HONG KONG — Beceem Communications Inc. is sampling the first silicon for Wave 2 of the WiMax broadband wireless standard, based on the IEEE 802.16-2005 mobile wireless standard.

The BCS200 chip set uses the same baseband and RF partitioning as the original fixed WiMax chip set from Beceem, but offers 25-Mbit/second throughput along with a 25 percent reduction in power consumption and 60 percent reduction in footprint.

Lars Johnsson, vice president of business development at Beceem, said that many prototypes were developed by competitors based on the original 802.16e spec, "but we are not anticipating anyone else to be in full sampling of Wave 2 yet." The BCS200 adds more-advanced MIMO and beam-forming features and uses a direct-conversion radio architecture in both 2- and 3-GHz bands. Medium Access Control functions are implemented on an embedded processor in the baseband chip.