u-blox launches compact 3.5G module

u-blox, a leading fabless provider of wireless communication and global positioning solutions, announced LUCY, a new family of high-speed wireless modules supporting the world’s fastest globally adopted mobile communications standard.

Based on UMTS/HSDPA, LUCY supports a wide range of M2M applications such as high-bandwidth multimedia systems for mobile Internet and VoIP routing, in-car multimedia as well as streaming video for remote media panels and transfer of large data volumes for medical diagnostics, security and surveillance.

“The market trend is clearly towards mobile multimedia, where high-bandwidth is a necessity” said Thomas Seiler, CEO of u-blox. “LUCY gives our customers drop-in UMTS performance, allowing them to focus their design efforts on applications and services, and not on connectivity and certification.”

LUCY supports tri-band UMTS/HSDPA and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE class 12 with embedded TCP/IP stack and SSL client. A key feature of LUCY is its low idle-mode power consumption of less than 2 mA, and wide operating voltage, 3.2 – 4.5 V. The module includes an assisted GPS client for on- and offline telematics applications, and comes in a compact 45 x 37.5 x 3 mm package with 60-pin board-to-board connector. The highly-integrated module supports both voice and data, and requires only an external antenna.