Sequoia Communications, a start-up based in San Diego, announced an equity investment from Motorola for its development of multimode RF chipsets. Sequoia Communications’ FullSpectra architecture aims to enable multi-mode transceivers with significant advantages in cost, printed circuit board (PCB) size and power consumption. The FullSpectra architecture features polar modulation, which is already the de facto standard transmit architecture for GSM. Thus, any multi-mode device supporting GSM will require polar in order to have a single transmit architecture for all modes. Sequoia said that achieving this common transmit architecture is critical to shortening the RF design cycle. It believes its FullSpectra polar transmitter architecture will reduce the RF design cycle by more than 50 percent due to this common multi-mode platform.
Sequoia is focused on WCDMA, one of the most challenging air interfaces to implement in polar. Adding GSM, EDGE and other modes to this WCDMA baseline is straightforward. The company claims that with its architecture, up to 70 percent of the RF circuitry is shared by every mode, enabling dramatic reduction in die size, PCB area, component count and cost.
Sequoia Communications plans to develop an entire line of single-chip multi-mode transceivers based on the FullSpectra architecture. The company will sample its first product in Q2 2005.
The Motorola investment was an extension of a series D round that closed in December 2004. Third Point Ventures L.P., an early stage technology investor also participated in this round of funding. Additional financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.sequoiacommunications.com
http://www.motorola.com/ventures
