Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Clearwire lines up Sequans and Qualcomm for TDD-LTE modem chips

4G network operator Clearwire has announced collaborations with Sequans and Qualcomm, for the development of the Time Division Duplexing (TDD) LTE chipsets, which the company will require as they transition from a provider of WiMAX to the new 4G standard.

Sequans has been working with China Mobile on development of TDE-LTE for several years,  and has demonstrated working devices in 3GPP bands 38 (2.57-2.62 GHz) and 40 (2.3-2.4 GHz). Earlier this year, at the Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm announced that their latest Gobi  MDM9225 and MDM9625 chipsets would support seven different radio access modes on a single baseband chip: including both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) LTE and TDD-LTE. For Clearwire's spectrum, Sequans and Qualcomm will support the 3GPP Band 41 specification (2.496-2.690 GHz).  Clearwire says they expect device availability sometime in 2013.

Deployment of Clearwire's TDD-LTE netwrok is a key component of Sprint's Network Vision strategy, which will require the use of multiple air interfaces (TDD and FDD LTE), in multiple frequency bands.At the Sprint Open Solutions Developer Conference in November last year, Sprint-Nextel CEO Dan Hesse says that he expects multi-mode chipsets to be available that will enable a seamless handover between networks.

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