Until recently WiMAX was doing remarkably well. Now the momentum in mobile broadband has shifted quickly to LTE, which will now surpass WiMAX in terms of both subscribers and device shipments within 12 months, going on to grow much more rapidly than W-CDMA did in the past. For radio component suppliers, participating in LTE requires nimble identification of new opportunities and rapid development of new products to meet the needs of device OEMs and operators facing their own daunting 4G challenges.

Opportunities await in PAs and pairs of PAs that can operate simultaneously in LTE and legacy modes in the same bands, multi-mode and wide-band PAs that can reduce PA counts, tunable duplexers and duplexer-switch banks, RF switches for TD-LTE, and compact electromagnectially isolated antennas for MIMO.

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Chris Taylor, RF & Wireless Components Director