Electronic Design
September 15, 2010
According to Altair Semiconductor, its Digital Dividend (Band 20) Reference Design embarks as one of the world’s first such designs and the only one that has already completed IOT testing with tier-one infrastructure vendors. It features the company’s established FourGee LTE chipset and interoperability-tested software stack and is viable for use in a wide range of products. These include USB dongles, CPEs, and routers, all of which users can expect to be market-ready by the end of the year. Due to reliable propagation characteristics, Digital Dividend spectrum will become especially important for use in rural-broadband installations. Digital Dividend is UHF spectrum that, until now, has been used for analog television broadcasting. As a greater number of consumers switch from analog to digital televisions, this spectrum has become available for use in carrying mobile broadband signals. Additionally, as per the GSMA, it is approximately 70% cheaper to provide mobile broadband coverage over a given geographic area using Digital Dividend spectrum than with the 2.1 GHz spectrum currently employed for 3G services. ALTAIR SEMICONDUCTOR, Plano, TX. (469) 361-1358.