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Research and Development Experience

Edward M. Roney

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Roney was one of the first technologists assigned to develop and commercialize Motorola’s wireless mobile handsets for North America’s first cellular standard (“AMPS”). Towards the late 1980s, he worked for Motorola’s newly-formed North American Cellular Subscriber Division where he continued to research, develop and commercialize wireless communications technology for Motorola’s market-leading AMPS mobile handsets, including the world’s first commercial mobile phone (“DynaTAC” a.k.a. ‘brick’ phone), the world’s first flip mobile phone (“MicroTAC”), and the world’s first clamshell mobile phone (“StarTAC”).

In the late 1980s to early 1990s, Mr. Roney researched and developed physical layer functions for North America’s first digital cellular standard (“IS-54/136 TDMA”). Some of his activities included implementing register transfer level (“RTL”) hardware designs or 16-bit fixed-point digital signal processor (“DSP”) software for the following technologies:

Full and half-rate VSELP, RPE-LTP, and AMR voice coders and decoders
Acoustic echo canceller, passive noise canceller, and full and half-duplex noise attenuator
Fractionally-spaced maximum likelihood sequence estimation (“MLSE”) equalizer and delay detector
Channel acquisition and synchronization
Channel error coding and decoding, including Viterbi decoders, interleavers, convolutional coders, and cyclic redundancy check error detectors
Radio frequency control algorithms, including automatic gain control and automatic frequency control

He received many patents for these activities, covering a broad range of technology areas from audio signal processing, error detection and correction, radio frequency control, signal detection, and voice processing.

Starting in 1992, Mr. Roney managed the development and commercialization of Motorola’s IS-54/136 TDMA digital mobile handsets, including directing several of Motorola’s corporate R&D groups in the development of IS-54/136 TDMA systems-on-a-chip solutions and software. During this time, he also represented Motorola on various industry standards bodies in enabling Motorola to integrate their technology into these standards. Due in part to his efforts, Motorola was able to generate substantial royalties from other handset manufacturers, which were required to license Motorola’s technology under fair and reasonable terms in order to practice these standards.

At the end of 1994, Mr. Roney founded PrairieComm, Inc. as a fables semiconductor manufacturer providing highly integrated chipsets, embedded software, and licensed intellectual property to leading international consumer electronics companies serving the digital wireless communications market. PrairieComm’s chipsets and software have been used in wireless mobile handsets sold around the world by Motorola, Samsung, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Siemens and others. As founder, CTO and Executive Vice-President of Development and Marketing for PrairieComm, Mr. Roney led an engineering staff of over 250 engineers located throughout the U.S. and in India. He directed and led the development and commercialization of protocol stack software, systems-to-silicon verification environments, and systems-on-a-chip solutions for second and third-generation digital wireless standards, including IS-136, PDC, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, CDMA, and UMTS.

Mr. Roney’s vision in developing systems-to-silicon verification environments resulted in substantially improved system-to-silicon development cycles by providing compliance verification of C++, fixed-point DSP and RTL code at all levels of abstraction. To offset development expenditures, Mr. Roney negotiated licenses with Cadence Design Systems, Inc. to allow them to sell some of these verification environments as packaged products, becoming the de facto standard for developing and verifying systems-on-a-chip solutions by the world’s leading wireless communications manufacturers. These verification environments contained executable algorithmic models associated with all physical layer functions for digital mobile handsets and infrastructure equipment, including error coding and decoding, traffic channels, control channels, vocoders, transmitters, receivers, and multi-path fading models.

By the early 2000s, Mr. Roney had led PrairieComm in the development of some of the world’s most integrated systems-on-a-chip solutions for wireless communications. To enhance the feature set of PrairieComm’s chipsets and software, he negotiated many technology transfer and cross-license agreements with some of the leading high-tech companies in the world, including Intel, Inc. (DSP cores), ARM Ltd. (microprocessors), Broadcom, Inc. (Bluetooth), Conexant, Inc. (GPS), Qualcomm, Inc. (CDMA ASIC license), Samsung (turbo decoder), and many others. PrairieComm’s highly integrated systems-on-a-chip solutions typically included on a single die the following:

16 or 32-bit RISC ARM microprocessor core with associated protocol stack software, user interface software, and microprocessor subsystem hardware, including UARTs, DMA controllers, keypad interface, SSIs, external memory interface, JTAG, ADCs, DACs, watchdog timer, interrupt controller, clock generator, diagnostic interface, etc.
16-bit DSP core with associated physical layer software, on-chip SRAM, and DSP subsystem hardware, including interrupt controller, timers, power controller, GPIOs, ADCs, DACs, etc.
Physical layer hardware accelerators, including Viterbi co-processor, modulator co-processor, rake receiver co-processor (CDMA & UMTS), turbo decoder co-processor, MPEG-4 co-processor, FM co-processor, etc.
Bluetooth hardware logic and software
Network-assisted GPS hardware logic and software
MP3 decoder and Hi-Fi DAC interface

To help his customer-partners maximize their return on wireless communications investment, Mr. Roney represented Mitsubishi, Panasonic, and Samsung on various U.S. and international telecommunications industry standards groups, enabling them to integrate their intellectual property into these standards. Leveraging substantial intangible value created by having their technology integrated into the standards, they were able to negotiate very favorable technology transfer or cross-license agreements with other leading wireless communications manufacturers.


Back to Profile	Research and Development Experience Edward M. Roney In the mid-1980s, Mr. Roney was one of the first technologists assigned to develop and commercialize Motorola’s wireless mobile handsets for North America’s first cellular standard (“AMPS”). Towards the late 1980s, he worked for Motorola’s newly-formed North American Cellular Subscriber Division where he continued to research, develop and commercialize wireless communications technology for Motorola’s market-leading AMPS mobile handsets, including the world’s first commercial mobile phone (“DynaTAC” a.k.a. ‘brick’ phone), the world’s first flip mobile phone (“MicroTAC”), and the world’s first clamshell mobile phone (“StarTAC”). In the late 1980s to early 1990s, Mr. Roney researched and developed physical layer functions for North America’s first digital cellular standard (“IS-54/136 TDMA”). Some of his activities included implementing register transfer level (“RTL”) hardware designs or 16-bit fixed-point digital signal processor (“DSP”) software for the following technologies: Full and half-rate VSELP, RPE-LTP, and AMR voice coders and decoders Acoustic echo canceller, passive noise canceller, and full and half-duplex noise attenuator Fractionally-spaced maximum likelihood sequence estimation (“MLSE”) equalizer and delay detector Channel acquisition and synchronization Channel error coding and decoding, including Viterbi decoders, interleavers, convolutional coders, and cyclic redundancy check error detectors Radio frequency control algorithms, including automatic gain control and automatic frequency control He received many patents for these activities, covering a broad range of technology areas from audio signal processing, error detection and correction, radio frequency control, signal detection, and voice processing. Starting in 1992, Mr. Roney managed the development and commercialization of Motorola’s IS-54/136 TDMA digital mobile handsets, including directing several of Motorola’s corporate R&D groups in the development of IS-54/136 TDMA systems-on-a-chip solutions and software. During this time, he also represented Motorola on various industry standards bodies in enabling Motorola to integrate their technology into these standards. Due in part to his efforts, Motorola was able to generate substantial royalties from other handset manufacturers, which were required to license Motorola’s technology under fair and reasonable terms in order to practice these standards. At the end of 1994, Mr. Roney founded PrairieComm, Inc. as a fables semiconductor manufacturer providing highly integrated chipsets, embedded software, and licensed intellectual property to leading international consumer electronics companies serving the digital wireless communications market. PrairieComm’s chipsets and software have been used in wireless mobile handsets sold around the world by Motorola, Samsung, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Siemens and others. As founder, CTO and Executive Vice-President of Development and Marketing for PrairieComm, Mr. Roney led an engineering staff of over 250 engineers located throughout the U.S. and in India. He directed and led the development and commercialization of protocol stack software, systems-to-silicon verification environments, and systems-on-a-chip solutions for second and third-generation digital wireless standards, including IS-136, PDC, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, CDMA, and UMTS. Mr. Roney’s vision in developing systems-to-silicon verification environments resulted in substantially improved system-to-silicon development cycles by providing compliance verification of C++, fixed-point DSP and RTL code at all levels of abstraction. To offset development expenditures, Mr. Roney negotiated licenses with Cadence Design Systems, Inc. to allow them to sell some of these verification environments as packaged products, becoming the de facto standard for developing and verifying systems-on-a-chip solutions by the world’s leading wireless communications manufacturers. These verification environments contained executable algorithmic models associated with all physical layer functions for digital mobile handsets and infrastructure equipment, including error coding and decoding, traffic channels, control channels, vocoders, transmitters, receivers, and multi-path fading models. By the early 2000s, Mr. Roney had led PrairieComm in the development of some of the world’s most integrated systems-on-a-chip solutions for wireless communications. To enhance the feature set of PrairieComm’s chipsets and software, he negotiated many technology transfer and cross-license agreements with some of the leading high-tech companies in the world, including Intel, Inc. (DSP cores), ARM Ltd. (microprocessors), Broadcom, Inc. (Bluetooth), Conexant, Inc. (GPS), Qualcomm, Inc. (CDMA ASIC license), Samsung (turbo decoder), and many others. PrairieComm’s highly integrated systems-on-a-chip solutions typically included on a single die the following: 16 or 32-bit RISC ARM microprocessor core with associated protocol stack software, user interface software, and microprocessor subsystem hardware, including UARTs, DMA controllers, keypad interface, SSIs, external memory interface, JTAG, ADCs, DACs, watchdog timer, interrupt controller, clock generator, diagnostic interface, etc. 16-bit DSP core with associated physical layer software, on-chip SRAM, and DSP subsystem hardware, including interrupt controller, timers, power controller, GPIOs, ADCs, DACs, etc. Physical layer hardware accelerators, including Viterbi co-processor, modulator co-processor, rake receiver co-processor (CDMA & UMTS), turbo decoder co-processor, MPEG-4 co-processor, FM co-processor, etc. Bluetooth hardware logic and software Network-assisted GPS hardware logic and software MP3 decoder and Hi-Fi DAC interface To help his customer-partners maximize their return on wireless communications investment, Mr. Roney represented Mitsubishi, Panasonic, and Samsung on various U.S. and international telecommunications industry standards groups, enabling them to integrate their intellectual property into these standards. Leveraging substantial intangible value created by having their technology integrated into the standards, they were able to negotiate very favorable technology transfer or cross-license agreements with other leading wireless communications manufacturers.