Altair Semiconductor Launches LTE RF Transceiver - EPN RF & Wireless Blog

Altair Semiconductor Launches LTE RF Transceiver
EPN RF & Wireless Blog

August 6, 2009

Altair Semiconductor has announced the immediate availability of the FourGee-6150 LTE RF transceiver, fabricated on a CMOS process and based on a single conversion architecture. The 4G chip company, based in Hod Hasharon, Israel, says that the new RF chip complements its existing range of baseband processors to create a comprehensive LTE solution.

The FourGee-6150 is an LTE-TDD RF transceiver IC which - in addition to LTE - also complements Altair's baseband processors for mobile WiMAX and XGP. Operating in the 1.9 - 2.7GHz band, the chip integrates VCO, PLL, PA driver and LNA, and has been optimised for receiver sensitivity and LO leakage rejection as well as for low power consumption. It is housed in a miniature WLCSP package measuring 4.4mm x 2.9mm.

"Having an RF transceiver developed in-house is one of the cornerstones of Altair's strategy for LTE," said Oded Melamed, Co-Founder and CEO of Altair Semiconductor. "The FourGee-6150 is optimized to interface with all of Altair's 4G baseband processors, minimizing power consumption and solution cost. We view this as being a strong competitive advantage for Altair over companies only developing baseband processors."

"The LTE landscape is much more complex than that of other 4G technologies due to the fragmented global spectrum map and varying combinations of frequency bands and duplex methods," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development for Altair. "The investment required to develop a global LTE solution is significant. This, combined with the fact that most of a chipset's value lies within the baseband processor, has left many pure play RF transceiver companies reluctant to invest in the technology. Offering a complete chipset solution that covers world-wide frequency bands and duplex methods puts Altair in a strong position as LTE technology rolls out in the coming months."

Altair's comprehensive portfolio for LTE also includes: the FourGee-3100 - a fully optimized LTE CAT-3 baseband processor that will operate with devices from mobile handsets, data cards and USB dongles to various handheld consumer electronics devices; the FourGee-6200 - a multi-band LTE-FDD MIMO transceiver that supports the most popular LTE bands in North America, Japan and Europe; and the FourGee LTE USB ExpressCard UE (User Equipment), designed for customers and partners to use for testing, IOT and field trials, that will be available to order in 4Q09.