Several popular smartphones shipped in 2011 with compact, integrated antenna tuners, the first of a wave of such tuners from Peregrine Semi, RFMD and others. We have been looking into the outlook for active antennas & tunable components in cellular phones by comparing the different suppliers and technical approaches and we are now convinced of an upbeat forecast of the market through 2017.

Mobile devices that support 4G, 3G and 2G in multiple bands have complex RF front-ends, with compromises in antenna performance that can degrade calls, as Apple learned last year. Tunable components can reduce dropped calls and improve battery life, while simplifying the cellphone.

Significant new strategic avenues open for radio component vendors

Antennas with tunable impedance matching will bring success to some new entrants such as WiSpry and inevitably shake up the existing order among cellphone RF front-end component vendors.

The new ‘antenna tuner’ product category will emerge as an important piece of the cell phone RF front-end, and we expect antenna specialists including Ethertronics and Skycross, in combination with front-end component suppliers including Skyworks, RFMD, Avago Tech, TriQuint and Murata, to compete aggressively in this segment using GaAs, CMOS, RF MEMS and voltage-dependent dielectric variable capacitor technologies.

Stephen Entwistle

Client reading: The Strategy Analytics report, “Outlook for Active Antennas & Tunable Components in Cellular Phones” reviews the prospects for tunable RF components, comparing the different approaches and suppliers, and provides an upbeat forecast of the market through 2017.

Qualcomm announced the acquisition of Atheros Communications today to strengthen its market presence in the non-handset markets and to unlock the value of its connectivity chip business. Atheros currently supplies WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS and other networking products to notebook and netbook markets. Qualcomm is currently the number one player in the cellular baseband market. Here are our quick comments and impact on the competition, • This acquisition will allow Qualcomm to enhance the value of its connectivity chip portfolio. Historically, Qualcomm was not a major player in the stand-alone connectivity IC market. Qualcomm successfully integrated GPS functionality into its basebands but couldn't repeat the same for WLAN, Bluetooth and FM. • Atheros acquisition will allow Qualcomm to apply pressure on Broadcom which appears to have a broader wireless portfolio than Qualcomm including NFC (Near Field Communications). By our estimates, Broadcom ranked number two in the wireless semiconductor market (excluding memory) in Q3 2010 and is growing rapidly. Although Broadcom is a minor player in the cellular baseband market, the company is still ahead of many wireless companies in terms of wireless revenue, thanks to its connectivity business. • Qualcomm's upcoming product, the MSM8960, integrates multi-mode LTE baseband modem, ARMv7-compliant dual applications processor cores, Adreno GPU and connectivity (WLAN, GPS, Bluetooth and FM). As far we know, this is the first cellular baseband product that integrates a variety of connectivity functions. We believe products like this could apply pressure on Broadcom's stand-alone connectivity chip business in future. • This acquisition also increases pressure on Texas Instruments (TI). TI currently draws its wireless revenues from OMAP applications processors, connectivity chips and Nokia's custom basebands. TI is expected to complete its exit from the baseband market by 2012. The lack of baseband products could leave TI without any apparent synergies between its applications processors and connectivity chips and may force TI to divest its remaining wireless business. Overall, we believe that this acquisition will allow Qualcomm to expand into adjacent markets and also apply more pressure on its key competitors. Qualcomm successfully executed integrating applications processors into its basebands and became the number one player and now the company is trying to further the success by integrating connectivity chips. Sravan Kundojjala

Broadcom announced today that it will acquire privately held 4G chipset vendor Beceem Communications for $316 million. Beceem, founded in 2003, is the leading provider of WiMAX basebands and RF chips for portable and handheld WiMAX devices. The company also supplies WiMAX radio chipsets for gateways, routers and other fixed WiMAX customer premise equipment. Recently Beceem started to shift its emphasis to LTE with the announcement of its BCSM500 baseband, which will support both LTE and WiMAX. Broadcom so far hasn't announced its LTE plans publicly, and this acquisition signals that the company is looking to the future in the wake of growing competition and consolidation in the cellular baseband supplier base. Broadcom acquired GSM/GPRS/EDGE and W-CDMA technology through acquisitions, and these are now paying off, so it appears that Broadcom is repeating this strategy for LTE. Beceem supplies basebands for all of the WiMAX USB dongles and data cards sold by Clearwire, the largest WiMAX operators in terms of subscribers. Beceem generated $43.7 million in revenue in 2009 with net loss of $17 million, but with shipments surpassing 1 million chips per quarter in Q3 '09 and sales having tripled since 2008, the company appeared headed for profitability by late 2010. Buoyed by this success, Beceem filed for an IPO initially thought to be worth more than $100 million in April '10. This would have made a nice down-payment to investors, which include Intel Capital, DoCoMo Capital, Samsung Venture Investment and NEC. Investment by all VCs in Beceem totals close to $200 million to date. By August 2010, announcements of support for LTE by operators around the world made it clear that Beceem faced a weakening, or at best slower growth WiMAX market, cutting the value of its proposed IPO. With its new LTE-WiMAX baseband, Beceem could benefit from the launch of LTE by Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, and MetroPCS in North America, however, Beceem will not ship samples of its WiMAX-LTE baseband before Q1 ’11. After shipping its first samples and getting them designed into products, Beceem would still have to go through interoperability testing (IOT) with infrastructure vendors and demonstrate support for FDD and TDD in multiple channel bandwidths. The IOT process could take 18 months or longer, pushing LTE chip production out to mid-2012 or later for Beceem. In light of this, investors evidently saw risks in continuing to support Beceem, and decided to take Broadcom’s offer. From Broadcom's perspective, the acquisition will allow Broadcom to offer home gateway / router platforms that incorporate 4G, Wi-Fi, cable, DSL and / or fiber optics, which would allow multiple users in a household to share a single wired or wireless broadband connection, cutting the monthly price per user. Of even more potential significance, the acquisition will allow Broadcom to eventually expand into LTE mobile devices. Until then, Broadcom can draw on Beceem’s success in WiMAX USB dongles, PC data cards and handsets to help fund development of LTE chipsets. It seems likely that merchant baseband suppliers Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, Altair Semi, Icera, Renesas and Intel / Infineon will beat Broadcom to market in LTE, particularly in the rapidly growing “non-handset” (our term) segment of the mobile market consisting of USB dongles, PC data cards, M2M modules and related data-centric wireless modem devices. By our estimates, basebands for the non-handset mobile market accounted for about 12 percent of the total baseband market in revenue terms in 1H 2010. Currently Qualcomm, Icera, Infineon and ST-Ericsson have the leading market share in basebands for non-handsets, a market today dominated by 3G. An increasing proportion of future non-handset WWAN data modems will support LTE plus 3G, making LTE capability essential for firms to continue supplying basebands into this important segment. Note that compared to LTE + 3G, it appears that LTE + WiMAX mobile devices will at best represent a small niche market. When Broadcom enters the LTE baseband market, we expect the company to offer chipsets with comprehensive support for legacy GSM air interfaces through W-CDMA / HSPA+, multi-mode / multi-band RF transceivers, plus optional Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / GPS, and optional ancillary chips for mobile TV and advanced video processing. Broadcom had only about 3.3 percent share of the cellular baseband market in unit terms in 1H 2010, but the company's market share in basebands is growing rapidly with design wins at top-tier OEMs. Broadcom's acquisition of Beceem leaves other baseband start-ups Icera, Altair Semiconductor, Sequans and Wavesat as potential acquisition targets for established baseband / chipset vendors looking to expand into LTE. Of these start-ups, Altair Semiconductor, which sampled its first LTE baseband in September ’09, appears to be in the lead with LTE basebands now reaching early production status. Another firm to watch in LTE is Intel, which recently acquired WiMAX / LTE chipset start-up Comsys and announced its intention to acquire the cellular chipset product lines of Infineon. Intel Capital has a 20 percent stake in Beceem, so we can only speculate that Intel decided that acquiring Comsys and Infineon would offer better synergies and returns on investment given that Intel already ships WiMAX chipsets into the embedded laptop market. Aside from LTE chipsets, Broadcom also has to solve is its smartphone applications processor challenges; by our estimates, Broadcom had no share in smartphone applications processors in 1H 2010. Broadcom scored design-wins in Nokia's Symbian^3 smartphones recently with its BCM2727 co-processor, but we believe that Broadcom has to integrate BCM2727 functionality into its basebands to score significant smartphone design-wins in the future.

Last week we published our cellular baseband market share estimates for 1H 2010. By our estimates, cellular baseband unit shipments grew 23 percent and revenues grew 15.5 percent from 1H 2009 to 1H 2010. The non-handset segment, which includes PC data cards, PNDs, netbooks, tablets wireless USB dongles and M2M, accounted for 12 percent of total baseband revenues in 1H 2010 and grew faster than the handset baseband market. Here are some highlights of our cellular baseband market share estimates: • Qualcomm continued its revenue share lead with 39.6 percent share in 1H 2010. Qualcomm ranked number one in CDMA and W-CDMA baseband markets. We believe much of the Qualcomm's growth came from smartphones and non-handsets in 1H 2010. • MediaTek ranked number two in revenue share behind Qualcomm with 16.3 percent share in 1H 2010. Contrary to popular perception, MediaTek currently doesn't compete head-to-head with Qualcomm and only recently launched its first W-CDMA baseband. By our estimates MediaTek had less than 1 percent W-CDMA share in 1H 2010 but the company ranked number one in GSM/GPRS/EDGE (GGE) and TD-SCDMA baseband markets in revenue terms. MediaTek’s baseband shipments to grey handset OEMs showed signs of decline in 1H 2010 in the wake of government-led crackdowns in India and China. • ST-Ericsson finally showed signs of recovery in 1H 2010 after a difficult 2009 with its improved and rationalized product line up for GGE, TD-SCDMA, W-CDMA and LTE markets. However, the company has to shift its focus to its stagnant W-CDMA market share to compete against Qualcomm and Infineon. • Infineon continued to gain share in GGE and W-CDMA markets with the help of its top-tier handset OEM relationships. By our estimates Infineon is emerging as a strong competitor to Qualcomm in the non-handset market also with 9 percent unit shipment share in the non-handset segment of the W-CDMA market. Infineon is expected to improve its non-handset baseband share further once Intel completes its acquisition in 2011. Texas Instruments' exit from the baseband market creating opportunities for Infineon and Broadcom at Nokia. • Broadcom's baseband revenue grew 245 percent in 1H 2010 compared to same period the year before thanks to its design-wins at Nokia and Samsung. By our estimates W-CDMA revenues accounted for 17 percent of Broadcom's total baseband revenues in 1H 2010 and the company continued to improve its product-mix. • Spreadtrum, Marvell, Icera, and Via Telecom also made progress in 1H 2010. Renesas' baseband revenues were down slightly but the company is expected to emerge as strong player by 2012 with LTE chipset design-wins at Nokia. Looking forward, we believe that the non-handset market and new radio technologies (HSPA+, LTE and TD-SCDMA) to create growth opportunities for baseband vendors.

Consolidation in the baseband market continued with Intel acquiring Infineon's wireless business on Monday for $1.4 billion. Infineon's takeover is the fourth high-profile announcement in the last two years. Previously NXP, Freescale and Texas Instruments announced their exits from the merchant baseband market. This signals that the entry barrier is now too high for new entrants and raises pressure on smaller players such as Marvell, Spreadtrum and Icera. Intel's acquisition of Infineon's wireless business leaves Qualcomm, MediaTek, ST-Ericsson, Intel, Broadcom and Renesas as long-term players in the cellular baseband market. We analyzed this back in May when the original rumour of the Intel/Infineon wireless deal surfaced. Infineon's wireless business is definitely an attractive target for Intel as it gives immediate access to valuable IP and an established customer base. Infineon is a rising star in the W-CDMA baseband market and ranked number two in the W-CDMA baseband market behind Qualcomm (excluding Texas Instruments’ custom baseband business with Nokia). Infineon has so far focused on slim modems and has stayed away from developing ARM-based applications processors. So far Infineon’s niche strategy has paid off, but the time has come for the company to expand its portfolio by offering a wider range of processors to address smartphones, tablets and other connected consumer devices. Although 3G and smartphones are of most interest to Intel, the company is likely to keep Infineon’s 2G business as it provides scale which is crucial to play in the cellular baseband segment. It will be another year or two before Intel's applications processors are smartphone-ready. Meanwhile, in the next 12 - 18 months Intel can bundle Infineon's 3G platform with all of its notebook and netbook chipsets and gain significant 3G share to undercut Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson's non-handset offerings. But both Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson appear to have a two year technology lead over Infineon in chipsets for HSPA+ and LTE; Infineon is expected to introduce its first HSPA+ chipset in 2011 and an LTE chipset in 2012. MediaTek’s grey handset chip business may come under pressure from Infineon in the future if Intel expands its field application engineering force in China. Likewise, Broadcom is expected to come under pressure from this deal but should survive with help from its other businesses such as connectivity and digital home. This acquisition will also likely affect stand-alone application processor vendors such as Texas Instruments and NVIDIA that currently lack their own 3G / 4G modems. But we believe that it will take another 4-5 years for Intel to integrate basebands into its Atom CPU, if at all. Infineon's acquisition still doesn’t guarantee Intel's success in the wireless handset market and the company's ultimate success in this market hinges on how soon Intel can come up with power-efficient processors that can stand-up and compete against a host of ARM-based processor vendors. On a positive note, Intel appears to be moving ahead of its other chip competitors in the software area which positions it well against ARM-based processor vendors. The company’s strong software expertise could help it to gain some OEM mindshare. Intel’s uninspiring track record in the wireless market during the last decade suggests that the company has to execute flawlessly this time to make it successful and keep Infineon’s wireless business as independent as possible. Clients can read our eight page analysis of the Intel/Infineon deal here.

Nokia announced today that Renesas will acquire its wireless modem technologies business for $200 million and the transaction is expected to close before the end of 2010. Renesas has offered GSM PAs and transceivers for the mainstream GSM market for more than a decade but lacked basebands. More recently, Renesas entered the baseband market with W-CDMA basebands for Japan and plans to provide complete chipsets and PAs for the global market. Renesas merged with NEC Electronics in April 2010 and most recently joined the Symbian Foundation. Previously Nokia transferred its 3G IC design operations to ST-Ericsson, licensed its W-CDMA/HSPA modem technology to Intel and collaborated with Infineon for LTE RF transceivers development. This announcement raises a question whether Nokia will continue to own the IP and earn royalties for legacy basebands, GSM through W-CDMA / HSPA+? This is a significant development considering Renesas' lack of baseband design-wins outside Japan. Strategy Analytics estimates that Renesas and NEC Electronics cumulatively held just 1.3 percent of the baseband market (in revenue terms) in 2009. Renesas originally licensed baseband technology from Japanese network operator NTT docomo to produce the SH-Mobile G series baseband processors, which also integrate Renesas' application processing technology. Most recently Renesas sampled a fourth generation of SH-Mobile G baseband processors, the SH-G4, which supports the HSPA air interface. This partnership with Nokia provides Renesas with three different sources for fundamental 3G modem IP, NTT docomo, NEC Electronics and Nokia. This situation is similar to ST-Ericsson's, which also has three different 3G modem IP sources, EMP, NXP and Nokia. It appears that Renesas will use Nokia's 3G modem technology to compete for design-wins outside Japan. The combined entity of Renesas and NEC Electronics now boasts Fujitsu, Sharp, NEC, Sony Ericsson and Panasonic as its baseband customers . Renesas' expansion into the global baseband market would increase competition in the marketplace. This move comes at a time when the 3G market is growing, accounting for close to one third of global cellular baseband revenues in 2009. Nokia's existing 3G chipset suppliers include Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Broadcom, ST-Ericsson and Icera. It is worth noting that the first Nokia 3G phones based on Qualcomm, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson's basebands are expected to debut in late 2010 or early 2011. Infineon is noticeably absent in this list although Infineon is a key GSM/GPRS/EDGE baseband supplier to Nokia. We don't expect the first products based on this partnership to debut until late 2012, the time when Texas Instruments completes its baseband exit. In 2013 Nokia's 3G chipset suppliers list would include Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, Broadcom, Icera, Renesas and potentially Infineon and Intel. While Nokia can afford to have multiple suppliers considering its scale we could see some further acquisitions and mergers among these baseband suppliers. Today’s announcement is likely to affect several companies... • ST-Ericsson: ST-E will probably be worst hit by this announcement as it brings into doubt the strong relationship ST-E has had with Nokia over the past 3 years. ST-E has spent the last couple of years consolidating the 3G technologies it acquired from EMP and NXP with Nokia's 3G IP into its flagship processor the U8500 which is expected to appear in handsets at the end of 2010. Nokia will obviously be working with Renesas in future HSPA/LTE projects, thus potentially diluting the relationship with ST-E. • Qualcomm: Qualcomm has enjoyed a much more positive relationship with Nokia during 2009/2010 since the companies resolved their long-standing IPR legal battles. Qualcomm is expected to supply chipsets to Nokia for its upcoming W-CDMA/LTE products. Nokia's stronger relationship with Renesas may now affect that. • Infineon: Why did Nokia not choose Infineon? Nokia and Infineon already have a close relationship around LTE RF transceivers, but Nokia may have considered Infineon's expertise in HSPA and LTE modems to be too weak. • NTT docomo: Renesas currently licenses 3G modem IP from NTT docomo for use in its SH-Mobile G processors which are desgined into handsets from Sharp and Fujitsu. Renesas' strong relationship with Nokia now makes it more likely that Renesas will use NTT docomo's IP for products aimed at the Japanese market, and will employ Nokia's HSPA/LTE IP in new chipsets for us in Nokia handsets. It will also allow Renesas to expand its client base beyond Japanese waters.

Profits in the RF / wireless component industry reported during Q1 ’10 strengthened to the highest level since 2005, marking a “V” shaped recovery from the worst of the global recession. Demand for cellphones and mobile PCs drove chip demand, which pushed sales up about 7 percent sequentially at the typical supplier. Of the 46 RF & wireless component suppliers that we examined in Q1 ’10, 78 percent reported profits, up from only 30 percent a year earlier. The results are still coming in, but the recovery appears to have continued into Q2 ’10. In spite of the apparent recovery, RF & wireless component industry managers remain at best cautiously optimistic, and even while profits have improved dramatically, VC funding for RF & wireless start-ups has remained severely depressed by historical standards. What is going on here? Maturing markets. Consumption of wireless devices such as cellphones in the developed world continues to grow, but these markets have matured and growth has slowed. Consolidation among radio chip suppliers has eliminated many of the less financially-viable suppliers, and the remaining suppliers have cut costs and pruned product lines to focus on core strengths, which probably explains much of the profit spike reported in Q1 ’10. Lack of confidence: Are we going to the PIGS? Policies in most of the developed world will lead to higher taxes or higher inflation and interest rates unless changed, and people know it. A sign of this is the unbridled debt that has destabilized Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain economically, driving up interest payments to foreign debt holders and stifling economic growth. Many of the world’s largest economies, including France, Japan, the UK, Germany and the US are headed in the same direction, and a general awareness of unemployment and the risks of ballooning public debt has taken a toll on confidence among citizens and business managers alike. The debt crisis in the EU worsened recently when the government debt to GDP (gross domestic product) ratio in Greece reached 125 percent, driving interest payments to an unsustainable 15.2 percent of tax revenues according to the Wall Street Journal. In the US, the Government continues to run ever bigger budget deficits in an effort to stimulate growth and jobs, and the government debt to GDP ratio will pass 76 percent this year. To make matters worse, government pension and medical obligations to aging baby-boomer retirees will generate additional demands on government funds in the world’s largest economies over the next twenty five years. Tight credit. Bailouts of the “too big to fail” banks have not helped small businesses and entrepreneurs. The US Federal Funds rate is near zero percent, which means that the Bank of America gets free money from the US Federal Reserve, however, money remains tight on main street. Apparently, the “too big to fail” banks are using cheap money to increase their reserves and pay the US Government back for last year’s bailouts instead of loaning money to small businesses. I believe that the situation is similar to the US in Western Europe and Japan. Risk-Averse VCs. By some reports, venture capital firms have more money than they know what to do with, yet investment in start-ups remains low in the West by historical standards. Apparently, VCs no longer have the time for due diligence and to help manage early-stage start-ups. Instead, VCs are investing primarily in lower-risk, later-stage start-ups nearing commercial success. VCs have also stampeded toward “clean tech,” avoiding most wireless chip start-ups. The rise of China. On top of the economic challenges facing the developed countries, China will soon emerge as the leading world economy. Whether this is good or bad depends on your perspective, but it will mean less ability to fund deficits in the West, and lower global market share for component suppliers in developed countries as China continues to promote indigenous suppliers. Spreadtrum, MStar Semi, and HiSilicon / Huawei are just three of the many radio chip suppliers well positioned to capture share in China. What all of this means for the wireless components industry, I believe, is continued uncertainty over the next several years, and consequently caution in terms of capital investment and hiring. On the positive side, many of the larger and higher-share companies, for example Qualcomm and Intel, appear to have plenty of cash, which gives them the ability to invest in China, start-ups and new technologies. Please feel free to post your own observations and views on the challenges facing the industry. In addition, you can find the latest information on RF & wireless industry profits, new products and market opportunities at the “Industry Review” section of the Strategic Technologies / RF & Wireless Components market research web site. If you are a subscriber to the RF & Wireless Components service, you can find an expanded Insight version of this blog here.

We have just finished up our Q4 2009 update to our baseband market share model. This gives us full year 2009 market share as well. It's the combined work of myself, Chris Taylor and Stuart Robinson with support from our wireless service colleagues. Cellular baseband market revenues reached $11.04 billion in 2009, down about 0.7% from 2008. In 2009, the cellular baseband market faced ASP challenges due to the global economic recession and increased competition in the market. Here are some highlights based on the data from Strategy Analytics Baseband Quarterly Metrics service module: * Qualcomm led the the market with close to 40% share of total global baseband revenues in 2009. Qualcomm improved its revenue share in both the CDMA and W-CDMA markets. * Despite being absent in the important W-CDMA market, MediaTek managed second position in terms of baseband revenue share in 2009. Strategy Analytics estimates that the W-CDMA market represented close to one third of total cellular baseband revenues in 2009. MediaTek is expected to take a minor W-CDMA share in 2010 with its new W-CDMA baseband processor, MT6268. * ST-Ericsson had a difficult year in 2009 as the company continued to restructure its product lines and also lost share at its important tier-1 handset OEM customers. TD-SCDMA was the only bright spot for ST-Ericsson. * Both Infineon and Broadcom benefitted from multi-sourcing strategies at tier-1 handset OEMs which significantly improved their baseband revenues in 2009. Both companies are expected to make further gains in 2010 by expanding at their respective customers. * Marvell had just 1.4% share of baseband revenues in 2009 but is expected to play an important role in the Chinese TD-SCDMA baseband market with its highly integrated TD-SCDMA baseband processor, Pantheon 920. Strategy Analytics provisionally estimates that total global cellular baseband revenues reached $2.8 billion in Q1 2010. Looking forward to the end of 2010, new radio technologies (LTE, TD-SCDMA), multi-sourcing strategies and mobile broadband will provide growth opportunities for baseband processor vendors. - Sravan Kundojjala

Last week the IEEE hosted an informative panel discussion at MTTS 2010 in Anaheim titled “The Challenges, Competitions and Future Prospect of 60 GHz” that gave support to Strategy Analytics’ optimistic views on 60 GHz for short-range wireless applications. Panelists included academic and industry experts from Broadcom, IBM Research, Intel, Marvell, Panasonic, and Samsung. Aside from an interest in untethering the television, network attached storage is driving demand for faster networking, and consumers want higher bandwidth internet access and faster synchronization of ever larger multimedia files among smartphones, PCs, netbooks, portables media players and in-vehicle entertainment systems. Short-range gigabit radios can potentially serve all of these needs, and this has driven interest in commercialization and recent standardization efforts, particularly on the Wi-Fi front with the proposed 802.11ac and 802.11ad: The view among the panelists at MTTS was that WHDI (5 GHz), which has been developed explicitly for video streaming, will serve mainly in whole-house (through wall) applications. WirelessHD and WiGig will serve in cable replacement and display link applications mainly at ranges of 2 meters and less. The recently proposed 802.11ac, also known as 802.11 VHT (Very High Throughput), would use the existing 5 GHz Wi-Fi band with wide 80 MHz or 160 MHz channels, improved modulation, and simultaneous multi-user MIMO for throughputs above 1 Gbps. This would enhance Wi-Fi with faster links and extend it to new applications such as wireless connections among storage peripherals in data centers. Next would come 802.11ad, which would add a 60 GHz transport layer to Wi-Fi. According to Ali Sadri, Director of the Intel Mobile Wireless Group and Chairman of the WiGig Alliance, WiGig has been confirmed as the baseline specification for draft 802.11ad. The potential unification of Wi-Fi with 60 GHz in the form of 802.11ad would benefit both the Wi-Fi and 60 GHz communities by allowing 60 GHz to build on the installed base of Wi-Fi networks while opening new applications up to Wi-Fi. Benefits of 802.11ad, if approved, would include: • One tenth the energy per bit of 802.11ac. To transfer a 17.5 GB movie wirelessly, 802.11ac would require about 11 minutes (real data rate 780 Mbps) and use 10.5 percent of a typical cellphone battery’s energy, according to Raja Banerjea of Marvell. In comparison, 802.11ad would require less than 60 seconds and only 0.9 percent of the battery’s energy. The numbers for 802.11ad appear to work out if you assume that the battery has a capacity around 750 mA-hour at 3 volts fully charged, and that 802.11ad uses a bit less than 500 picojoules per bit at 6.7 Gbps in 60 GHz mode. • SC (single carrier) and OFDM modes for lower-rate / low power and higher-rate / high power modes respectively, combined with beam forming. Battery powered devices would use SC, which would employ pi/2 BPSK/QPSK for tolerance to phase noise and PA non-linearities, reaching 2 – 3 Gbps. In contrast, OFDM mode, using 8QPSK and above modulation schemes, would have the best multi-path tolerance and reach data rates up to 6.7 Gbps, but with higher peak-to-average ratios and higher power consumption more suited to fixed devices with wall plug power. • WiGig has developed profiles for wireless HDMI, DisplayPort, USB, and PCIe interfaces. WiGig supports HDCP 2.0 content protection. The WirelessHD Alliance has stayed a step ahead of WiGig with its latest spec, WirelessHD version 1.1, which promises maximum throughput from 10 to 28 Gbps using 60 GHz. Proponents such as chipmaker SiBeam have pointed out that WiGig as presently defined cannot support the max throughputs of HDMI 1.3 & 1.4 (10.2 Gbps) and DisplayPort 1.0 (10.8 Gbps). 60 GHz Chips. As the only commercial supplier of 60 GHz chips designed for consumer applications so far, SiBeam is benefitting from interest in WiGig as well as WirelessHD. SiBeam’s recently-announced SB8100 RF transceiver supports both WirelessHD and WiGig. Other chip makers watching 60 GHz closely and likely to offer their own chips if the market grows as expected include Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek (working with IBM at the moment), Samsung Electro-Mechanics, NXP, Ralink, Realtek, STMicro and TI. Qualcomm seems to have been uncharacteristically quite about 60 GHz, but the company holds or has applied for several 60 GHz-related patents including one covering extended Golay codes, which can be used for SC and OFDM coding at 60 GHz. Challenges that still stand in the way of widespread use of 60 GHz short-range radio in consumer applications include: • Common standards. It now appears that a standard encompassing Wi-Fi, WiGig and WirelessHD (and 802.15.3c by extension) will probably emerge over the next several years. WirelessHD would become the highest throughput mode of the standard. Certification of devices is still at least three years and probably more like five years away. • High power consumption, low PA efficiency. Overcoming the inherent low gain and high noise of semiconductors operating at 60 GHz requires additional power consumption compared to chips operating below 6 GHz. SiBeam’s 60 GHz chipset is said to draw up to 1 watt, worst case. Sayana Wireless LLC, a start-up in Atlanta Georgia (USA), claims to have developed a 60 GHz SiGe-BiCMOS chipset that draws only milliwatts. Unfortunately, as of May 17, 2010, founders Joy Laskar and Stephane Pinel (ECMA Vice Chair) had been suspended from Georgia Tech University following allegations of misappropriating $600,000 in university funds for use by Sayana Wireless, putting the future of the company into question (see http://www.wsbtv.com/news/23578468/detail.html.) • High-speed memory bus limitations in portable devices. Cellphones typically use memory buses running at 20 to 30 Mbps to reduce power consumption. In contrast, PCs typically have memory buses that run at or above 2 Gbps. Jeyhan Karaoguz, Technical Director at Broadcom, has stated that memory bus speed will increase to 125 Mbps or more in most portables within two years, alleviating this challenge to adoption of 60 GHz. • Global Regulations. Products that will work in Australia (59.4 – 62.9 GHz), Europe & Japan (59.0 – 66 GHz), and North America & Korea (57.0 – 64.0 GHz) using the same 60 GHz chipset will require antenna, synthesizer, LNA and PAs that can span 9 GHz, or about 15 percent bandwidth to base frequency, no small challenge compared to relatively narrow band systems operating below 6 GHz. • Testing 60 GHz chips. Testing is still a challenge. • Backhaul lagging. Backhaul links typically operate at around 100 Mbps max, imposing a bottleneck on both wired and wireless data capacity that could impede the adoption of 4G and high-speed data services, whether wired or short-range wireless. Strategy Analytics has covered short-range gigabit radio with a complete forecast in the recently published Viewpoint titled Outlook for Short-Range Gigabit Radio. The ratification of 802.11ad including WiGig would lead to a change in our forecast by effectively merging our separate forecasts for WiGig and 802.11n 4 x n and above, but it appears that our prediction of most growth in 60 GHz occurring beyond 2014 still lines up with the evidence.

Dr David Allstot from the University of Washington kick-started the 2010 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium with a review of the challenges and ongoing research into CMOS power amplifiers for use in the cellular radio front-end. Highlighting the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions from cellular handset usage, Dr Allstot emphasized the need for more efficient PAs as continued motivation for development of CMOS PA technologies.  Research into CMOS PAs has been ongoing for around 20 years, with current designs achieveing around 1W power outputs and up to 60% PAE. The performance of typical power amplifier PAs including Class A, B and E were highlighted, and then put into context with the demands of current networks which place greater importance on PAs operating backed off from peak power with schemes such as 64QAM resulting in probability distributions that translate into actual efficiencies of only 5%.  Dr Allstot provided examples of digital PAs comprising multiple PA cells and power combining techniques that have been put forward to address these issues, and highlighted the potential for Class G power PAs that feature a hump-shaped curve with the first peak aligning with probability distribution curves of a 64QAM spectral signal and offering the potential for efficiencies as high as 24%.  While these results are promising, Strategy Analytics still sees a gap in performance capabilities between GaAs and CMOS PAs which is compounded by cellular handset requirements continuing to evolve. This translates into a moving target that places greater emphasis on linearity, efficiencies and peak-to-average ratios (PAR) and in our opinion will continue to favour the capabilities offered by compound semiconductor technologies.  Nevertheless, the pervasive nature of RF technology will open up doors for CMOS and SiGe PAs, while also continuing to provide growth the compound semiconductor technologies, and this was highlighted by the second plenary talk, given by Gregory Waters of Skyworks Solutions Inc.  Mr Waters provided an overview of how the growth in the cellular handset market has transformed the RF industry into a mainstream technology with future trends pointing to greater pervasive use of RF in multiple applications. Smartphones are leading the initial trends towards more complexity in the radio chain which translates into greater content and provides continued growth for the industry.  Video is the primary driver for the RF market moving forwards with social media driving demands for always-on connectivity. This in turn will translate into more RF content going into terminals to meet these needs. Skyworks estimated that average RF content has increased by around 2.5 to 4x the content required when delivering voice-only capabilities.  The different approaches in the cellular front-end to handle these growing needs were highlighted, from multiple PAs through broadband PAs able to tackle high-band and low-band RF chains, to solutions that will cover all bands through a converged solution. This will be coupled with techniques such as envelope tracking and digital predistortion to provide more linear, more efficient RF solutions.  The other key message from Skyworks was that RF technology will become even more pervasive in its application moving forwards, with embedded RF translating to multiple applications, examples including smart metering for utilities, vending machines and passive RF technology for tracking applications.  To serve market needs moving forwards, RF companies will need to continue developing a broad base of technologies that incorporate not only the RF, but also interconnects and packaging   Strategy Analytics sees this pervasiveness as a catalyst that will open doors for Si technologies while the growing complexity needed to serve the always-on connectivity will present continued opportunities for compound semiconductor technologies.