Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column where we let C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry to provide their unique insights into the marketplace.
LTE has been in commercial service for a while, which makes it easy to overlook the fact that it’s still a relatively new technology for most device original equipment manufacturers. In fact, even those that have been building LTE smartphones, tablets, machine-to-machine products and other devices for years are still climbing up a steep learning curve.
On top of everything, LTE is still evolving (e.g. LTE-Advance features), which creates additional challenges for OEMs. A prime example is LTE-Advanced, which aggregates intra- and inter-band carriers from multiple bands to maximize capacity and throughput. This feature amplifies existing challenges, such as finding room for antennas, because available space inside smartphones is declining 25% annually to accommodate large displays and batteries.
LTE is challenging enough for OEMs with extensive 3G experience. It’s even more so for OEMs with no cellular experience. For example, as the cost of LTE chipsets declines, and as operators build out their LTE networks, consumer electronics vendors are increasingly looking to add LTE connectivity to products such as digital cameras, game consoles, smart TVs, tablets and laptops. Declining costs and expanding capabilities are also prompting automakers to add LTE for applications such as in-vehicle infotainment, telematics and sensor management.
Newcomers and veterans alike must find ways to overcome challenges such as limited space and the need to deliver the reliable connectivity that consumers and business users expect from LTE. For OEMs targeting business applications, including mission-critical ones such as telemedicine, there’s the additional challenge of maximizing reliability. All OEMs have to contend with pricing pressure, which is especially tough in the cost-sensitive M2M space.
One module covers global bands, wider product segments, and established and emerging markets
Plug-and-play smart antenna front-end solutions enable device OEMs to meet aggressive price points, deliver on customers’ reliability and performance requirements, get new products to market quickly and flatten LTE’s learning curve. These solutions combine multiple RF components, such as chips, antennas and tuning circuits, into a module that OEMs can quickly and cost-effectively incorporate into their products. That’s particularly attractive to device OEMs with limited or no cellular experience, such as manufacturers in the healthcare, consumer electronics, cameras, automotive and many more industries.
Plug-and-play RF solutions benefit suppliers to device OEMs, too, by reducing both the number of individual components they have to buy and the number of component vendors they have to work with. With a turnkey solution from a single vendor, OEMs have the design flexibility necessary to develop products faster and more cost-effectively, giving them and their OEM customers a competitive advantage.
Although plug-and-play RF solutions are ideal for LTE devices, they’re equally valuable for devices that use incumbent technologies such as HSPA, GPRS and CDMA2000 1x. That’s important because although many operators are aggressively rolling out LTE, it’s going to be several more years before it has regional or global coverage comparable to 3G. Hence the value of plug-and-play RF solutions that can cover all 2G, 3G and “4G” cellular bands between 700 MHz and 2.7 GHz. That broad coverage also enables those smartphones, tablets and other devices to support technologies such as Wi-Fi and GPS.
For OEMs, one challenge over the past couple of years is finding room for all of the antennas needed to cover the growing number of bands. The growth of LTE and consumer desire for feature-packed wireless devices, have led to the need for larger batteries and displays, and consequently little room for RF components such as antennas and chips. In smartphones, the amount of space available for antennas and other RF components is shrinking. And, although M2M devices might appear to have more space available, that’s often not the case. As a result, there’s no question that the only way to accommodate these trends is through re-architecting the RF front end.
Plug-and-play modules are additionally an ideal solution since many LTE devices, especially handsets, require 3G/2.5G/2G fallback to enable voice calls, to maintain data service in areas where LTE hasn’t launched yet or both. A plug-and-play module that spans 700 MHz to 2.7 GHz, all with a single antenna element, enables OEMs to meet these requirements even in form factors with limited space.
Active antenna systems are the future of plug-and-play LTE modules. Unlike traditional passive antennas, active antenna systems can dynamically tune themselves by combining advanced antenna architectures, active components and algorithms to cover significantly wider bandwidths, attain physically smaller volumes and provide more degrees of freedom in the design phase. Tunability also means that the module will perform consistently in the field even as the RF environment continually changes due to hand, head and other loading effects.
Device OEMs, particularly in M2M, will migrate to plug-and-play modules because they enable repeatability and high efficiency for the best performance. They can design a single platform that can be quickly and cost-effectively integrated to meet the unique requirements of each new device. This enables vendors and their OEM customers to get products to market faster, providing competitive and revenue benefits. For example, they don’t have to create a SKU for every country or even multiple SKUs for a single country.
In a sense, LTE is as much a set of challenges as it is a technology. Plug-and-play modules utilizing active antenna systems are a sustainable way for device OEMs and their suppliers to turn those challenges into market opportunities.
