Altair unveils TD-LTE reference design for wireless terminal manufacturers

HOD HASHARON, ISRAEL: Altair Semiconductor, the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets, has announced the commercial availability of a new TD-LTE terminal reference design for use in a range of products, including USB dongles, data cards, CPEs and handheld devices.

The reference design features Altair's field proven FourGee-3100/6200 chipset and a complete and interoperability-tested LTE software stack. Spectrum bands supported include India's recently auctioned TD-LTE band 40, China's band 38, and a variety of other bands which are being trialed and deployed in Japan, North America and Europe.

The reference design features a unified TDD/FDD architecture using a single chipset and a single software stack, enabling a small form factor and cost efficient integration for multimode devices.

"The demand for TD-LTE products, mainly in emerging markets such as India and China, is rapidly increasing, forcing carriers to develop cost-effective solutions for this growing segment," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair Semiconductor.

"Thanks to the maturity of Altair's FD-LTE solution which had sampled in September 2009, and the extensive testing it had undergone with most tier one infrastructure vendors, releasing a TD-LTE version was a logical next step for us."

TD-LTE, a 4G wireless standard which was designed to operate in unpaired spectrum, is emerging as the de-facto 4G standard for TDD spectrum globally. Since China Mobile's selection of TD-LTE as its 4G upgrade path, TD-LTE has received strong support from carriers such as Reliance Industries (RIL), Softbank Mobile and others in Europe and North America as well as from carriers such as Yota, which recently announced a strategic shift from WiMAX to LTE.

Recently, Altair announced a partnership with San Francisco-based IPWireless to develop a suite of multi-band LTE modem products that will support key frequency bands ideally suited to global LTE deployments. The companies will integrate Altair's
cutting-edge software-defined radio baseband processor into IPWireless' LTE devices.

The first consumer-friendly LTE USB modem device will support multiple frequency bands including the 800MHz digital dividend band, 1800 MHz and TD-LTE's 2.5 GHz. Subsequent devices will also support the entire US 700MHz and AWS frequency.