Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Qualcomm chip targets 'cost effective' HSDPA handsets
By John Walko

EE Times
Mar 14, 2005

http://www.commsdesign.com/news/market_news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159402944

NEW ORLEANS, LA — Qualcomm will start sampling by the end of this year a 'cost effective' version of the chipset and software it already has in the pipeline for high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) capable handsets and data cards.

The company also revealed Monday (March 14) at the CTIA Wireless expo that it is planning to make available its air interface specification for FLO (Forward Link Only) technology to an industry group, the aim being to get the specification standardized and ratified as quickly as possible for mobile multimedia.

Qualcomm said its FLO technology, based on innovative coding and interleaving techniques, would reduce the operators' costs of delivering multimedia content by dramatically decreasing the number of transmitters that need to be deployed. FLO-technology based multimedia multicasting would complement wireless operators' cellular network voice and data services according to Irwin Jacobs.


Jacobs, who is about to hand over the running of the company to his son Paul while remaining as chairman also stressed that that there are no plans to make any strategic changes in the direction of the company.

The 'cost effective' mobile station modem, dubbed the 6260, for tri-band W-CDMA/HSDPA and quad-band EGPRS handsets, will support peak data rates of 3.6Mbit/s, when combined with Qualcomm's RF CMOS radio. "That will allow OEMs to develop HSDPA devices at attractive price points," said Paul Jacobs, the company's CEO elect.

The 6280 version, previously announced, is aimed at handsets and data cards capable of up to 7.2Mbit/s.

The first device in the range, the 6275, was being demonstrated in several handsets by Qualcomm and its handset partners at the show. "I anticipate the first commercial handsets using this HSDPA solution will start appearing by September or October this year", said Sanjay Jha, president of Qualcomm CDMA technologies. Sierra Wireless is already using the 6275 in a data card, and handset makers such as LG, Samsung and Siemens are designing in the part.

Paul Jacobs said Qualcomm expects 'further major improvements' in CDMA EV-DO capabilities, for both capacity and time to market, as well as reducing latency to about 30ms.

At the show, the company was demonstrating live transmission of VoIP services over the latest version, EV-DO Rev.A. This improves peak data rates on the forward link to 3.1Mbit/s, while reverse link peak speeds can reach 1.8Mbit/s within the same 1.25 MHz carrier.