AT&T Wireless will use Broadcom's EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution) technology as it begins offering EDGE service nationally.
Broadcom EDGE technology has been incorporated into Sony Ericsson's GC82 PC card, which is being supplied to AT&T Wireless to support its EDGE service. The GC82 PC card has been tested by AT&T Wireless in live networks averaging download speeds of 100 - 130 Kbps, with speeds bursting up to 200 Kbps. Based on recent field trials, EDGE delivers nearly twice the data rate of the competing CDMA2000 1X standard. Sony Ericsson and Broadcom are the first companies to achieve Full Type Approval (FTA) with a Class 10 EDGE terminal with four receive data (Rx) and two transmit data (Tx) slots.
EDGE is an evolution of the Global System for Mobile (GSM) technology that allows consumers to use cellular handsets, PC cards, PDAs and other wireless devices to connect to the Internet at data rates up to four times faster than existing GSM and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) wireless devices.
"The availability of Broadcom's EDGE technology enables us to give customers the fastest national wireless data speeds in the country," said Rod Nelson, Chief Technology Officer for AT&T Wireless. "We are very pleased to be working closely with Broadcom to deliver a data network that can enable important business applications for our customers."
Sony Ericsson's GC82 EDGE PC card is designed for dual band 850/1900 MHz GSM networks in North America and supports higher power (Class 4) two watt output for the 850 MHz band. The GC82 fits in the PCMCIA-slot of a laptop, providing fast and easy wireless access to Internet and corporate intranet sites for laptop users.
Broadcom's EDGE platform is based around a BCM2132 single-chip baseband processor chip and uses a unique hardware and software architecture to enable four-slot receiver processing at very low power and cost. Broadcom has provided the BCM2132 chip and reference design including an EDGE protocol stack, digital signal processing (DSP) code, NDIS drivers and PC software, to Sony Ericsson for the GC82.
"The GC82 is the first high-performance EDGE modem to be deployed in the market," said Anders Franzen, Corporate Vice President for Sony Ericsson M2M. "With Broadcom's technology and engineering support, we have been able to bring an advanced product to market for one of the leading wireless networking providers."
"Broadcom's EDGE technology once again highlights our commitment to engineering execution and first to market mindset," said Robert Rango, Vice President of Broadcom's Mobile & Wireless Group. "We are very pleased to be working closely with both Sony Ericsson and AT&T Wireless to make EDGE a reality. AT&T Wireless' national launch of EDGE will bring the fastest wireless connectivity available to the mass market."
Broadcom and Sony Ericsson are also collaborating on other PC card products including the GC79 802.11b/GPRS combo and GC75 GPRS modem. The GC79 uses Broadcom's 802.11b/GPRS BCM2121 chipset and software.
Broadcom's single-chip BCM2132 EDGE solution is targeted at multimedia handset and PC card/data applications. The platform supports a broad array of multimedia messaging features including camera, graphics engine, multiple color displays, USB, and IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth technologies. Broadcom's platform includes complete messaging client software that enables video clips or pictures to be sent via EDGE, as well as a broad range of messaging support.
Broadcom's EDGE software/hardware partitioning is unique in that the key radio modem and protocol functions are handled by dedicated hardware and thus do not require the use of a high-speed DSP core to deliver four-slot EDGE functionality. This partitioning, coupled with a novel incremental redundancy implementation that requires very low DSP and CPU processor instructions, results in low power consumption and leaves more processing power available to run multimedia applications.
Broadcom's EDGE multimedia platform consists of a complete radio reference design including protocol stack, flexible software, application programming interface, application enablers and all layer 1/DSP software. A complete multimedia framework is also available for supporting full feature terminals and man-machine interface (MMI) development.
In addition to the BCM2132 EDGE/GPRS/GSM multimedia processor, Broadcom's mobile communications, single-chip, all-CMOS baseband processors include the ML2011 GSM processor and the BCM2121 GPRS/GSM processor. Broadcom's proven expertise in mixed-signal and CMOS RF also enables the delivery of complete wireless, local and personal area network (WAN/LAN/PAN) solutions in mobile data communications with compelling, size, cost and performance benefits. Broadcom offers a wide range of innovative wireless products including solutions for EDGE, GSM, GPRS, IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth, delivering on the vision of anytime, anywhere connectivity.
Broadcom Corporation provides solutions for digital cable and satellite set-top boxes; cable and DSL modems and residential gateways; high-speed transmission and switching for local, metropolitan, wide area and storage networking; home and wireless networking; cellular and terrestrial wireless communications; Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway and telephony systems; broadband network processors; and SystemI/O server solutions.