RF&WirelessBlog

High-gain linear power amplifier suits LTE Infrastructure

Avago has introduced a high-gain, high-linearity power amplifier for high datarate applications found in 700-800 MHz cellular infrastructure equipment. The new high-linearity MGA-43128 amplifier provides excellent signal transmission quality with low power consumption for LTE AP, CPE, and picocell equipment and can also serve as a base station driver amplifier.

Ubidyne to show active antenna system for 700MHz LTE at Mobile Word Congress

Ubidyne has announced that it will be featuring a new active antenna solution for the US LTE 700MHz digital dividend band at next month's Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona. The uB700 Antenna Embedded Radio with flexible beam forming and tilting capabilities has just completed independent network trials with a leading US mobile operator, reportedly delivering double throughput at the cell edge and an increase of over 40% cell capacity with the same output power. Ubidyne says these results show that operators can use active antenna technology to address the exploding demand for wireless data by maximising coverage and capacity from their existing macrocells before they need to invest in small cells.

In addition to the new uB700, Ubidyne's uB900 Antenna Embedded Radio supports GSM, UMTS and LTE in the 900MHz frequency band to address mobile networks in Europe, Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Middle East. Future products are also in development for the European digital dividend bands of 800MHz and highband up to 2.6GHz as well as multi-band solutions.

By removing the need for bulky coaxial feeder cables, remote electrical tilt assemblies and additional amplifiers on antenna towers and masts, Ubidyne says that its active antenna technology significantly reduces installation costs and energy consumption while improving radio performance, deployment flexibility, coverage and network capacity. OPEX costs and outages are further reduced by a self-healing mechanism that secures antenna coverage in the event of a system failure.

"The US trials show that active antennas can significantly increase cell capacity using vertical sectorisation and double the uplink throughput at the cell edge as well as increase the coverage area with independent uplink and downlink tilting," said Michael Fränkle, CEO of Ubidyne. "Active antenna technology offers end users a continuous service, while operators will save both CAPEX and OPEX costs; we have the potential to dramatically change the radio architecture and operations of mobile communications without migrating to small cells at tremendous cost. Active antennas have arrived and we are seeing increasing interest and demand from operators around the world."

Tunable LTE antenna module features aperture-tuned technology

SkyCross has launced its VersiTune-LTE tunable antenna module for 4G LTE mobile devices. The antenna module promises enhanced data speeds and multiband, multifunction operation. According to SkyCross, the module simplifies 4G LTE device design and reduces antenna volume by up to half.

China Mobile tests TD-LTE with T&M equipment from Rohde & Schwarz

China Mobile is using Rohde & Schwarz’s CMW500 wideband radio communications tester from for TD-LTE testing. China Mobile uses the equipment in its Research Institute labs to perform RF tests on user equipment for time division LTE (TD-LTE).   
The R&S CMW500 from Rohde & Schwarz is a highly flexible wideband radio communications tester that supports all common wireless communications standards in a single box. It is suitable for all phases in the development and production of chipsets and mobile wireless devices as well as for lab tests by network operators.   

Sweden gets world’s first LTE FDD/TDD Dual-mode commercial network

In a world first, ZTE and Swedish carrier Hi3G have announced that their commercial LTE FDD/TDD dual-mode network has gone live in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö.
Hi3G says it is committed to upgrading its network to enhance the subscriber experience with significantly faster radio access speeds and a much more extensive range of data services. Hi3G signed this LTE network contract with ZTE in March 2011, to cover the whole of Sweden.

IHS iSuppli: LTE to Account for 10% of Global Wireless Subscribers by 2015

Driven by near-universal support among mobile network operators, LTE will enjoy stratospheric growth during the next few years, allowing the technology to account for 10% of worldwide mobile subscribers by 2015, according to IHS iSuppli’s Smartphones & Converged Devices Market Tracker report. Worldwide subscribers to 4G LTE at the end of 2011 will number a projected 11.6 million, up a superheated 4,062% from just 300,000 in 2010.

Test software for circuit-switched voice in LTE released

Anritsu has released new software for users of its MT8820C Radio Communication Analyser to test the CS Fallback function on LTE smartphones and mobile terminals. The MX882012C-016 LTE FDD CS Fallback to W-CDMA/GSM software package is an all-in-one solution for evaluating the CS Fallback function of multimode LTE terminals.

LTE and LTE-A RF interface promises flexibility and customisation

CommAgility has debuted the AMC-RF2x2, a wideband, flexible dual channel RF card in the AdvancedMC format. The new card provides a high quality RF interface for LTE and LTE Advanced wireless infrastructure applications, and is suitable for test equipment, research, demonstrators and trial systems.

Joint solution enables high-performance LTE femtos

At 4G World, Aricent and Picochip announced the launch of a joint LTE eNodeB reference framework. The carrier-class product is a complete solution design, from RF interface through to S1 and X2 interfaces and includes Aricent base station software stacks integrated with Picochip baseband and silicon. Rigorously tested for functionality and performance, the base station solution is designed to help telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) deliver high-performance base stations in multiple form factors, including femto, pico, metro and micro-cell configurations and is available for both LTE FDD and TD-LTE variants.

First public demo of Cavium’s base station-on-a-chip

Cavium is set to demonstrate its Octeon Fusion small cell base station on a chip technology in public for the first time later this week at the 4G World 2011 conference (October 25-27 in Chicago).