Altair Semiconductor Launches World’s Most Advanced Single-Mode LTE-A Chipset Family

New Product Line Built on Over 4 Years of Global Carrier and Customer Deployment Experience

HOD HASHARON, Israel, February 20, 2013 — Altair Semiconductor, the world’s leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets, today announced the launch of a new family of chipsets, which includes two new baseband processors – the FourGee™-3800 and FourGee™-3802 – and a new radio chip – the FourGee™-6300.

The new chipsets are built on the architecture of Altair’s successful FourGee-3100/6202, and boast enhanced features and increased performance, keeping pace with the newest LTE standards.

Key features of the new chipset family include:

*Support for LTE Release-10 features
*Based on Altair’s 3^rd generation SDR architecture, software upgradable to future Release-11
*Category 4 throughput 150 Mbps DL / 50 Mbps UL
*Support for Carrier Aggregation (CA)
*High performance 700MHz network processor subsystem
*Wide frequency band span of 400-3800MHz with 6 concurrent LTE bands for both primary and diversity antennas, enabling global band combinations
*Integrated IMS/VoLTE with support for HD-Voice
*Incorporates Altair’s proprietary interference cancellation (INCA™) technology
*Incorporates Envelope Tracking (ET) technology
*Supports enhanced Inter-cell Interference Coordination (eICIC)
*Ultra low Active and Idle power consumption
*Rich set of host and peripheral interfaces to support a variety of applications including smartphones, tablets, mobile hotspots, routers and M2M

“The industry is rapidly adopting single mode LTE as the de-facto technology for implementing the ‘Internet of Things’, replacing 3G+4G functionality in devices with 4G-only capabilities,” said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP Marketing of Altair. “This chipset is a real game changer in terms of performance, features and cost, enabling our customers to continue launching highly differentiated products, while keeping pace with the rapid evolution of the LTE industry.”

Research by Analyst firm Wireless 20/20 shows an increasing trend towards the adoption of single-mode LTE in consumer devices and M2M. “Unencumbered by the IPR, semiconductor and BOM costs associated with 2G/3G technologies, single mode LTE chipsets are able to reach price points not possible by 2G/3G/4G multi-mode solutions,” said Haig Sarkissian of Wireless 20/20. “This provides opportunities and incentives for service providers and equipment vendors to embed LTE in devices otherwise not possible with multi-mode solutions.”

About Altair Semiconductor

Altair Semiconductor is the world’s leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G semiconductors. Altair’s chipsets can be found in approximately 30 end-user devices – ranging from USB dongles to smartphones – built by its more than 15 customers across North America, Europe, China, India and Taiwan – making it one of the only TDD/FDD LTE chipset manufacturers in the world with commercially available products. Altair’s comprehensive product portfolio includes baseband processors, multi-band RF transceivers for both FDD and TDD bands, and a range of reference hardware and product level protocol stack software. Based on a novel, proprietary Software Defined Radio (SDR) processor, codenamed “O[2]P™”, Altair’s products are the smallest and most highly power optimized in the industry, offering an unmatched combination of flexibility and performance. For more information, visit the company’s website at altair-semi.com.  Follow Altair on Twitter: @AltairSemi