SkyCross, Infineon Unveil Lower-Cost Mobile Phone Architecture

SkyCross, a global antenna solutions company, reportedly has partnered with Infineon Technologies AG, to lower the cost of materials to launch ultra-low cost handsets. The handset architecture takes technical advantages of Infineon chips and SkyCross (News - Alert) iMAT (isolated mode antenna technology) antennas to eliminate conventional RF components.

 

iMAT enables a single antenna structure to behave like multiple antennas through the use of multiple feed points. Each feed accesses the antenna as if it consisted of multiple antennas, each with high isolation, low correlation, and high per-feed antenna efficiency. The resulting improvement in antenna gain and receiver sensitivity significantly enhances device performance and network capacity.

 

This enables lower cost, simpler integration, and space savings without compromising on the performance. The new architecture consolidates the components, since the Infineon platform has one single chip that integrates baseband, power management, RF, and two SIM interfaces. When this chip is paired with an iMAT antenna from SkyCross, switchplexer in the system can be eliminated. This solution also bundles technologies, development tools, and customer support.

 

Horst Pratsch, Vice President of Marketing for Entry Phone Business at Infineon, said that cost is a main driver in each of the mobile phone segments, but pressure is particularly intense for the rapidly growing, high volume, ultra-low cost segment.

 

“This pressure encourages innovation, and we are pleased to address the challenge with the talented team at SkyCross,” Pratsch said.

 

According to Joe Gifford, Executive Vice President of Business Development and Product Management at SkyCross, “This game-changing architecture developed by Infineon and SkyCross delivers design freedom to ultra-low cost handset designers. iMAT continues to demonstrate benefits across a wide range of products, and this use of the versatile technology represents a new wave of possibilities.”

 

Future generations of ultra-low cost solutions are also coming up, like the Infineon X-Gold102 chip is already in mass production and it has the iMAT dual feed antenna into its XMM1020 platform.