The Irish branch of Bell Labs is raising its profile after five years in the country, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON
ONE OF the more desirable R&D acquisitions for the State during the Celtic Tiger years, Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs complex in Blanchardstown just had its fifth birthday.
The Irish branch of one of the world's most famous research groups (Bell Labs in the US is best known as the place where the transistor was developed), it has kept a fairly low profile. The lab's most public side is its collaborative role with the 10-university research consortium focused on high-end telecommunications technologies, the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research, headquartered at Trinity College and chaired by Iona Technologies co-founder Chris Horn.
This year, it has gone more public. To celebrate its first five years, Bell Labs Ireland held its first open day, inviting guests in to see presentations on all its research projects, which range from health diagnostics to business process management to mobile base station technologies.
Its focus, says director Sam Samuels, is to make "disruptive technologies" - ground-breaking technologies that have wider social, cultural and scientific impact.
"[ The lab] started out as a very ambitious vision," says Eileen Sharp, head of the IDA Ireland's Information and Communications Technology division. "This was the first time something like this was attempted in Ireland."
Samuels says the Irish lab has developed its own distinct personality.
"There are certain characteristics of this lab that you won't get in other labs, and which make it unique. Because it's new it's a bit like a teenager - it has no fear. It has a reputation it wants to build, and take on bigger problems."
He also says Ireland, which is one of Bell Labs' smallest labs - about half the size of most of the others - is unusual in that it has lots of small research groups.
"They are small, but their proximity allows them to bubble away and interact. They can sit back and see how the dots join up."
Currently the lab has about 25 researchers but Samuels has the self-confessed "lofty" goal of expanding that to 120.
CTVR, which has just reached the end of its initial five-year funding cycle from Science Foundation Ireland, will continue as a core focus of Bell Labs Ireland, Samuel says.
He notes that the government has committed to continue CTVR's funding, "which is important for the sustainability of a lab like this".
But does the lab produce anything concrete or is it all high-end, theoretical stuff? Samuels says a goal of the lab is to generate intellectual property (IP) and ideas that can "trickle through and be viable in industry. Because we're responsible to shareholders, we have to be sure to be commercially relevant".
Working with academic partners, as with CTVR, is useful because it can accelerate the speed at which the R&D to commercialisation process unfolds, he says.
Samuels sees his own role as one of conducting an orchestra of researchers, each with a specialty that can harmonise with the others.
The economic downturn has made his job more challenging, but he credits the Irish government with keeping a focus on R&D. "Here in Ireland, we still have an extremely attentive host," he says.
His five-year goal is to make the Irish Bell Labs "world class at many levels" and have it seen in Ireland as an iconic place to work if you are a graduate scientist.
And that's how he views his own job: "One of those childhood geeky dream things. Mine was always to join Bell Labs."
Bells Labs Ireland research projects
ANTENNA ARRAYS
Antennas are one of the costliest elements inside the base station cabinets used for transmitting mobile phone signals. They comprise half the total equipment costs, three-quarters of the total volume of equipment in a cabinet, and draw down the most power.
The latest types of antennas, which will enable more advanced mobile services, take up the most space and are the costliest. This Irish project is aimed at significantly scaling down the size of antenna arrays, while increasing energy efficiency - a current prototype is a third more efficient than existing models.
FEMTOCELL TECHNOLOGIES
Femtocells are small base stations that connect to a broadband network in homes or businesses and boost capacity and coverage. They can overcome poor signals caused by internal and external walls in a building and raise broadband speeds for multimedia and data services.
One research group at Bell Labs Ireland is working to make the cells more intelligent, and another, to make them self- configuring - able to form their own, most efficient networks on the fly, so that they will know what devices are around and where and adjust themselves accordingly. Many predict most homes and businesses will eventually have femtocells.
CUTTING-EDGE TELECOMMUNICATIONS
One of the key reasons Bell Labs opened in Ireland was to work with a consortium of Irish universities through the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR). CTVR is headquartered at Trinity College, with an associated research base at Bell Labs. Work is focused on a range of very high end telecommunications projects including photonics, software radio, radio spectrum hopping, and thermal and energy issues in telecommunications.
HEART-MONITORING SYSTEMS
An auscultation patient-monitoring system being developed at Bell Labs Ireland - and currently being trialed in French hospitals - blends stethoscope and communications technologies to let general physicians make more accurate heart assessments. An Alcatel-Lucent stethoscope plugged into a computer creates very sensitive sound and visual images of heartbeats which can then be transmitted in real time to a specialist. This allows for remote consultations or home monitoring, but also is so sensitive that it has shown inaudible murmurs missed by specialists, enabling earlier management of health problems.
