Altair Semiconductor and LitePoint Showcase Advanced LTE Data Card With High-Volume Test at Mobile World Congress

BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- There's a lot of buzz about LTE, the 4G standard that promises to deliver wireless broadband networking. But real examples of LTE data cards are few and far between. The first Category-3 UE data card is from Altair Semiconductor – the FourGee™ LTE USB ExpressCard UE - and it is on display in Hall 2 at space J11, the LitePoint Corporation booth. What you'll see is not only a real 4G data card reference design, but a real high-volume manufacturing test solution for this advanced LTE device.

"We expect a lot of demand for LTE in a variety of devices, so LTE data cards will hit peak volumes quickly," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP Marketing and Business Development at Altair. "The FourGee™ LTE USB ExpressCard UE combined with LitePoint's test solution offers a way for developers and device manufacturers to design LTE products quickly, enabling them to meet high demand."

Category-3

Based on the 3GPP LTE specifications (Release 8), a Category-3 device can support 100 Mbps down-link and 50 Mbps up-link throughput. The Altair FourGee™ LTE ExpressCard UE delivers Category-3 performance. Based on Altair's LTE chips – the FourGee™3100 and 6200 - the new ExpressCard consumes little power and takes up little space. It covers a range of 700 MHz to 2.7 GHz (FDD or TDD) and supports all bandwidth channels up to 20 MHz.

High-Volume Ready

Altair offers a turnkey hardware reference design to ensure that handset and data card manufacturers can ramp to high volume quickly. To make the solution complete, Altair has teamed up with LitePoint Corporation to offer a high-volume-ready calibration and verification test capability.  LitePoint is unveiling, for the first time, its new 3G/4G high-volume test solution, called "IQxstream," and demonstrating some of its capabilities with Altair's reference design.

"We also believe that LTE data cards will need to ramp quickly," said John Lukez, LitePoint director of product management. "Altair paves the way to rapid design, and we provide the quickest deployment and fastest testing for high-volume verification at the lowest cost."

About Altair Semiconductor

Altair Semiconductor is the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G semiconductors. The company's products provide device manufacturers integrating any 4G technology into their products with a highly power-optimized, robust and cost-effective solution. 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 "O2P™," Altair's products are the smallest and most highly power optimized in the industry, offering an unmatched combination of flexibility and performance. Altair is privately held and has raised a total of $48M in three rounds of financing from investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, BRM Capital, ETV Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Jerusalem Venture Partners, and Pacific Technology Fund.

About LitePoint

LitePoint is a leader in consumer electronics wireless testing that designs, manufactures, and sells wireless test systems. Its products coupled with responsive, experienced support enable the company to offer the quickest solutions deployment, fastest no-compromise testing, the most streamlined and simple operation, plus greatest overall savings. Companies experienced in wireless design and manufacturing, as well as those new to wireless, rely on LitePoint because its unique position in the wireless value chain plus its products and support services help them go quickest from design to volume manufacturing.

SOURCE Altair Semiconductor