New chips bring mobile WiMAX nearer

Stuart Corner
Monday, 10 September 2007 12:55

IT Industry - Strategy

Separate announcements by two chipmakers ApaceWave Technologies and Sequans suggest that the eagerly awaited any overdue availability of mobile WiMAX products is getting nearer.

ApaceWave Technologies, a developer of WiMAX baseband processors, has announced its APW-2000 mobile station system-on-a-chip (SoC) at the WiMAX Summit in Beijing claiming that it "requires a minimum of external components to create WiMAX modems for CPEs, PC Cards, USB adapters, and portable handheld devices...[and supports] all 802.16 mobile WiMAX Wave 2 features, including MIMO matrix A & B, and beam forming."

APW-2000 samples and reference design kits will be available Q1 2008. ApaceWave is headquartered in Fremont, California with R&D offices in Beijing and is claimed to be "under the leadership of seasoned executives who are committed to deliver best price-performance WiMAX devices and reference designs."

Sequans meanwhile has introduced what it says is the industry’s first mac/phy chip for mobile WiMAX base stations. The release of the SQN2130 chip follows Sequans’ earlier release of the SQN1130 chip for CPE. Sequans now claims to be the only mobile WiMAX chipmaker supplying both base station and subscriber station chips.

Georges Karam, Sequans’ CEO,said: “Not only do we provide both ends of the link, assuring interoperability and giving valuable time-to-market and certification advantages, but we also provide the highest chip performance at both ends of the link, supporting the manufacture of the industry’s most advanced Mobile WiMAX systems and devices.”

Sequans already claims to have several key customers for the product, including "new soon-to-be-announced customers that include world-leading equipment manufacturers with global deployment plans."