defining the new IEEE 1687 standard which simplifies the automatic on-site testing of telecom equipment thereby improving the reliability of mobile communications systems all over the world.

The 'radio module' also allows wireless operators to re-farm their GSM spectrum in the 900 or 1800 MHz band by introducing more advanced W-CDMA/HSPA+ or LTE services through simple software activation.

Called the MC-TRX, the new radio module is currently available globally. Alcatel-Lucent reports it has already been selected by Tier 1 wireless service providers, not just in Europe but in the U.S. as well as in Canada and Brazil.

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Source: Alcatel-Lucent.