Few years ago, the LTE (News - Alert) data cards were expected to sweep the market. But due to the delay in development of this technology and the high costs involved, this technology has not grown as expected. Now, Altair Semiconductor (News - Alert) has teamed up with LitePoint to showcase the FourGee LTE USB ExpressCard UE.

 

LTE technology is part of the GSM evolutionary path beyond 3G technology, which has been developed after EDGE, UMTS, HSPA and HSPA Evolution.

 

A Category-3 device can support 100 Mbps down-link and 50 Mbps up-link throughput based on the 3GPP LTE specifications. The Altair FourGee LTE ExpressCard UE delivers Category-3 performance. Based on Altair's LTE chips – the FourGee3100 and 6200 - the new ExpressCard consumes little power and takes up little space. Also, to ensure that handset and data card manufacturers can ramp to high volume quickly, Altair offers a turnkey hardware reference design.

 

“We expect a lot of demand for LTE in a variety of devices, so LTE data cards will hit peak volumes quickly,” said Eran Eshed, co-founder and vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Altair. “The FourGee LTE USB ExpressCard UE combined with LitePoint's test solution offers a way for developers and device manufacturers to design LTE products quickly, enabling them to meet high demand.”

 

Altair has teamed up with LitePoint Corporation (News - Alert) to offer a high-volume-ready calibration and verification test capability to make the solution complete. For the first time, LitePoint is unveiling its new 3G/4G high-volume test solution, called 'IQxstream,' and demonstrating some of its capabilities with Altair's reference design.

 

Recently, the company announced a joint LTE collaboration with Aeroflex (News - Alert), a global provider of LTE test equipment. Through the collaboration, Altair and Aeroflex will perform interoperability testing to enable joint customer development and testing on a pre-tested and qualified user equipment test setup. Altair has ordered multiple 7100 LTE digital radio test sets from Aeroflex.