4G chipmaker Sequans Communications S.A. (NYSE: SQNS) today announced that its first LTE-Advanced chip will be sampling next quarter. The SQN3220 is part of Sequans’ Cassiopeia platform, supporting 3GPP Release 10 specifications. Cassiopeia is Sequans’ third generation LTE platform solution, following earlier Release 8 and Release 9 solutions introduced in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Cassiopeia’s key capability is carrier aggregation of 40 MHz total bandwidth.

“With Cassiopeia we have leveraged nearly a decade of 4G experience to develop an exceptionally powerful LTE-Advanced solution,” said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO. “The key feature is extremely flexible carrier aggregation, allowing combination of any two carriers of any size up to 20 MHz each, contiguous or non-contiguous, inter-band or intra-band, for an overall total of 40 MHz of bandwidth. Cassiopeia’s unique implementation of carrier aggregation gives operators the ability to get the most value possible from their LTE spectrum—even the smallest slices.”

Cassiopeia also supports other Release 10 enhancements such as new MIMO schemes, enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) schemes for heterogeneous networks (HetNet), and improvements to eMBMS (evolved multimedia broadcast multicast service) or LTE Broadcast. Sequans eMBMS technology supports multiple concurrent sessions for multicast traffic along with unicast traffic, on both TDD and FDD networks, and also provides a standardized interface to third party eMBMS middleware.

Cassiopeia is a member of Sequans’ StreamrichLTE product family for high-performance, feature-rich LTE devices. It is compliant with 3GPP Release 10 specifications, delivering carrier aggregation and other improvements needed by carriers to support the growing needs for capacity, spectrum flexibility, and performance. It supports both FDD and TDD duplexing methods and integrates a customer-programmable processor in a very small package. The SQN3220 baseband chip is built in 40 nm CMOS and is designed for the highest possible efficiency either as a standalone 4G LTE solution or alongside a 3G subsystem. The SQN3220 Cassiopeia platform includes baseband and RF chips and reference designs.

Sequans will be participating in LTE-Advanced trials with leading operators beginning next quarter and is conducting interoperability testing and performance optimizations of the Cassiopeia platform in collaboration with leading infrastructure vendors and test equipment suppliers, including Agilent Technologies.

“Sequans has always been a leader in 4G semiconductors and we are pleased to collaborate with Sequans on the testing of their next-generation LTE-Advanced solution,” said Joe Depond, vice president of Agilent Technologies’ Mobile Broadband Operation. “Agilent’s T2010A LTE Wireless Communications Test Set, used in Agilent design verification and conformance test systems throughout the industry, has been successfully used to test Sequans’ Release 10 carrier aggregation capability with excellent results.”

See Sequans at Mobile World Congress, February 25-28, 2013, hall 7 stand G20.

Cautions regarding forward-looking statements

About Sequans Communications

Sequans Communications S.A. (NYSE: SQNS) is a 4G chipmaker, supplying LTE and WiMAX chips to original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers worldwide. Founded in 2003 to address the WiMAX market, the company expanded in early 2009 to address the LTE market. Sequans chips are operating in 4G networks of leading mobile operators around the world. Sequans is based in Paris, France with additional offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and China. Visit Sequans online at www.sequans.com; www.facebook.com/sequans; www.twitter.com/sequans