Spreadtrum Communications, a leading fabless semiconductor company in China, together with other companies and research institutions, was announced as the winner of a special prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award 2016 for "The fourth generation mobile communications system (TD-LTE) key technology and application" project on Jan 9, in Beijing.

The project, having the TD-LTE technology at its core, broke through barriers in technology, industrial development, networking, testing, and organization and gave China's 4G mobile communication technology a safe lead throughout the world. 

"Spreadtrum previously won the National Science and Technology Progress Awards with its GSM/GPRS and TD-SCDMA core technologies in the 2G and 3G eras,"said Dr. Li Liyou, the chairman and CEO of Spreadtrum, adding that Spreadtrum's winning the special prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award for the TD-LTE project is a big affirmation for the company's efforts to advance technology and innovation in the 4G era.

Spreadtrum was engaged in the project responsible for the R&D and marketization of the terminal chips since the formulation of the TD-LTE standard. It has tackled a series of key technique difficulties, including 16/28nm technology, digital and analog circuit design, LTE communication link design, LTE key algorithm design and hardware implementation, high-speed hardware accelerator design, low-power design, and multi-mode protocol stack design and implementation. Spreadtrum also came up with an effective approach to high integration, low cost and low power consumption of multi-mode communications chips for commercializing TD-LTE tech. 

To accelerate the commercialization of the TD-LTE technology, Spreadtrum was the first to release the 28nm 5-mode quad-core LTE SoC Platform SC9830/9832 and the 16 nm 64-bit Octa-core LTE SoC Platform SC9860.

In 2016, Spreadtrum sold over 100 million LTE chipsets in more than 20 countries and regions. The Spreadtrum SC9830/9832 LTE SoC Platforms have been adopted by many domestic and foreign smartphone brands such as Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Cool, Micromax, Lava, ADVAN as well as by operators including China Mobile and Reliance of India. The high-end SC9860 LTE SoC Platform will be applied in information security and finance fields. 

"Spreadtrum Communications has been committed to technological innovation and development since it was established," said Li Liyou. "It will continue to focus on 5G key technology breakthrough and build itself into a world-class chip design enterprise to better promote the development of China's telecommunications industry."