Altera, Sequans offer mobile WiMAX chipset

Altera Corp. and Sequans Communications announced the availability of a mobile WiMAX base station modem chipset supporting the recently ratified IEEE 802.16e-2005 broadband wireless access standard. The Sequans SQN2110 modem chipset is comprised of three Stratix II FPGAs.

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 base stations, a cell radius of 3km-10km and system access speeds of up to 40Mbps per channel.

Altera's Stratix II FPGAs are used for the medium control access and PHY layers of the 802.16e-2005 channel card. The chipset supports the first-wave certification profile stage as well as hardware requirements and processing speeds. Each wave will include new certification profiles and/or new functions.

Sequans will also offer the previously announced SQN1110, a complementary IEEE 802.16e-2005 mobile station modem chip, for customer premise equipment.

The Sequans' mobile WiMAX evaluation kits have shipped recently. Availability of the chipsets is planned for June 2006.