China Mobile bridges LTE flavors with Skycross
Partners show off MIMO antenna design that spans 12 frequency bands, as well as TDD and FDD modes
Published: 21 June, 2011
READ MORE: China | China Mobile | SkyCross | LTE
China Mobile has had to strike a difficult balance with its 4G strategy. Forced to use a TDD technology, it has thrown its weight behind TD-LTE, but risked repeating its 3G nightmare and becoming a wireless island with no ecosystem. However, TD-LTE is expected to gain far broader uptake, partly because key operators such as Mobile itself, and Vodafone, have pushed for devices and infrastructure to support both LTE flavors from day one.
These two carriers have spent the past two years urging chipmakers to incorporate TDD and FDD support in their LTE products as a matter of course, giving both strands a wide range of devices, and providing cellcos with flexibility. They have met with mixed success, with most silicon vendors believing dual-mode is too expensive, and too niche a requirement, to support in the first phase of LTE. But China Mobile is looking to other routes too, and has announced a collaboration with Skycross for a cross-standard antenna.
The China Mobile Research Institute and Skycross have unveiled a MIMO antenna design that will be licensed to the industry as well as to Mobile's own suppliers. The product is aimed at multimode, multiband handsets and other devices, able to tune into 12 different frequency bands from 700MHz to 2.7GHz, and to most of the 3G and 4G standards (both LTE flavors, Mobile's TD-SCDMA plus GSM/EDGE/W-CDMA).
The announcement is the result of a partnership first mooted last September, when the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding to create antennas that would support the carrier's current and future networks, and allow for global roaming. The cellco provided detailed antenna performance requirements meeting 3GPP specifications, while SkyCross carried out the design and implementation.
Bill Huang, general manager of China Mobile Research Institute, said: "Our joint development effort with SkyCross has demonstrated that cost-effective, multimode, multiband antennas are technically achievable for global LTE handsets. We believe this demonstration will accelerate the development of universal handsets capable of roaming worldwide, as well as create the manufacturing volume to meet all operators' requirements."
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