New-Tech Europe Magazine | Aug 2018

Qualcomm’s latest antenna module announcements bring 5G smartphones closer to commercial reality.

Malik Saadi, ABI Research

The News: Qualcomm has created a breakthrough for 5G NR with the announcement of a new batch of radio frequency (RF) solutions for both mmWave and sub-6GHz designed for smartphones and other mobile devices. By pairing Qualcomm’s latest RF modules with its Snapdragon X50 modem, the company intends to offer OEMs an incredibly compact end-to-end 5G solution, enabling them to focus on what they do best without worrying about the complexity of the RF system design brought about by 5G, mmWave in particular. In tandem, the solutions will be able to offer 5G coverage in dense urban areas and broad 5G NR coverage.

The Impact: “As the industry moves to 5G, RF front-end (RFFE) designs and RF componentprocurementwill become far more complex and cumbersome for OEMs to handle. Such compact solutions as these from Qualcomm will no doubt help OEMs accelerate smartphone time-to-market without overly compromising the integrity of the devices’ industrial design, performance or cost,” says Malik Saadi, Vice President of Strategic Technologies at ABI Research. Why mmWave Module, QTM052 is a big deal: Qualcomm has created a breakthrough for 5G NR mmWave with the announcement of its QTM052, a new radio frequency

(RF) system in the package for smartphones and other mobile devices, which encapsulates all RF components from the antenna to the radio transceiver. This is the first in the industry as, traditionally, OEMs procure RF components from several vendors and handle the design of the overall RF system themselves. “The mmWave module announced by Qualcomm today is a turning point for 5G implementation within mobile devices as this could potentially set the standard for plug- and-play RF system design for 5G mmWave,” says Malik Saadi, Vice President of Strategic Technologies at ABI Research. Of most striking significance from the announcement is the

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