Wireless Infrastructure mmWave

The transition to 5G mobile is coming, driven by demand for higher-rate broadband at gigabits per second. Such bandwidth is made possible via a new radio spectrum known as millimeter-wave (mmWave) because its wavelengths are shorter than existing mobile radio at 6 GHz and below.

Millimeter-wave deployments require radio densities higher than traditional wireless networks. As a result, millimeter-wave radio systems are diverging from traditional base station architectures, adopting instead different engineering approaches and semiconductor technologies like CMOS. iCana leverages CMOS foundation with a novel array architecture tuned to make millimeter coverage reliable and economical.

At mmWave bands, iCana is developing Up/Down Converters (UDCs) and Beam Formers (BFICs) at different frequency bands.

Beamforming is a technique by which an array of antennas can be steered to transmit radio signals in a specific direction. This results in a stronger signal at a particular point. Beamforming ICs are used to regulate the phase of the signal before it is sent to the antenna array in order to control/enable beamforming.