Infineon's baseband processor suits 3.5G cellphones

Infineon Technologies, a supplier of advanced communication ICs and solutions, announced sample availability of its latest baseband processor for 3.5G multimedia cellphones as well as its second-generation platform for ultra-low-cost handsets.

The 3.5G baseband processor S-GOLD3H provides data rates of up to 7.2Mbps. According to the press release, the mobile phone platform featuring the EGOLDvoice chip may further reduce the number of components in a basic cellphone from currently 100 to less than 50.

The S-GOLD3H is the heart of Infineon's next-generation mobile multimedia platform, which is called MP-EH, supporting high-speed downlink packet access data rates of up to 7.2Mbps. Other components of the MP-EH are a power management chip SM-Power3; an RF transceiver SMARTi 3GE; a six-band WCDMA and quad-band EDGE RF transceiver; a Bluemoon UniCellular chip for Bluetooth connectivity; an assisted GPS positioning single-chip named Hammerhead; and a WLAN low power chip dubbed Wildcard LP. The S-GOLD3H supports GSM, EDGE, GPRS and WCDMA cellular networks.

The E-GOLDvoice chip is the center of Infineon's second platform generation for low-cost handsets, the ULC2. The new chip includes the baseband processor, the radio frequency transceiver, SRAM memory, and even power management for the mobile telephone. The new chip includes the baseband processor, the radio frequency transceiver, SRAM memory and power management for cellphones. Compared to the ULC1 platform offered by Infineon, this new platform can allegedly to lower the bill-of-material costs for a low-cost cellphone by approximately 20 percent, to about $16.