The HSC Story
Hughes Systique seeks to play a key role in the unfolding story of the next-generation wireless communication networks. The HSC team brings a rich and varied experience of wireless networking, for voice, data and multimedia networks, in the terminal, access networks and core networks. Hughes Systique boasts of an extensive knowledge base with end-to-end network design and testing, carrier grade systems development and wireless.
Hughes Systique offers its services in the following areas:
Product Reengineering
Product reengineering helps vendors of network equipment in established technologies offer substantially improved components for their customers. Product reengineering may involve one or more of the following:
- Software reengineering: This is done to improve the capacity, reliability, performance or feature set supported by a given software component. Depending on the context, it might include porting to a different platform, or reengineering in order to meet tighter resource and performance requirements. An example is the reengineering of legacy GPRS base stations to reduce cost per channel and improve data throughput and Quality of Service (QoS) management
- Product enhancements: This means improving internal algorithms and features to give additional capacity to an existing software product. The key challenge is to do this without breaking any existing software functions, many of which (for long-lived products) are incrementally developed on the base specifications. Thus, the enhancement requires a long and exhaustive test-cycle, even if software development is only incremental
Network design and modeling
Network design and modeling is required by network operators as they launch new networks, reengineer existing networks and/or interwork between networks. Examples are
- Migration of UMTS networks to all IP environments
- Interworking between UMTS networks with embedded WiMax networks.
- Redesign of the core network component to offer better QoS to users
- Launch of Wimax/Wifi networks in a given area.
A relatively recent success story has been the rapid interest and commercialization of Wireless LAN technologies. WLAN, and later complementary technologies such as Wimax have already seen rapid spread in the personal communication domain. Part of the reason for this is the nature of the technology. UMTS and other 3rd generation technologies were hit initially by massive investment requirements, both for highly over-priced spectrum licenses and the cost of cutting over large networks. WLAN and Wimax technology, on the other hand, were spear-headed by small companies selling chips and components for personal use, using an unlicensed spectrum. As the movement caught on, aided by massive investment of companies such as Intel and a strong standardization effort, the spread of Wimax and Wifi seems unstoppable.
The HSC team brings to this task a comprehensive set of skills, ranging from formal network modeling, design consultancy to an integrated test planning.
Product development
HSC works with network component vendors, especially in emerging technologies such as Wifi/Wimax to shorten the time-to-market for new components. By bringing all-round software design, development and testing skills, the HSC team allows the vendor to concentrate on their key technology offering, while the complementary components, platform integration and testing features can be executed by HSC. This helps vendors achieve very aggressive time to market their products, helping them achieve higher market penetration.
Software component development
HSC works with network component vendors to develop custom software units, ranging from protocol stacks, to functional components such as schedulers, compression engines, call management engines and resource management engines. Built to specification from the customer, these software components incorporate technologies contributed both by HSC as well as the customer's engineering and are written in a modular, testable manner, enabling easy integration into customer products. Along with the component, HSC works with the customer to help integrate and test this software into the final product.