3GPP LTE Chipsets

Designed from the ground up

About Altair’s LTE Chip Solutions
Altair offers unique LTE baseband and LTE RF transceiver chipsets, covering all relevant LTE bands and duplex modes globally.  Based on the cutting edge, field proven O²P Software Defined Radio (SDR) processor, Altair’s LTE solution offers unprecedented power/performance capabilities.  Altair's LTE chipset is comprised of a CAT-3 baseband processor capable of handling 100Mbps/50Mbps download/upload speeds respectively, and a range of RF transceivers capable of operating in LTE spectrum bands in Japan, North America, Europe and China, and support both and TDDFDD.

In order to ease testing and characterization of LTE networks, Altair offers low cost LTE Test ExpressCards,which are based on the FourGee LTE Baseband and LTE RFIC chipset and will be available to network operators, eNB (evolved Node B) vendors and other LTE equipment manufacturers to order starting January 2010.

About LTE
LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the next major step in mobile radio communications, and it is introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8.  The aim of this 3GPP project is to improve the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile phone standard and provide an enhanced user experience and simplified technology for next generation mobile broadband.  Researchers and development engineers worldwide – representing more than 60 operators, vendors and research institutes – are participating in the joint LTE radio access standardization effort.

LTE meets the requirements of next generation networks including downlink peak rates of at least 100Mbit/s, 50Mbit/s in the uplink and RAN (Radio Access Network) round-trip times of less than 10ms.  LTE supports flexible carrier bandwidths, from 1.4MHz up to 20MHz as well as both FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time Division Duplex).  The goals for LTE include improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum and refarmed spectrum opportunities, and better integration with other open standards.  The main advantages with LTE are high throughput, low latency, plug and play, FDD and TDD in the same platform, improved end-user experience and simple architecture resulting in low Operating Expenditures (OPEX).  LTE will also support seamless connection to existing networks, such as GSM, CDMA and WCDMA.