Altair Semiconductor and SkyCross announce LTE co-operation

HOD HASHARON, ISRAEL & VIERA, USA: Altair Semiconductor, a 4G chip company developing the world’s most advanced mobile semiconductors for handheld devices, and SkyCross, a global antenna designer and manufacturer, announced co-operation on high-performance, LTE product solutions.

As part of the co-operation, Altair has integrated the SkyCross iMAT MIMO antenna in Altair’s recently announced FourGee LTE USB ExpressCard UE (User Equipment). The card has undergone extensive interoperability testing (IOT) and is currently being used in various field activities throughout the world.

The two companies initially began their cooperation with a focus on mobile WiMAX technology utilizing Altair’s FourGee™-2150/6150 chipset and have been closely working on field testing and optimizations for more than a year.

“The combination of Altair’s comprehensive and power-efficient LTE USB ExpressCard and high-performance iMAT antennas from SkyCross provides the marketplace with one of the first small form factor LTE UEs,” said Oded Melamed, Co-Founder and CEO of Altair Semiconductor. “We look forward to further expanding our relationship with SkyCross as new 4G reference designs that support newly available RF bands are introduced to the marketplace.”

Altair’s FourGee LTE USB ExpressCard UE is one of the industry’s first Category-3 datacard solutions. Based on Altair’s FourGee-3100/6200 baseband/RFIC LTE chipset, the ExpressCard is an ideal test and IOT UE platform for system vendors and carriers involved in the development, field trials, and deployment of LTE systems. The FourGee LTE USB ExpressCard UE is also a reference design for terminal manufacturers working to develop commercial products based on the FourGee™ family of LTE chips.

“SkyCross is pleased to work with Altair to set the bar for high performance in small LTE devices using our iMAT MIMO antennas,” said Dennis McKenna, CEO of SkyCross. “Together, we have developed a winning reference design that device manufacturers and network operators can confidently leverage to offer end-users a sleek device design with an impressive LTE experience.”

Patented SkyCross iMAT antennas are proven to boost capacity, data rates, and reliability of 4G networks. LTE networks require MIMO to deliver compelling broadband throughputs. Mobile devices that support MIMO typically require multiple resonators, but space constraints and interference issues make this a difficult implementation challenge.

SkyCross iMAT antennae utilize a patented antenna design technique that enables a single optimized antenna element to take the place of multiple antennas, which lowers cost, improves MIMO performance, and streamlines the integration process when compared to traditional antennae.