Fabless chip developer Altair Semiconductor has released ALT2150 mobile WiMAX baseband processor to leading handheld device and module manufacturers. Altair claims that ALT2150 is the world’s smallest and most power-efficient mobile WiMAX processor. It implements full WiMAX Forum Wave-2 PHY layer and MAC functionality, and offers substantial performance enhancements beyond this profile.

The ALT2150 is the first in a family of chipsets from Altair crafted to achieve excellent modem performance, while consuming a fraction of the power of any mobile WiMAX chipset available today, said the supplier. This product is focused on battery-operated, handheld devices that impose very strict power consumption and size requirements on semiconductor content, stated Altair.

ALT2150 features include full compliance with mobile WiMAX Wave-2 features, patent pending extreme low power technology, power consumption figures of a complete mobile WiMAX MIMO solution, which includes an RF transceiver, power amplifier and power management.

Some key power specs provided by the manufacturer are as shown below:

According to Altair, it incorporates proprietary optimized OFDMA processor (O2P) for excellent PHY performance, ultra-low power consumption and future proof algorithmic implementation. And offers high performance MIMO decoder, supporting up to 64QAM Matrix-B decoding. Plus, its built-in, patent pending solution allows coexistence of WiMAX with Bluetooth and WiFi. It comes in a 7 x 7 mm low-profile BGA package.

• Altair Semiconductor

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