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February 25, 2013

The Future of LTE at MWC

It’s a busy week in Barcelona, as the Mobile World Congress has taken the city by storm. There have been a host of announcements coming out of MWC, many of which focus on the 4G LTE space. Here are some of the highlights so far.

First, the Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation, a fabless provider of radio frequency integrated circuits, expanded its DuNE Digitally Tunable Capacitor product line. The company added six second-generation devices for antenna tuning in 4g LTW smartphones. The new devices are intended to meet the harmonic and linearity requirements of LTE and support a variety of tuning circuit topologies.

Another semiconductor company, GCT, had some news out of MWC as well. The designer of 4G mobile semiconductor solutions has unveiled an LTE single chip that delivers 4G LTE connectivity to LG Electronics’ new mobile ultrabook and tablet. The chip is designed for easy integration into next-gen computing devices and enables LTE connectivity in LG’s new Windows 8 line.

There was also news regarding companies that teamed up for new innovations. Two companies that are working together are Aricent and Mindspeed, which have joined forces to launch a next-generation metrocell reference design that supports 20MHz LTE FDD and throughputs of up to 150Mbps. The companies have combined hardware from Aricent and software stacks from Mindspeed to deal with high performing small cell solutions.

Another announcement came from Pulse Electronics, which has developed a tunable, co-located LTE antenna structure. It contains two LTE Multiple Input, Multiple Output antennas in the same end of the device to provide nine frequency bands of functionality in just 3.2 cubic centimeters of space. This antenna configuration is designed for smartphones that use RF chips with a two pole double through antenna switch and metal ring.

Openwave Mobility had some news as well this week, announcing the general availability of Integra4, a mobile broadband value-added services platform. It offers a throughput of 100Gbps of HTTP traffic on a 16-blade chassis and is touted as one of the most scalable and high-performing mobile data VAS platforms on the market.

In other LTE chip news, Sequans introduced its first LTE-Advanced chip. The new chip, the SQN3220 is part of Sequans’ Cassiopeia platform and will support 3GPP Release 10 specifications. The third generation LTE platform solution has a key capability of carrier aggregation of 40MHz total bandwidth.

Finally, Novatel Wireless announced that its next-generation MiFi 2 will launch commercially with Ben on Canada’s largest 4g LTE Network. The MiFi 2 is touted as the first mobile hotspot with a touchscreen display and a host of features.

Those are some of the top stories in the 4G LTE space from MWC so far. Check back soon for more news and updates!




Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli


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