Altera and Sequans Provide First Mobile WiMAX Base Station Modem Chipset

May 16, 2006

Altera Corporation and Sequans Communications today announced the availability of the first mobile WiMAX basestation modem chipset supporting the recently ratified IEEE 802.16e-2005 broadband wireless access standard. Comprised of three Stratix II FPGAs, the Sequans SQN2110 modem chipset provides wireless OEMs with a ready-made solution for developing mobile WiMAX systems.

Mobile WiMAX is a technology based on IEEE's most recent iteration for wideband wireless communications. It provides mobile wireless connectivity without line-of-sight to basestations, a cell radius of three to ten kilometers and system access speeds of up to 40 Mbps per channel.

"Altera's FPGAs allow rapid delivery of an off-the-shelf flexible chipset to accommodate various customer needs and evolving WiMAX specifications, and presents a clear cost reduction path through pin-to-pin HardCopy structured ASIC," said Bernard Aboussouan, Sequans' vice president of marketing and business development. "As a result, our solution meets Wave 1 mobile WiMAX certification requirements and offers a clear migration path to Wave 2 certification profile, including the support of adaptive antenna systems (AAS) and multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO)."