Altair Semiconductor, a leading provider of LTE chipsets, today announced that samples of its new dual-mode FourGee-1210 CAT-1/CAT-M chipset will be available later this year, enabling a smooth transition to the next standard of Cellular IoT networks.
While CAT-1 chipsets have been deployed around the world for a wide range of IoT applications, carriers and vendors alike have been pursuing the emerging CAT-M (CAT-M1) and NB-IoT (CAT-NB1) standards that offer extended coverage and battery life capabilities, as the ultimate core technology for cellular IoT. However, there will be a lengthy transition period until there exists sufficient coverage and standards maturity to enable complete conversion to CAT-M and NB-IoT. Until the ecosystem is ready to fully adopt these standards, a CAT-1 fallback will be required. This is what the FourGee-1210 provides.
“Like any migration to a new cellular network, the complex transition from CAT-1 to CAT-M will take time and could potentially delay carrier and vendor rollouts,” said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Altair. “Altair’s FourGee-1210 chipset will facilitate a smooth migration to CAT-M adoption, providing the ecosystem with the combined solution it needs for the next 18-24 months.”
Key features and benefits of the new FourGee-1210 chipset include:
- Hardware/software compatible with Altair CAT-1 FourGee-1160, enabling the seamless reuse of existing customer modules to add CAT-M functionality
- Dual mode CAT-1/CAT-M with seamless switchover
- Support for CAT-M extended coverage enhancements
- Single Rx, optimized to reduce CAT-M module BOM cost
- Ultra-low power consumption, leveraging Altair’s market-leading power reduction architecture
- Software Defined Radio (SDR), enabling over-the-air firmware upgrades (FOTA) to accommodate CAT-M feature evolution
The FourGee-1210 chipset will reach the market by the end of 2016, coinciding with the projected launch of the first CAT-M networks.
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