Corporate Background

Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Co Ltd (ASTRI) was founded in 2001 in Hong Kong by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to promote technological advances for Hong Kong through applied research. Its missions are to perform high quality research and development (R&D), transfer advanced technologies to industries, develop technical human resources and act as a focal point that brings together industry and university R&D assets.

As Hong Kong's applied technology research centre focuses on providing world-class innovative technologies, ASTRI's R&D activities focus on four closely interrelated technological domains: IC designs; communications technologies; enterprise and consumer electronics; and material and packaging technologies. Since inception, ASTRI has built up a team of top researchers who have conducted a number of world-class research projects.

In April 2006, the Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC) launched the "Hong Kong R&D Centre Initiative" with the objective to promote applied R&D and to facilitate technology transfers and commercialization under a new strategic framework for innovation and technology development. Sharing the same missions, ASTRI was designated as the Hong Kong R&D Centre for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT R&D Centre) to perform cutting-edge R&D and enhance Hong Kong's technological competitiveness on a continuous basis.

Awards

ASTRI has received numerous awards. In January 2009, the research team of the Material and Packaging Technologies Group of ASTRI won the "IDW Outstanding Poster Paper Award" at the 15th International Display Workshops (IDW) held in Niigata, Japan. This international award recognizes the company's innovative ideas on liquid crystal display (LCD) and power saving.

In the "Hong Kong ICT Awards 2008," ASTRI has received the "Best Lifestyle Bronze Award" in recognition of the company's achievement in developing innovative ICT applications that enhance people's way of life. The award aims to encourage breakthroughs in the Hong Kong ICT sector while emphasizing on the contribution to quality of life and positive social impacts.

In August 2008, ASTRI received the "Innovative Product Award" of the "Second National Solid State Lighting Innovation Contest." The aim of the contest is to encourage cooperation between universities, research institutes and enterprises in developing LED technology and its application so as to enhance the competitiveness of the Solid State Lighting industry in China.

Also, the A8WiFi Cellular Base Station, jointly developed by ASTRI and ALTAI Technologies Ltd, was awarded the "2007 Hong Kong Awards for Industries: Technological Achievement Grand Award" in the Technological Achievement Category.

In December 2007, ASTRI received the "Innovation Award" from the Wireless Personal Area Networking (WPAN) Working Group of China National Information Technology Standardization Technical Committee (NITS) in Beijing.

ASTRI's Communication Technologies Group was recognized and awarded for its contributions to low rate WPAN (C-WPAN) and high rate WPAN (C-UWB) standards.

In addition to the corporate awards, Dr Allan Wong, the chairman of ASTRI's board of directors, has also been honored as the "Leader of the Year 2006" in the Commerce & Industry/Finance category by the Sing Tao News Corporation Ltd on 29 March 2007.

IC Design Service

ASTRI's IC Designs program has been tasked to assist in the development of local competence, consolidate the technology foundation, and sustain the IC design ecosystems in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. The team aims to help the industry to capture the best opportunities in the fast growing semiconductor and electronics markets worldwide, especially in the Greater China.

Advanced Programmable Video Codec (H.264) Engine for Mobile Devices

The H.264 video processing standard has been developed for next-generation media distribution and compression. This standard promises certain advantages over existing standards, which include drastic bandwidth saving and/or quality improvement. However, the algorithm of H.264 standard is processing-power-hungry, making it extremely complicated to be implemented on mobile platforms.

ASTRI is developing processing algorithms and implementation techniques to efficiently realize the advantages of H.264 standard on a single IC device, while maintaining low power consumption and small size. The resulting algorithms and implementation techniques will be suitable for next-generation mobile devices.

Java™ Acceleration Engine for Mobile Devices

The team is designing a computing architecture optimized to support JAVA execution on mobile devices, providing up to two orders of magnitude improvement in performance versus a software-only implementation, and making sure the solutions are adaptable in low-power environment.

In most handheld environments, an innovative architecture has been proposed and implemented to solve the issues of existing products. With this architecture, it is expected that the powered Java accelerator is able to deliver 8-50 times average to peak performance improvement respectively.

With the technology, mobile and portable palmtop products could be enabled with more versatility, user-friendliness and more vibrant graphical applications.

Communication Technologies

Through R&D programs, the group aims to generate significant industrial impacts to the local industry in the short term, as well as to lay the foundation for Hong Kong to become a world-leading R&D centre and IPR provider in the global wireless communications community in the long term.

Broadband Wireless Access System Platform

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is the next generation of standard based broadband wireless access technologies. It provides IP-based services and applications, quality of service, robust security, user scalability and seamless mobility handover. ASTRI researchers are active in the development of core technologies of mobile WiMAX - base station (BTS) platform, access service network gateway (ASN-GW) and management system (CWMS). With ASTRI's differentiating technologies and industry-based experiences, ASTRI is able to help the BWA infrastructure equipment vendor to produce advanced and completed mobile WiMAX system readily with low cost and flexibility for various applications.

ReOFDM Core Technologies

ReOFDM Core is one of the tracks under Multimode Multifunction System Technologies of Communication Technology KTI. Wireless terminals for future applications will be increasingly multimode. With the reconfigurable multi-mode architecture, a single device can be used in many different regions/countries where different standards are adopted. Instead of relying on dedicated hardware and software for each system, ASTRI is developing more efficient architecture and technologies for multi-mode mobile TV terminal baseband chipsets.

OFDM has taken the centre stage for most of the wireless systems after 3G, including WiFi, WiMAX, DAB, DVB, etc. ASTRI is developing a Reconfigurable OFDM Core which fully leverages the advantages of reconfigurable design and OFDM technology for multimode applications.

ASTRI's ReOFDM Core solution aims to develop baseband chipsets for single mode T-DMB and DVB-H, and multi-mode DVB-H/T-DMB/CMMB standards. The ReOFDM core has the advantages of innovative system algorithm, advanced hardware architecture, small silicon area, low power consumption, and cost effective design.

Future Development

In the next phase of ASTRI's development, ASTRI will build a totally customer-focused R&D organization that not only conducts world-class research, but also excels in bringing about real industrial impact. The company's objectives will establish ASTRI as one of the most influential R&D forces in the entire Greater China region, and a truly strategic asset that would enable Hong Kong to capture additional value from advanced technologies.