A novel duplexer lowers operators’ costs and simplifies deployment of wireless systems by enabling them to combine transmission of two 3G radio technologies onto a single cell site antenna
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Andrew Corp and IPWireless have jointly developed a product that lowers operators’ costs and simplifies deployment of wireless systems by enabling them to combine transmission of two 3G radio technologies onto a single cell site antenna. This new duplexer allows wireless operators to deploy both UMTS frequency division duplex (FDD) and UMTS time division duplex (TDD) systems using a single antenna, efficiently taking full advantage of their 3G spectrum to deploy new broadband services and offload traffic from their circuit switched networks.

Now commercially available, the UMTS FDD/TDD duplexer has already been proven in a number of trials across Europe, and will be used by a number of operators including the recently announced UMTS TDD deployment by Sonaecom in Portugal.

UMTS TDD systems were designed to operate in the unpaired IMT-2000 frequency bands (1900-1920 and 2010-2025MHz) that are adjacent to the paired WCDMA frequencies.

The TDD systems use time division to separate the uplink and downlink instead of using separate frequency bands, allowing the TDD system to have flexible asymmetry and better match typical data traffic patterns.
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Operators around the world are deploying packet based UMTS TDD systems because of the economical high-speed services enabled by the platform’s very high capacities and low latencies.

“Over the last few years, in addition to demonstrating the performance of UMTS TDD, we have worked with numerous mobile operators to show that TDD and FDD have very similar coverage characteristics and can coexist on the same towers”, said Bill Jones, Executive Vice President, technology and cofounder, IPWireless.

“Operators have also let us know that it is very important that the two technologies can share key infrastructure to lower cost and ease deployability, which is why we are so excited about this announcement with Andrew”.

“This new product provides wireless operators with a cost-effective and proven solution for TDD deployment, enabling them to provide their customers with wireless data while reducing their infrastructure costs”, said John DeSana, Group President, Filter Products, Andrew Corporation.