InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[lastchoice]

mschere, just took look at pico again
they do have a baseband dsp ASIC and software reference designs for basestations. both of those products are higher up the ISO layers than IDCC has been. idcc handles air interface and signal acquisition probably layers 1 and 1 1/2.

the pico stuff is probably the rest of layer 2 and maybe 3. they are really handling 1s and 0s. idcc is moving energy, modulating, sensing, encoding, etc... for tdd they had to work a bit farther up the model with comneon because they were on pioneering ground. firmware stacks are the interface between hardware and software and very specialized. it reduces the customer's risk substantially if they can operate on data streams.

the one thing much more specialized--basically considered black magic--is RF. that's why IDCC's position will be undeniable, nobody can say they developed their own air-interface. nobody could do it, (especially without treading all over the standards-recognized patents).