Intel today announced design completion of its first mobile WiMAX baseband chip. Combined with the company’s previously announced single-chip, multi-band WiMAX/Wi-Fi radio, the pair creates a complete chipset called the Intel WiMAX Connection 2300. It will be used in future laptops and mobile devices.
The Intel WiMAX Connection 2300 chipset design was demonstrated during Sean Maloney’s keynote at the 3G World Congress and Mobility Marketplace in Hong Kong (Press Releases).
Maloney showed an Intel Centrino Duo laptop with mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005), Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n), and high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) 3G capabilities successfully accessing the Internet at broadband speeds over a mobile WiMAX network.
The completed design of the Intel WiMAX Connection 2300 brings Intel a step closer to an integrated wireless system-on-chip that will help drive WiMAX adoption by maximizing useable space in mobile devices. As laptops become smaller, for example, they will have limited space for new technologies. Integration also helps enable ubiquitous connectivity on ultra mobile PCs, consumer electronics and handheld devices that have significant size constraints for the number of cards or components.
For the first time, Intel incorporated multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) functionality into the baseband chip. It employs the same software for Intel’s WiMAX and Wi-Fi solutions to help ensure unified management. Over-the-air provisioning supports easy configuration based purely on consumer purchases of mobile devices.
The baseband chip also has low power requirements for increased battery life and lower thermals to support smaller and thinner designs.
With the initial Intel WiMAX Connection 2300 chipset design now complete, Intel plans to focus on validating and testing the product, with plans to sample both card and module forms beginning in late 2007.
South Korea’s LG Electronics plans a range of products that support mobile WiMax technology next year, a company executive said at the ITU Telecom World 2006 conference and exhibition in Hong Kong.
The first products from LG to support mobile WiMax will be a version of the company’s XNote C1 Tablet PC and a PDA based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 software. The KC1 PDA will support both mobile WiMax and EV-DO. Mobile WiMax offers downlink speeds up to 10.2Mbps, which is expected to increase to 40Mbps or so next year.
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