SCIENCE

Skyworks Solutions has announced that Samsung is leveraging several of its solutions for its newest femtocell offering, including Verizon's Wireless Network Extender. Samsung's latest offering, the new code division multiple access (CDMA) plug-and-play personal base station, or femtocell, for homes or small offices, provides customers with enhanced cellular coverage, helping to eliminate "dead spots". It also reduces the need for a landline given its ability to manage up to three calls simultaneously with a fourth channel reserved for emergency 911 calls.

Femtocell base stations improve 3G cell phone coverage inside buildings or homes by working with users' existing 3G mobile phones to provide secure, cellular service over existing broadband networks. Acting as a wireless router, the femtocell provides access to the cell phone carrier's network for multiple devices within a building. With some carrier networks straining to keep up with the demands of increasing numbers of users surfing the Web from their smart phones, femtocells are being viewed as a cost-efficient means to improve the quality of service by making more bandwidth available to support data and video applications.

According to a March 2010 iSuppli study, femtocells are "headed toward critical mass among all major nodes of the wireless supply chain and will vault into explosive growth after reaching a decisive watershed this year." In April 2010, Infonetics Research estimated that femtocell shipments would top 2.5 million units in 2011 and that sales of fixed mobile convergence devices and femtocells would grow at an 86 percent compound annual growth rate from 2009 to 2014.

"Skyworks is delighted to be supporting Samsung with our full suite of femtocell solutions," said Liam K. Griffin, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Skyworks. "Our highly integrated dual band transceiver chipset enables femtocell designers to develop cost-effective, high-performance RF-to-baseband solutions, meeting the growing demand for network capacity driven by the mobile Internet phenomenon."