Tropian Inc., a Silicon Valley-based fabless semiconductor company specializing in wireless radio frequency products, announced today that Dr. Earl McCune, chief technology officer, will address the technical challenges and solutions for a multi-mode platform at next week's Mobile Silicon event in France.
The IBC Telecoms & Media conference, "Solutions for Next Generation Wireless," will be held at the Sofitel Bercy Hotel in Paris, Oct. 29 and 30, 2001. The goal of Mobile Silicon is to provide insight into the problems facing all involved in the production of next generation mobile terminals.
McCune's presentation, "A Power Efficient Radio Platform for UMTS, GSM, EDGE and TDMA," will take place Monday, Oct. 29 at 3:35 p.m. McCune will provide a summary of the technical challenges for a multi-mode platform, including:

-- Current consumption constraints and their impact on radio performance
-- An overview of other issues including adjacent channel rejection, spectral purity, use of multiple codes in CDMA, component count restrictions
-- Applicability of polar modulation
-- A comparison with conventional quadrature approaches including current consumption and power dissipation.

Performance measurements from Tropian's UMTS / GSM / GPRS / EGPRS platform will also be shown.
At the UMTS Expo 2001 in Barcelona this month, Tropian introduced the technology for CodeStar(TM), a multi-mode, multi-band RF transmitter chipset with the ability to offer adjacent timeslot switching between GSM, the most widely used European wireless format, and UMTS. This new technology also exceeds the specifications for both GSM and UMTS.
CodeStar provides all of data formats and frequency bands of Tropian's TimeStar(TM) chipset -- plus UMTS. TimeStar(TM), introduced to the wireless market earlier this year, is the company's first multi-mode, multi-band RF transmitter that enables wireless transmission of multiple voice and high-speed data standards including EDGE, GSM, GPRS, TDMA, GAIT and AMPS. Tropian currently has evaluation units in customer sampling, and expects TimeStar(TM) to be in volume production by 2002.
Tropian's multi-mode, multi-band products are designed to meet industry demand for multi-mode phones and networks that can switch from voice to high-speed data in an experience that is seamless for the end user. As additional modes and frequencies for 3G services are rolled out, the company believes demand will increase further.
Last month, Tropian announced that it had closed $45 million in Series D equity funding -- its largest funding round to date. Merrill Lynch Ventures LLC led the financing and was joined by several new and existing financial investors.