ST-Ericsson’s Thor M7450 LTE-Advanced modem, currently being sampled, uses a single radio for carrier aggregation.
Called M7450, it supports all relevant 3GPP specified frequency bands having 10 flexible RF ports enabling 17 frequency bands or more in the same device.
With this modem, ST-Ericsson significantly increases the number of LTE bands compared to devices currently on the market allowing device manufacturers to address a global market with less number of device variants.
"Next-generation modems need to combine extensive frequency band support to offer flexibility for operators and markets without increasing the modem size," says ST-E’s Staffan Iveberg.
Many operators only have 5 or 10MHz bandwidth allocations in each frequency band for LTE which is insufficient for LTE Category 3 or 4 with data rates up to 100 or 150Mbit/s.
Carrier aggregation allows bandwidth from two different frequency bands to be combined enabling higher data rates.
The Thor M7450 is a two chip solution with integrated RAM designed in 28nm CMOS and supports 3GPP Release 10, LTE category 4, with downlink speeds up to 150Mbit/s and VoLTE. With LTE-FDD, LTE-TDD, HSPA+, GSM and TD-SCDMA integrated in the same chipset.
Source:
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2013/02/25/55635/mwc-st-ericsson-sampling-multi-frequency-modem.htm
