Arctic Semiconductor ships IceWings, its first 5G RF chipset

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Arctic Semiconductor, which has rebranded from SiTune Corporation, has unveiled its first 5G RF chipset, as it looks to emphasise its focus on 5G RF products.

The 5G silicon chipset, IceWings, is now in mass production and has already been chosen by several customers for its programmable, performance, and low power features.

Arctic has been developing IceWings and other 5G chipsets for more than three years and holds over 40 patents for its technology. Its low-power universal RF chipsets look to provide exceptional signal quality and low power consumption to help equipment manufacturers build 5G wireless radios for various applications including small cells, private networks, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), macro base stations, and massive MIMO platforms.

Telecommunications and IT together use five to nine percent of the world's electricity supply and with the shift to 5G, energy consumption is expected to rise by as much as 160 percent by 2030, according to figures compiled by the Datacenter Forum. Consequently, lowering the electricity usage, the efficient management of heat, and reducing infrastructure costs are seen as crucial to the successful deployment of 5G.

Arctic said that its aim is to lower power consumption while offering top-of-the-line performance for both network equipment and user devices.

“Our mission is to design and develop the most energy efficient 5G RF IC solutions on the market,” said Vahid Toosi, Founder and CEO of Arctic Semiconductor. “The benefits of 5G will be felt for decades, but the energy and infrastructure costs are a challenge today. Offering cost-effective components that beats 3gpp specification while lowering power consumption are the key to fully scale 5G globally. That’s why we’ve chosen to focus on 5G and are committed to create solutions that are energy efficient as well as high performance.”

“Enterprises are continuing to invest in their digital business to build their competitive advantage. This investment will continue the exponential growth and widescale deployment and use of IoT and 5G-enabled devices driving strong demand for 5G RF transceivers,” said Brandon Hoff, Research Director, Enabling Technologies: Networking and Communication at IDC. “The rapid growth in digitisation creates critical hurdles in 5G deployment: power and cost.”

IceWings is a RF transceiver and comes with four integrated transmitters and receivers. It supports a wide range of standards in signal frequencies below 7.2GHz and enables mmWave applications by intermediate to baseband conversion.

Designed to be flexible and to make integration easier, IceWings allows customers to create more reliable platforms, with better yield, lower power consumption, and at a lower cost. The chip looks to streamline the production of 5G equipment, allowing customers to utilise the same hardware design with minor updates across a diverse set of use cases.