OpenET Alliance seeks to develop open specifications for envelope tracking interfaces for 3G and 4G platforms

Winchester, UK - Nujira is supporting the formation of an OpenET Alliance to develop and publish open specifications for envelope tracking interfaces for 3G and 4G platforms.

The new OpenET Alliance aims to cover both terminal and infrastructure applications, and membership is open to any company or organization with an interest in this technology or its application. Simon Whittle, Design Centre Manager, Nujira, has been named as the interim Chairman of the Alliance. The first release of the OpenET Terminal Interface specification will be published at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 15 February 2010 when the www.open-et.com/ website will also go live.

Adopters of the OpenET specification, including handset and base station OEMs, ODMs, chipset and platform providers and Power Amplifier (PA) suppliers, will be able to benefit from common, open specifications which will ease interoperability between different vendors.

Commenting, Simon Whittle, Design Centre Manager for Nujira's Bath office, Chairman of the OpenET Alliance said, "Envelope Tracking is widely recognized as a key enabling technology for high efficiency 3G and 4G Power Amplifiers, reducing opex and carbon emissions for Green Base Station applications, and reducing cost, size and power in USB dongles and LTE handsets. By launching the OpenET Alliance, we are enabling OEMs, platform partners and component vendors to adopt open, industry-standard interfaces to support Envelope Tracking PAs, and to help define future generations of the interface standards."

The OpenET Terminal Interface specification for Envelope Tracking ports enables ET capability to be added to existing or future baseband and RF chipsets for handsets, USB dongles and other mobile terminals with minimal impact on the cost and power consumption of the chipset itself, enabling platform vendors to support ET-enabled PA modules and solutions such as Nujira's Coolteq.L High Accuracy Tracking (HATTM) power modulator, which can reduce the current consumption of the PA by 50 percent or more.

Battery life, peak current management, and thermal limitations are major challenges for designers of HSPA and 4G/LTE terminals. By adopting the OpenET Terminal Interface specification, chip vendors can ensure that their platform is compatible with envelope tracking PAs, which are expected to be available from Nujira's partners from 2011. This can enable platform vendors to reduce the power consumption of the transmitter by over 50 percent.

Simon Whittle continued, "The OpenET specifications are wideband, futureproof, and entirely independent of transmission standard and frequency. They are suitable for use with all 2G, 3G and 4G mobile, Digital TV and Mobile TV broadcast applications, modulation schemes, standards and wavebands including Multicarrier GSM, W-CDMA, LTE, WiMAX, EDGE, HSUPA and HSDPA."

OpenET specifications will be royalty-free for adopters.