Through our research in wireless, video, and AI, InterDigital leads not only in the development of key standardized technologies but also plays a central role in the kinds of industry partnerships that are the hallmark of standards like 5G and Wi-Fi.
InterDigital develops standardized technologies that help consumers connect with loved ones and colleagues wherever they are, and that lower barriers to entry for new market entrants. This development process isn’t done easily but is built through a spirit of both competition and collaboration amongst industry participants. As we develop next-generation technological standards, companies provide their own solutions to specific technical problems, and then the industry as a whole collaborates to select the best technological advances for each version of a new standard.
Engineers from the leading contributing companies like InterDigital, are elected by their peers to take on key leadership roles in standards development organizations (SDOs) such as 3GPP, ETSI and ATIS in cellular wireless, IEEE in Wi-Fi, and DVB and MPEG in video.
This year, World Standards Day focuses on the UN’s sustainable development goal which celebrates the power of partnerships to help bring long-term sustainable solutions to some of the world’s most daunting challenges. It gives us an opportunity to recognize not only the power of standards that deliver more advanced devices and services, but also to reflect on how the ethos of partnership, inherent in standards development, is something we should protect and promote.
At InterDigital, we invest significant resources into our contributions to SDOs and the leadership roles we take on at standards groups and research bodies. Overall, we own thousands of patents that we believe are essential or might become essential to a standard, and we hold more than 100 leadership positions in wireless and video standards bodies.
We also foster close ties with universities and other research institutions around the world, where we engage in early-stage research, much of which is carried out before the standardization process for a specific technology begins. This pre-standards work, which takes place many years ahead of commercialization, is a hallmark of InterDigital’s research.
One partnership-based project that we launched in 2022 is our Nemo.AI Common Lab, which we established in partnership with Inria, France’s premier public research institute for digital science. This partnership focuses on exploring and fostering innovative applications of AI, many of which may eventually become components of their relevant global standards.
The lab — named for the adventurous Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea — is built upon harmonized research priorities on immersive media, AI for digital experiences, and energy-efficient technologies.
It also helps that both InterDigital and Inria operate research facilities in Rennes in Northwestern France, making collaboration even easier through frequent in-person collaboration and shared access to infrastructure.
One project that Nemo.AI launched earlier this year is known as Nisk.ai and is focused on the use of AI to develop energy-efficient video coding. The increase of video traffic on today’s networks reflects how video enables closer connections and more immersive experiences, but also brings a growing energy footprint across connected devices. By using AI-driven approaches to video compression, the Nisk.ai team focuses on delivering video content of equivalent visual quality as other high-quality coding tools, but at lower bitrates, thereby reducing bandwidth requirements and energy consumption.
As our work in Nemo.AI demonstrates, partnerships can be particularly valuable in early-stage research before the formal process of standardization has begun. Working collaboratively allows us to pool expertise and resources to perfect technical advances that can ultimately be contributed to a standard.
But it’s not just in pre-standards work where we make an impact. For example, our video engineers led a drive to ensure that energy consumption is taken into account in the development of new, standardized video technologies.
We appreciate the power of partnership in every area of our research, and we recognize that the benefits can be exponential when the technologies that result from these partnerships are incorporated into standards. That’s because, as new standards are implemented into new products and services, consumers benefit from seamless interoperability, and device manufacturers get lower barriers to entry, which in turn helps fuel widespread global adoption.
It's not just in research where we see the power of partnership in standards. At their core, standards are about a partnership between innovators who drive the development of new technologies and those companies that implement these technologies in their devices and services.
Our years of working closely with the likes of Inria in areas such as advanced AI techniques for video coding mean that we have carried out the research so that implementers can focus on what they do best in bringing new products to market.
It’s this kind of collaboration that drives how we connect and showcases how standards shape innovation.