Wavesat maps 802.16e strategy

Wavesat is one of those innovative companies worth watching. The company's WiMAX presence has been bolstered with the announcement of its 802.16e strategy, which will center on its UMobile family of WiMAX chip sets. The company says the chips will support all the features of mobile WiMAX Wave 2 profiles. The first chip set in the UMobile family is code-named Panther, and it offers cost efficient and low power consuming SOC. It supports 802.16e-2005 and implements all MAC and PHY features required for Wave 2 WiMAX certification in a single chip, and it also includes MIMO and beam-forming technologies. Among the Panther's features:

• High performance and programmable PHY & MAC, including smart antenna features such as MIMO 2x2.
• Low cost and small footprint with on-chip DRAM in a 9x9mm package (no external memory required).
• Low power consumption at 150 mW in receive mode by using ultra low power DSP technology and enhanced power saving modes.
• Programmable architecture supporting multimode operation including ODFMA, OFDM and legacy 802.11a/g.

Wavesat is moving in the right direction. Adlane Fellah of Montreal-based Maraveids predicts that there will be an accumulated 87 million broadband Wireless Access subscribers (excluding cellular) by the end of 2012, 67 million of which will be WiMAX subscribers. "WiMAX will represent 90 percent of subscribers who are added in 2012, of whom 75 percent will be using 802.16-2005 technology," Fellah says. WiMAX chip sets will start to be embedded into laptops in the beginning of 2008, into handheld devices in the beginning of 2009, and into consumer electronics in the beginning of 2010. "In this context, Wavesat who has been a pioneer in the development of WIMAX SOCs is well positioned to tap into this future competitive WIMAX mobile market."

For more on Wavesat's 802.16e strategy:
- see press release [1]