Lime Microsystems announces multi-band multi-standard transceiver

EDN Europe, 17 Feb 2009

Lime Microsystems’ LMS6002, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is a multi-band multi-standard RF transceiver IC designed for femtocells and small-cell basestations. The highly frequency agile transceiver operates at user-selectable frequencies between 375MHz and 4GHz and is suitable for 3G, WiMAX, and LTE standards. Ebrahim Bushehri, CEO of Lime Microsystems, says that the chip meets the needs of femtocell designers, “in terms of interference, dynamic range, gain control and frequency agility….the LMS6002 not only meets these requirements, it also offers considerable cost and inventory savings for OEMs.”
Designers can digitally configure the transceiver to operate in the full range of frequency bands, with 16 user-selectable bandwidths of up to 28MHz. This means that it can transmit and receive data across all WCDMA and CDMA bands, as well as those used or planned for WiMAX and LTE. This removes the need for individual transceiver chips for each of the different bands, and allows a small-cell base station to reconfigure rapidly and simply.

Lime announced first silicon for this device in April 2008. Feedback following evaluation by key customers has defined this second-generation device. The LMS6002 now incorporates multiple RF inputs and outputs to enable features such as GSM Listen Mode required for femtocell operation. You program it via SPI, and ther is a full calibration function. It comes in a 9x9 mm 116-pin DQFN package, and is available with an evaluation board and associated software.