LTE wireless modules will be smaller, lighter and less power-hungry than UMTS modules, according to NXP, which today launched its LTE chip-set capable of data transfer rates of 150 Mbits downlink and 50 Mbits uplink, and supporting LTE, HSPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS and GSM.

"We won't make the same mistakes as with LTE as were made with UMTS with its bulky, power hungry devices, and things which didn't fit together," Carsten Schimanke, marketing manager for NXP's cellular business, told Electronics Weekly.

Asked what makes LTE devices different, Schimanke replied: "The advantages are partly derived from the LTE standard itself, plus the use of our soft modem approach." It means that an LTE module will be small enough to fit in a USB dongle.

At the moment, NXP's chip-set will be shipping to infrastructure manufacturers who want to test their products.

Commercial deployment of LTE is a couple of years away, reckons Schimanke, although network operators which have plumped for LTE, like Verizon of the US and DoCoMo of Japan, are expressing worries that the operators which have opted for the alternative technology Wimax, which is on the verge of deployment, may be stealing a march on them.

"The industry has aggressive timelines for LTE, and it is good that we are early, but LTE will only happen when all the ecosystem, including all the testing and trials are ready and completed," said Schimanke.

Asked if NXP was frightened of a patent ambush from Qualcomm on LTE, Schimanke replied: "We are not afraid of Qualcomm. The IPR situation around LTE is much more open compared to CDMA, there are more companies with significant IP, like Philips and NXP. With the IPR widely spread, cross-licensing will be easier, because there's not one dominant party having the majority of the IPR."

Has NXP got agreements in place with all the IPR owners? "I'm sure we'll come to an agreement with all the IPR owners, We've done our homework. We know who they all are but negotiations are not yet done," replied Schimanke.

Schimanke pointed to the NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) agreement in which a number of wireless technology companies have agreed to declare their patents, and state what price they put on them, and set a limit on that price.

Qualcomm, of course, hasn't signed up to NGMN. Asked if that was a problem, Schimanke replied: "Of course we don't underestimate them, but I assume that, when the IPR is more equally distributed, it puts them in a more equal position."

LTE gives astonishing data capabilities like downloading an HD movie in seven minutes at the full 150Mbits/sec rate. By comparison, top whack HDSPA is 7.2Mbits/sec. Naturally, the LTE data rate depends how far you are from the basestation, and how many other people are using it. NXP calls its chip-set the Nexperia Cellular System Solution PNX6910.

The PNX6910 allows phone makers and consumer electronics manufacturers to get into LTE early, with a reference design that can connect a wide variety of handheld products via cellular services to the Internet.

The soft modem approach reduces chip design effort by 1.5 to 2 years due to parallel design phases. This approach incorporates multi-mode functionality on a single RF chip and a single baseband chip.

Power efficiency is achieved by advanced system architectures and process technologies beating the historical power curve prediction.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Wireless, a roundup of content related to wireless communications.