Semiconductor startup Quantance has raised another $12 million from investors including DoCoMo Capital, TD Fund, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners and DoCoMo Capital. The company makes power supply chips that use envelope tracking technology. Envelope tracking regulates power in LTE phones by matching radio power input with output.
Battery life has been a significant problem for many LTE phones to date, so envelope tracking is important to handset makers. “So many big players have firm plans for deploying ET solutions that we expect ET to be ‘table stakes’ by the end of next year,” said Quantance founder Vikas Vinayak.
The company says it has already had several wins with handset makers as well as with semiconductor companies who incorporate its chip design into integrated chipsets for mobile devices.
More established chipmakers are also working hard on envelope tracking technologies. Broadcom demonstrated its solution for RCR at Mobile World Congress (below):
