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Infineon Technologies today announced that NEC and Panasonic will use Infineon's radio frequency (RF) transceiver in their next generation 3G products. Infineon is the world's first semiconductor supplier to provide single-chip UMTS transceivers in high volumes. NEC and Panasonic will use the RF transceivers in their W-CDMA mobile phones for the Japanese market.

In mobile devices, the RF transceiver handles the mobile device's interface over the air. On the one hand, it receives and amplifies the high-frequency signals and transfers them into electronic signals which then are transformed into voice and data. On the other hand, before sending signals out over the antenna, the RF transceiver receives them from the baseband chip, modulates and converts them to the required frequency at specified signal level and amplifies them.

World's highest integrated UMTS / W-CDMA RF chip for mobile devices

Infineon's RF transceiver, the SMARTi U, is the world's highest integrated UMTS/ W-CDMA RF chip for mobile devices. It significantly reduces component count and circuit board area at very low current consumption. Using SMARTi U (Single-Chip Multi Advanced Radio Transceiver IC for UMTS), the UMTS RF transceiver functionality can be realized on a board size of less than 100 square millimetres. As a world first, SMARTi U integrates the UMTS RF receive and transmit path into a single chip. It replaces more than 50 percent of the components in the RF section of UMTS phones. Thus, the SMARTi U helps mobile device manufacturers to design a UMTS phone significantly faster and on smaller board space. Its very low current consumption enables competitive stand-by time of more than 300 hours and 140 hours talk time.

"Infineon's RF Transceiver, the SMARTi U, helps us to provide 3G mobile phones, offering additional value, such as saving RF board size, with a form factor competitive with available 2G solutions," says Yoshiharu Tamura, General Manager, Mobile Terminals division of NEC.

"With SMARTi U, Infineon reinforces its number one market position as RF supplierfor the cellular market and continues its success in UMTS," said Dr. Erk Thorsten Heyen, CEO of the Secure Mobile Solutions business group at Infineon Technologies."Since we delivered our RF solution into the first W-CDMA phones worldwide in 2001, Infineon has continuously expanded its market position with RF transceivers and today is the world's leading supplier."