RF&WirelessBlog

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."

What if every device in your home had its own IP address?

At CES, NXP and Belkin demonstrated a smart home network that gave each light bulb in a house an IPv6 address, so they could be controlled from a smartphone or tablet. The network features a WeMo device from Belkin that enables mobile devices to interact securely (via WiFi) with smart home appliances using JenNet-IP – NXP’s low-power wireless connectivity software based on 6LoWPAN and IEEE 802.15.4.

Industry’s first network processor to support 400 Gigabits per second

Alcatel-Lucent has announced a new network processor, claiming it delivers a fourfold increase in performance over the fastest IP networks available today. By supporting 400 Gigabits-per-second (G) transmission speeds, its new FP3 processor opens up possibilities for bandwidth-intensive services, applications and content, while cutting power consumption by up to 50%. A single FP3 processor could handle 70,000 simultaneous HD video streams or 8.4 million simultaneous retail cloud sessions, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

Femtocells to the fore at the Fira – Mobile World Congress 2011

This year more than ever before, femtocells were one of the key technology stories at Mobile World Congress. But far from just conventional residential femtocells, larger enterprise and 'metro' femtocells were much in evidence this time, and the distinction between these and microcells or picocells is now largely based on which platform they have been developed on rather than their physical size or capacity. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a residential femtocell can now be realised in a USB dongle form factor.

Alcatel-Lucent proposes distributed structure to replace traditional basestation

Alcatel-Lucent has announced lightRadio, a new concept in mobile and broadband infrastructure that it says will both streamlines and radically simplify mobile networks, which is on show at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Pioneered by Alcatel-Lucent's R&D arm Bell Labs, and supported by partners Freescale and HP, the new lightRadio system replaces basestations with much smaller components that are distributed both into the antenna and throughout a cloud-like network, thereby reducing both power consumption and technical complexity.

Clear Mobitel announces UK LTE trial in 800MHz ‘Digital Dividend’ spectrum in Cornwall

Clear Mobitel, whose headquarters are in the UK, has announced this week that it will carry out the UK's first live LTE trial in Cornwall, UK, using the 800MHz 'Digital Dividend' spectrum. The 800MHz RF band was previously occupied by analogue TV transmissions until the completion of the digital switchover in the South West in April 2009. Meanwhile in a separate announcement Strategy Analytics has released figures indicating that more than 40% of LTE devices will operate in the lower frequency bands of 700 – 850MHz up to 2014.

Skyworks PA powers Samsung’s first commercial LTE modem

Skyworks Solutions announced yesterday that Samsung Electronics is using one of its power amplifier (PA) modules in the Samsung GT-B3710 - a USB modem that it says is the world's first commercial LTE device. The compact and efficient SKY77706 LTE PA module is designed for multiple handset and data card applications, and will allow consumers to enjoy the benefits of high-speed data services such as advanced Web TV broadcasting, online gaming and Web conferencing.

ST-Ericsson and Sagem Wireless collaborate on multimode LTE/HSPA+ platform

It has been announced that Sagem Wireless and ST-Ericsson are to partner on the development of multimode LTE/HSPA+ reference designs, devices and modules. The two companies are collaborating on a multimode platform that can connect to LTE, HSPA+, 3G and GSM networks, with the aim of launching a mobile broadband modem before the end of 2010. This builds on an announcement in March of this year of a strategic partnership to co-operate on the development of a wide range of wireless products.

Mobile World Congress: wireless PA chips evolving – single-chip phone getting closer?

The RF power amplifier (PA) has always been the key component in a mobile handset design in terms of defining the power efficiency of the whole phone, and finding ways to optimise its power consumption has been an ongoing quest for semiconductor vendors. And for many years the industry has speculated on the feasibility of the single-chip phone, but the main stumbling block has always been the inability to integrate the PA – which has traditionally been a GaAs chip − with the silicon parts of the circuit because of the different semiconductor technologies.

Some announcements at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week may well have shifted expectations on both of these issues. Firstly RF Micro Devices (RFMD), which leads the GaAs handset PA market, has introduced what it claims is a new category of device based around the PA – the 'power platform'.

But GaAs now has real competition from silicon in its traditional PA stronghold.

OneVoice wins GSMA backing

The GSMA has announced today at Mobile World Congress that it has adopted the work of the One Voice Initiative in order to move towards a standard way of delivering voice and messaging services for LTE. The GSMA's Voice over LTE (VoLTE) initiative has the backing of more than 40 organisations, including many leading mobile operators, handset manufacturers and equipment vendors, who all support the principle of a single, IMS-based voice solution for next-generation networks. The GSMA has also said it will lead the development of the specifications enabling interconnection and roaming between LTE networks, which it expects to be complete by Q1 2011.