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Mobile World Congress is a tough show for WiMAX, being the official event of the GSM Association, but the rival standard usually manages to make a splash all the same. Last year, a lot of this was driven by the emerging stimulus plans round the world, and WiMAX' place in those. This year will be about WiMAX' credentials as a commercially proven platform, with more operators using it than LTE or HSPA+, and about emerging hot markets like India and Indonesia, as well as updates from flagwavers like Clearwire. But the WiMAX chipmakers will also be looking to diversify into other markets, especially LTE.

Beceem, Altair, Comsys and Sequans all have parallel WiMAX and LTE roadmaps and all will be showing these off at MWC. Comsys and Beceem have been leveraging the natural closeness between Android and WiMAX to offer demonstrations of this combination, with HTC expected to announce an Android smartphone for Clearwire/Sprint, called Supersonic, in the coming weeks. In Barcelona, Comsys will show a reference platform for a WiMAX/EDGE handset running the Google OS.

Sequans has boosted its profile recently by working with Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent to power a TD-LTE network for the upcoming Shanghai Expo in China. Now it is looking to another huge growth market for wireless, India, with its more traditional WiMAX range. The French firm has been chosen by PointRed, the product design subsidiary of India's Gemini Communications, to supply chips for Gemini's major contract with state operator BSNL. Once deployed over the coming year, BSNL's WiMAX network will be the largest in the world, with about 7,000 base stations across several states. PointRed/Gemini has 40% of the deal, with Alvarion and ZTE also involved.

Sequans is providing silicon for several WiMAX devices, including USB dongles, simple modems, Wi-Fi/WiMAX/VoIP modems, and outdoor units. The chip firm could ride on the back of PointRed's expansion program, to get its designs beyond India - the firm ships products to 45 countries and 120 cellcos. It will use Sequans' SQN1200 series of single-die 65nm semiconductor solutions, which reduce cost and power consumption, delivering up to 40Mbps with power consumption of less than 350mW in active mode. The integrated RF covers the three standard WiMAX bands, 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz, in TDD and H-FDD mode. The SQN1210 variant also supports 2 Tx and uplink MIMO to improve cell coverage.

Also adopting Sequans' WiMAX technology is Sagemcom, for its new SX686 indoor WiMAX/Wi-Fi gateway and SX682 residential modem.

The two French firms are partnering to deliver additional WiMAX/Wi-Fi gateway products in 2010 as well as USB dongles, including WiMAX/2G and WiMAX/3G versions.

Boosting its range, Sequans will use MWC to unveil its release of mimoMAX 2.0, an upgrade to the patented technology at the heart of its WiMAX semiconductors. This combines a high efficiency 'maximum likelihood' MIMO decoder on the downlink with dual independent transmit channels on the uplink. The latter can realize a 3dB gain, significantly improving range and throughput. MimoMAX 2.0 adds a new algorithm, 2Tx Closed Loop Diversity (2T CLD), that further improves the performance of the uplink by for 5.5dB overall gain.

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