Wireless video application based on wavelet compression

What’s in a name?

A lot, according to Bjorn Jawerth, co-CEO and chairman of High Speed Net Solutions. The company - which is changing its name to Summus -- launched BlueFuel, a wireless multimedia solution, earlier this month at CTIA Wireless IT 2001 (www.wirelessit.com) in San Diego.

Summus is the nickname bestowed upon Isaac Newton by an admiring colleague, mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss*, explained Jawerth, himself a noted mathematician. Jawerth explained his own admiration for Newton, who left academia in his 40s to pursue a career in business.

Traveling a similar path, Jawerth is currently a part-time professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and until last year, was the David W. Robinson Palmetto Professor of mathematics and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of South Carolina. He has worked with Intel, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army and other governmental agencies.

“Newton is the best mathematician we’ve ever had,” Jawerth said. Jawerth runs Summus (www.summus.com) along with Richard Seifert, co-CEO and vice chairman, from its headquarters in Raleigh, NC. The company was founded in 1991, and recently announced its BlueFuel Video solution, designed to run on handsets enabled with Qualcomm’s (www.qualcomm.com) Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW). Summus a BREW developer, but Jawerth emphasized that BlueFuel - as an open development environment - can be designed to run on a J2ME or WAP phone as well.

BlueFuel is based on a mathematical concept called a wavelet. Wavelets are a new standard format for the transmission of audio-visual data, explained Jawerth, who discovered the first wavelet decomposition in 1976. The name wavelet refers to the wave pattern of multimedia transmission. Using wavelet compression, BlueFuel processes “the nature of the image through an abstraction process,” he said.

Based on the topology of multimedia information, BlueFuel can reduce a 500kb image to 5kb. Processing can be reduced to less than 3MIPS, whereas a similar image processed by MPEG-4 technology could require 15-50MIPS. The reduction in size and processing strength required to transmit a multimedia image allows BlueFuel, for example, to download graphic images over the air to a wireless device many times faster than similar systems relying on MPEG-4 technology, Jawerth explained.

Most wireless multimedia platforms today require space on a separate processing chip. BlueFuel can be placed on the excess processing capacity of an existing voice processor chip, which lowers manufacturing costs for new multimedia-capable wireless devices, such as the Kyocera 3035 (www.kyocera.com). Summus demonstrated BlueFuel on the Kyocera 3035 at Wireless IT 2001. Summus has formed partnerships with major content providers, carriers and handset vendors.

Broken down into “media modules,” BlueFuel can process and transmit graphic, video, animation or music based multimedia content.

“The core of Summus BlueFuel, the efficiency engine resource manager, enables BlueFuel to handle multimedia efficiently,” Jawerth said. “BlueFuel delivers striking multimedia using less than 3 MIPS. This means it generates less heat, drains less power and stays cooler than alternative solutions, such as MPEG4. The real importance to carriers, device makers and content providers is that you can deliver compelling multimedia applications on lower cost devices, with an excellent user experience. Through our relationship with Qualcomm, we are bringing the benefits of BlueFuel to market.”

Although the BlueFuel platform is new, Summus has other products, including a video e-mail application, a wavelet image software developer’s kit and a video compression editor. Summus customers include Corel (www.corel.com), Symbol (www.symbol.com), Raytheon (www.raytheon.com) and Hughes (www.hughes.com).