4G Terminal Chipsets Present Challenges And Opportunities - Mobile Dev & Design

4G Terminal Chipsets Present Challenges And Opportunities
Mobile Dev & Design
Eran Eshed, Altair Semiconductor

Dec. 11, 2009

The world of communications is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift. The cellular communications medium, once used for making voice calls, is now in the midst of a fascinating transition to become a source for multimedia communications and personal services consumption. The state-of-the-art 3.5G cellular technology, also known as UMTS-HSPA and CDMA-EVDO, is giving way to a much more advanced wireless communications scheme based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and smart antenna techniques.

These technologies can efficiently relay more digital data between the network and user at very high speeds, even under extreme mobility conditions. Such next-generation technologies, also called 4G standards, include 3rd Generation Partnership Project Long-Term Evolution (3GPP LTE), mobile WiMAX 802.16e, and the Japanese Extended Global Platform (XGP).

The 4G air-interface includes three main semiconductor building blocks. The baseband processor implements the modem functionality. The radio upconverts and downconverts the baseband/RF signals respectively. And, the RF front end includes the power amplifier, filtering, and matching and switching circuitry.

The WiMAX Role

In the world of cellular 2G and 3G, a single chip vendor supplied traditional baseband and radio ICs. As the cellular world transitions to 4G chip vendors face new challenges in developing solutions. Observing the WiMAX semiconductor ecosystem and how it evolved over the past few years enables us to better understand some of the challenges LTE semiconductor companies are likely to face in the coming years.

In the early days of WiMAX, different companies developed and supplied baseband processors and radio ICs. The baseband processor, which is the  brain  behind the chipset, is the part of the system that requires most of the semiconductor R&D investment. The baseband is also the area in which these chip vendors differentiated their product. Given this, companies kept baseband processor development in-house. The radio IC, on the other hand, was considered a complementing component that could be sourced from companies with a sole focus on the RF silicon domain.

As WiMAX baseband processors matured and became more commoditized, the baseband-focused companies moved toward expanding their portfolio to include the radio ICs. The goal was to own a larger share of the pie, and in some cases provide an integrated baseband and radio to the marketplace.

While the baseband processor was agnostic of the spectrum band, and therefore able to operate in the different standard profiles, the radio IC had to be specifically designed to support different frequency bands. The leading WiMAX baseband suppliers today, including Altair, Beceem, GCT, and Sequans, offer both baseband and radio ICs as part of their WiMAX product portfolios. As a result, the pure-play radio IC companies saw a decline in sales as their radio products only served as gap fillers in the product roadmaps of the baseband companies.

Eran Eshed is the cofounder and vice president of marketing and business development for Altair Semiconductor. Previously, he served as director of marketing for Texas Instruments  cable modem business unit, where he was responsible for all marketing activities including creating and implementing strategic revenue plans, managing major accounts, and channel development activities for OEM and ODM customers in North America and Asia. Prior to joining Texas Instruments, he spent eight years in various hardware and silicon development and management positions, with various startups including Libit Signal Processing. He holds a BS in electrical engineering from the Tel Aviv University. He can be reached at eran@altair-semi.com.