Date: 15/01/2009

2G/3G/LTE RF transceiver supports data rates up to 150 Mbps

Infineon Technologies is sampling its second generation Long-Term-Evolution (LTE) RF transceiver. The SMARTi LU is a single-chip 65nm CMOS RF transceiver providing 2G/3G/LTE functionality with a DigRF digital Baseband interface for data rates up to 150 Mbps in LTE Networks.

Additionally Infineon announced the 3rd Generation of its successful 3G RF transceiver family, SMARTi UE. The SMARTi UEmicro is optimized for lowest cost 3G designs and enables an RF-system e-BoM for Dual Band WCDMA/EDGE to 6.50 US-dollars. That's about 40 per cent lower than available solutions on the market.

Stefan Wolff, Vice President of the Wireless Solutions Division and General Manager of the RF Engine business at Infineon said, "In addition to being the innovation leader for LTE RF, we are also addressing the need for lowest cost 3G mobiles for the mass market by further reducing component count and system cost with SMARTi UEmicro. Meeting the ambitious cost targets of the consumer segment will fuel the commercial roll out of 3G technology to emerging markets."

SMARTi LU
SMARTi LU is a 2G/3G/LTE multi-mode RF transceiver compliant to 3GPP Rel.7 and Rel.8. It supports up to six 3G and LTE Bands simultaneously with Quad Band GSM/EDGE. Its feature list includes LTE FDD class 4 (up to 150 Mbps downlink, 50 Mbps uplink) MIMO Rx diversity (2Rx + 1Tx), HSPA+, HSPA, WCDMA and GSM/GPRS/EDGE. The device is supporting the global spread of HSPA/LTE spectrum throughout a wide variety of bands. SMARTi LU is based on a standard 65nm CMOS technology provided by multiple semiconductor foundries.

Samples and measurement results will be shown at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

SMARTi UEmicro
The SMARTi UEmicro is a single chip 2G/3G CMOS RF transceiver for the low end segment of the 3G market. It is a cost down version of the proven and widely adopted SMARTi UE with a backward compatible hard- and software interface via DigRF v3.09. With the elimination of external Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA's) and a simplified co-banded RF frontend without Rx filters SMARTi UEmicro is perfectly matching the mass market requirements for ultra low cost 3G handsets. Customer sampling will start beginning of 2nd quarter 2009, mass production is planned for end of 2009.