Tuesday, November 14, 2006

TI Extends PIQUA Software to Carrier Gateways

Texas Instruments has extended its "PIQUA" IP quality management software with its first implementation in media gateways for carrier networks, enabling service providers and carriers to deliver an advanced level of quality to IP-based services.



TI's PIQUA system is based on the company's digital signal processor (DSP) technology and embedded software solutions that provide a real-time distributed system of quality management elements that monitor and improve the quality of IP-based services, such as voice, data and video. PIQUA can collect data from a variety of endpoints, including user devices, IP set-top boxes and residential and media gateways. These endpoints use DSPs to execute software, which encode voice and perform the signal processing required to facilitate the transmission of voice between various networks.



The PIQUA technology uses RTCP-XR and TI-developed extensions to measure VoIP performance, with plans to incorporate RTCP-HR and RTCP-Video for future IP applications. These standards allow the delivery of quality metrics to a network management and quality assurance system. The PIQUA system extends the parameters available in these reports with custom features such as its Echo Quality Index, providing enhanced statistics and diagnostic capabilities. Together these features allow for the real-time response to service degradation while providing the carrier or service provider with extensive metrics that accurately convey the user experience.



TI said that with PIQUA elements embedded in equipment at both the customer premise and the network, consumers using IP-based services - such as VoIP, Video over IP, IPTV and Internet-based music - will realize exceptional quality and performance.



"By embedding TI's PIQUA elements in the network, service providers can focus on meaningfully identifying potential problems and flagging and repairing degraded service, ensuring they deliver the best IP services and applications that their subscribers expect and demand," said John Warner, strategic marketing manager for TI's Communications Infrastructure group.



With TI's PIQUA-embedded elements represented in more endpoints throughout the network and CPE devices, better quality can be delivered with additional information available for monitoring and analysis. Endpoints with TI's PIQUA elements also provide a valuable resource for managing today's complex IP networks.

http://www.ti.com/piqua













PIQUA
Captures Packet Intelligence at the Traffic Source
Because
TI's chips are widely deployed at the edge of IP networks, its new
announced PIQUA technology offers the potential to collect vast amounts
of packet data at the source. PIQUA could be used to knit together a
quality of service (QoS) management fabric that addresses all of the
discovery, configuration, monitoring and repair tasks in the diverse and
widely dispersed elements of IP networks.