As Canada’s leading research agency in telecommunications for more than half a century, the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) has continually defined the cutting edge of this technology sector. Members of this organization have regularly played key roles in shaping specific technical innovations, including the complex regulatory environment that governs the widespread application of emerging technologies.

From the design of a new type of antenna to helping government officials in the development of international standards for high definition television broadcasts, the CRC offers the country’s most authoritative perspective on communications issues. Among the most challenging of such issues has been the ongoing convergence of

communications technologies, which has blurred the lines that traditionally distinguished radio or television from such newer media as the Internet or telephony. Beyond simply ensuring that different pieces of equipment can interact with one another, CRC researchers are exploring the unprecedented potential offered by this convergence, which could usher in some entirely new products and services. Their efforts have yielded concrete results, in the form of software and hardware that is making its way into marketplaces in Canada and around the world. Canadians stand to benefit from this progress, just as they have previously benefited from CRC’s earlier telecommunications work, building the connections that have come to define our global economy.

Did You Know

■ While digital television broadcasting promises to bring an unprecedented calibre of sound, images and interactive services into our homes, innovations by CRC mean this technology will need far less room on the electromagnetic spectrum than the frequencies currently allocated to existing television channels.

■ The human ear may be the ultimate judge of sound, but organizations like Dolby, Phillips, Panasonic, Samsung and NASA find it valuable to measure the performance of their hardware automatically, using the System for the Evaluation of Audio Quality (SEAQ) software developed by CRC.

■ The licensing of Fibre Bragg Gratings (FBG) technology has made CRC the most successful publicly-funded research organization in North America in terms of Intellectual Property revenue or number of licenses, or patents applied or patents issued, when normalized with respect to R&D budgets. FBG enhances the data-handling speed and power of optical networks, allowing some waves of light to pass while filtering out others. This critical technology combines a significant collection of patents that has subsequently been licensed to more than 30 major clients around the world over the past decade.

■ Radio is no longer about your traditional radio tuner — it can work with any wireless device, including your cell phone, pager, laptop computer or satellite receiver. Software Defined Radio (SDR) enables different types of hardware to treat these transmissions like any other software program. CRC is at the forefront of developing the tools to create such programs, with the Software Communications Architecture – Reference Implementation (SCARI) Software Suite program that enables the development of hardware platforms to handle various radio transmission modes.