More France IP Communications Stories

Accent, a major player in semiconductor integration of communications and metering technologies, has opened a Wireless IP development center in Sophia Antipolis, France.

Officials with Accent said that under a strategic agreement between the company and Wipro Technologies (News - Alert), the former RF engineering team of Wipro Newlogic has transitioned to Accent.

As part of the same agreement, Accent has also obtained certain rights to key OFDM and WiFi (News - Alert) technologies.

Company officials said that the new team will focus on developing emerging IP-based wireless technologies to be integrated into Accent’s System-on-Chip platform portfolio.

“The addition of the new wireless IP unit represents a strategic decision for Accent and reflects the company’s strong commitment to meet the evolving need of our market place and customers”, said Federico Arcelli, CEO of Accent, in a statement.

Arcelli said that while the team has only been on board a short period, integration with the rest of the engineering team has completed very smoothly and work has already started on developing next generation products.

He said that the proven track record of this RF team together with the rights of key Wipro technologies will allow the company to greatly accelerate internal IP developments and to bring new products to the market as early as this year.

Back in October Accent andItron, a major player in advanced metering technology, had announced Itron’s selection of Accent to supply a newly developed integrated circuit for its OpenWay CENTRON smart meter product line.

The new design will integrate the latest ARM (News - Alert) processor technology, a complete ZigBee wireless solution (RF, baseband and protocol stack), as well as an LCD driver and on-chip embedded flash memory to deliver best-in-class performance, highly reduced BOM and lowest system cost.