Freescale and ArrayComm Team to Deliver Multi Antenna Signal Processing Technology for WiMAX Base Stations

By Niladri Sekhar Nath

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Freescale Semiconductor and ArrayComm (News - Alert) have jointly developed reference design to simplify the creation of high-performance WiMAX base station equipment. The solution integrates ArrayComm's multi antenna signal processing software (A-MAS) with Freescale's high-performance MSC8144 quad-core digital signal processor.

 

The reference design takes advantage of the high performance of the MSC8144 DSP to handle both Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) processing. The solution will help deliver high frequencies, superior channel density and low operating costs.

 

Steve Sifferman, president of ArrayComm commented in a statement to the press, "The end result of this collaboration allows our customers to profit from our ability to fully utilize the advanced processing power, versatility and features of Freescale's DSP technology to create our highly advanced signal processing algorithms in wireless broadband network economics."

 

The products based on the combined solution are likely to offer two to four times greater coverage, more than doubled data rates, and as much as a fourfold increase in capacity for 802.16/WiMAX networks, both the companies note. The reference design complies with the IEEE (News - Alert) 802.16e standard and conforms to the WiMAX Forum Wave 2 base profile as well.

 

ArrayComm's A-MAS software offers support of multiple input/multiple output (MIMO), adaptive antenna system (AAS) and combined MIMO/AAS modes. It incorporates the entire antenna processing aspects of the WiMAX (News - Alert) profiles approved by the WiMAX Forum Mobile Task Group for IEEE 802.16e.

 

The MSC8144 DSP is based on StarCore DSP technology. The processor is capable of reducing system cost and enhancing performance for intensive network processing. The MSC8144 DSP takes single chip integration to new levels, embedding four multiple-issue 1GHz StarCore DSP cores and integrating one of the industry's highest density embedded DSP memories at 10.5Mbytes, a security coprocessor, RISC engines and an abundance of high speed networking interfaces.

 

"The high-performance programmable processing of the MSC8144 DSP allows OEMs to use the same device, hardware platform and tools for multiple applications by using differentiated software loads," said Jeff Timbs, director of marketing for Freescale's Networking Systems Division. "The combination of the MSC8144's processing performance with ArrayComm's multi antenna software offers significant savings on development time, decreased base station costs and performance benefits for a new generation of broadband wireless infrastructure equipment."