Wimbledon getting techie with new gadgets

London, June 28 : Wimbledon is getting more and more technically advanced by adopting gizmos to help umpires and players during matches.

In fact, tennis fans can experience the tournament, which reaches its 133rd year, on their phones.

The All England Club, which organizes the tournament's two decade long association with computing firm IBM's has taken the Wimbledon experience to new level as far as technology is concerned.

IBM's Wimbledon executive Alan Flack said that the partnership's focus is on managing and processing data.

"What we do here is an enormous data management exercise-collecting data, presenting it, visualising it in different ways for different audiences, and making it available across all sorts of media platforms," the BBC quoted Flack as saying.

Umpires update the score using PDAs, while a team of data collectors overlooking each court log every moment of the action.

They use a special keypad to log the type of shots in a rally and enter detailed information about exactly how each point is won.

This data is then sent down some 35 miles of cable to the Wimbledon Information Centre where it is processed further.

The players and their trainers have access to the stats which are also sent to other outlets such as the Wimbledon website and broadcasters.

Augmented reality applications use the handset's GPS and built-in compass to overlay a virtual layer over the real-world environment, reports The BBC.

"To make sure we''re giving the best quality video that we can, we''re using a combination of local wi-fi networks that are available and also boosting the 3G network using local pico masts," said Mark Sweatman, technology head at developer Ogilvy One.

"These are positioned around the ground so as people move around they can get the best bandwidth possible for their devices and see the highest quality video streams," he added.