Alcatel-Lucent will be expanding its research presence in Ireland as part of a government program to grow the country's tech industry.
The expansion will create more than 70 "high-caliber" technology jobs in Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs over the next five years. Bell Labs was first established in Ireland in 2005.
"Bell Labs plays a hugely 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."
As part of the expansion, Bell Labs in Ireland 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 Executive Director Sam Samuel was one of the pioneers of the femtocell, devices which have been deployed by global operators to improve coverage for subscribers.
Energy management has been a key area of research for the 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, low-weight, high-efficiency hardware technology to increase capacity and reduce power consumption in cellular base stations.
The lab also helped redesign Alcatel-Lucent's supply chain and was instrumental in defining the new IEEE 1687 (IJTAG) standard which simplifies the automatic on-site testing of telecom equipment thereby improving the reliability of systems.
"We are 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 efforts we believe Bell Labs in Ireland will be able to contribute to the local knowledge economy and have a beneficial impact on the lives of people around the world."
In addition to the news of Bell Labs' expansion in Ireland, Alcatel-Lucent 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 global operators.
The module also allows 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.
The new module, dubbed the MC-TRX, is currently available worldwide. Alcatel-Lucent reports it has already been selected by Tier 1 mobile service providers.