LTE offers 100Mbit/s mobile downloads, says processor firm

Altair Semiconductor has announced that its TD-LTE standard chipset for 4G mobile has achieved download data rate of 100Mbit/s in a commercial USB dongle in a live over-the-air demonstration.

This is significant because the hope is that next generation mobile phone networks based on the LTE standard will dramatically improve download data speeds.

"This capability substantially upgrades the service offerings of TDD carriers and allows them to offer similar user experiences as FDD carriers," said Eran Eshed, co-founder and v-p of marketing and business development at Altair Semiconductor.

The 100Mbit/s sustained IP throughput was possible because of a higher instantaneous peak throughput of 150Mbit/s.

The demonstration used a commercial eNB in a standard TD-LTE configuration (Config-2), which is being used by carriers in numerous worldwide markets.

Altair is shipping TDD/FDD LTE chipsets. The FourGee chipsets are based on a proprietary software defined radio (SDR) processor architecture.

“In order to achieve such high throughputs, patent pending MIMO and channel estimation algorithms are employed over the SDR processor,” said the company.

CEVA, another developer of SDR-based mobile processor IP for 4G, last month introduced HSPA+ software libraries for its CEVA-XC processor cores which are integrated into system-in-chip (SoC) mobile silicon.

The software will support the implementation of software-based multimode HSPA/HSPA+/LTE/LTE-A handset designs. 

The importance of this is that will enable 4G LTE developers to design multimode systems with the necessary backward compatibility with 3G for mobile applications.