Meeting Minutes

27th May, 2006

Attended by Pankaj K, Rajesh, Rajiv, Shubhankar

• Started off with a round of introductions. Rajesh and Shbubhankar gave their background. Rajesh is a Analog IC design Engineer and he is handing the RF daughter board part of our project. Shubhankar is a DSP Engineer with Blackfin experience and is working with Pankaj T to come up with the baseband that we require for the prototype.
• Rajiv then presented the overview of the project and feilded questions about it.
• Shubhankar raised the point of IDE. Will we develop it fully ourselves? Answer is no. We will develop the required plugins for Eclipse for the tool chain and in future for the simulator so that it will enabled easy development and testing of the applications for the mobile. Pankaj pointed out that Eclipse was developed by IBM!
• Rajesh had a question about what is the scope of our firmware. The firmware consists of the baseband code for the Blackfin and the RF calibration settings for the RF component.
• Question was raised on the feasibility of developing the protocol stack fully. We are going to use a C++ design framework to expidite the development of the protocol stack. The framework will provide all the infrastructure so that creating layers and protocol stack is made easier. It will also have logging mechanism inbuilt and a testing environment as well. It will be developed over our port of the L4 microkernel.
• The licensing model was clarified. We are going to use the Dual Licensing scheme wherein we release the code as GPL and under a BSD style license as well. The BSD style licensing will provide support which can be charged. The GPL licensing will not cover support. But it will enforce the rule that for any modifications has to be released along with the source as well.
• Shubhankar asked how and when will we procure the hardware. Right now we are looking at end of June to start the process of procuring the hardware. The Balckfin board will be purchased from the STAMP board site and the refurbished BTS Simulator will be purchased from eBAY or some other vendor in India.
• Pankaj also raised the issue of competition and the scenario wherein they decrease the price of their offering to compete with us. In that scenario we can only fall back upon fact that our OS is a the best OS for ULCH's in the market and our reference design is not propreitary.
• Shubhankar had a question about the FCC certification requried. The FCC certiciation for our RF components will only be required past the beta stage. Also there are other certification required, the GCF and Interoperablity. We will have to bear these costs ourselves and recover them from the commercial licensing.
• Rajesh pointed out that we will need a hardware engineer who has the knowledged of designing PCB's and troubleshooting it and he offered to look amongst his acquiaintances for a matching profile.
• A general disucssion was initiated on the hardware costs and the Moore's Law. Since hardware costs and fab sizes are decreasing, the mass manufacturing results in a decreased cost of the hardware. The software on the other hand costs the same for each product, decreasing at most by depreciation. This plays in to our benifit since we concentrate more on the software.
• Rajesh gave an update about the RF chipset solutions that he is looking into. As per his research SILabs soultion is very good and ADI's chipset do not have a power amp. We need both an RF and a power amp. He is looking at other outdated soulions which can work for us as well.
• Shubhankar gave an update that he has come up with an architecture document of the Blackfin. He will post it to our mailing list.
• Rajiv gave an update on the Mobile OS. His work has been offloaded to Nataraj who has more experience in this particular feild. He was suppsosed to join but couldnt do because of his prior commitments.
• It was agreed upon that going forward we will schedule a technical talk in each of our sessions. We will take turn for it. Rajiv offered to provide a talk on GSM call flow scenrios in the next one.
• The venue for the meeting was also discussed. We need a better place for our meetings and suggested the school in Jeevan Bima Nagar. Rajiv will enquire about it. As of now the venue for the next meeting is Rajiv's home and he will get a whiteboard. Rajiv will also check out other options available (somebody's home!)
• Rajesh raised the final point about NDA's. Almost all the RF chip solutions that we are looking into requires NDA before we can use them. He is looking out any one which does not. But if need be Rajiv took up the task of talking to the company for the NDA.
• The updated Action Items Register is here.