ISSUE 05 2014
CAMBRIDGE WIRELESS
11
T
he Cambridge Wireless (CW) community started life as ‘Cambridge 3G’ 15 years ago, championing the need for a test bed for applications based on what was considered – at the time – to be fast Internet access.
For the industrial archeologists among us, the roots of CW can be traced back much further, in fact, to World War I when the Pye Company started manufacturing and testing thermionic valves. These provided the basis for developing affordable wireless receivers in 1922 to allow the public to listen to the first radio broadcasts from the BBC. Coincidentally, Pye was itself founded by an employee of Cambridge University’s famous Cavendish Laboratory, home to James Clerk Maxwell and the place where Crick and Watson decoded the structure of DNA. An early example of cooperation between academia and industry.
When ‘high definition’ TV broadcasts started in November 1936, Pye was frustrated at being outside the coverage radius of the Alexandra Palace transmitter and developed the EF 50 valve as the heart of a high gain receiver. This component was used in World War II radar and two-way radios. Bletchley may have ‘won the war’, but Cambridge played its part.
At its peak, Pye employed 15,000 people and created a generation of engineers with a broad range of wireless development skills. Many of these engineers – and their children and grandchildren – went on to set up their own companies and consultancies, providing the legacy backbone that has been the foundation for the wireless community that Cambridge Wireless represents today, fitting into the wider ‘Silicon Fen’ region.
A truly global membership
That community now embraces almost 400 companies and includes everything from small, one man start-ups to global giants such as ARM.
In the early years activity revolved around two or three meetings per year and a few very good dinners. Those dinners, now known as Founders’ Dinners, continue today but different groups of members now get together on an almost weekly basis to talk through specific technical and market challenges and opportunities. These weekly meetings are structured through 20 special interest groups (SIGs), each led by a team of ‘SIG champions’.
Pye was founded by an employee of Cambridge University’s famous Cavendish Laboratory, home to James Clerk Maxwell and the place where Crick and Watson decoded the structure of DNA
The SIGs represent specific technology interests including: future devices, future technology, radio technology, small cell technology, software open source and virtual networks, application areas such as automotive and transport, big data, digital delivery and content, location based systems, security and defence, mobile broadband and wireless healthcare, along with academic and legal disciplines, business, wireless heritage and the user experience. There is also an international SIG which does an increasing amount of work liaising with Chinese companies.
Responding to the international brief, the two-day Future of Wireless International Conference (FWIC) held every summer is attended by over 400 delegates with presenters and attendees from all over the world:
www.cambridgewireless.
co.uk/futureofwireless/
In addition, a technical conference, CW-TEC – the Cambridge Wireless Technology and Engineering Conference is being introduced in March 2015 to complement the more market- focused FWIC event, but again with a global rather than regional remit.
Broadening reach – and debate You certainly do not have to be either Cambridge or UK-based to be a member of CW and the membership in practice becomes increasingly broad each year both in terms of geographic reach and subject. A millennial team within the organisation is also working on initiatives to involve younger engineers and marketers through less formally structured meetings.
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