Chips Reach Beyond Mere Silicon
By Brad Smith, STAFF
HOTLINKS
(Wireless Week) _ Now that the mobile WiMAX standard has been solidified, silicon vendors like Intel, Sequans and Texas Instruments are building portfolios that offer a broader scope than just hardware.
For example, Intel will soon be offering a baseband card called the Intel NetStructure WiMAX Baseband Card designed to aid in the creation of base stations. The card is the first from Intel to integrate hardware and software for transport, control and baseband processing. The chip company says manufacturers will be able to use the card to get to market more quickly by reducing development time and costs, as well as management costs.
The Intel card used the AdvancedMC standard under the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative. It's expected to be available in December.
2006 show as well as a couple of customers for the product, Aperto and Soma Networks.
The mobile station chip, called the SQN1110, features the industry's lowest power consumption and a throughput of 10 Mbps, Sequans says. It integrates both the physical (PHY) and media access control (MAC) layers
"We are very pleased by the performance of the SQN1110 chip," Bernard Aboussouan, Sequans vice president of marketing and business development, said in a statement. "We plan to demonstrate through upcoming trials with our partners that WiMAX is a strong alternative to 3GPP and 3GPP2 proposed enhancements, and that Sequans silicon offers the best foundation possible for the development of low cost, highly efficient broadband mobile networks."
Aperto says it will use Sequans' silicon in its PacketMAX WiMAX base stations, while Soma Networks says it will integrate Sequans' 802.16e-2005 technology and chipsets with its FlexMAX Mobile WiMAX System. Soma and Sequans demonstrated the solution at the recent WiMAX Forum PlugFest for streaming multiple, simultaneous traffic flows.
And Texas Instruments has developed a certification library that includes all the core signal processing and permutation functions required for an 802.16e Wave 1 compliant solution. TI also has incorporated Wave 2 permutation functions looking forward to the use of multi-antenna signal processing and beam-forming.
TI also has expanded its portfolio of wireless signal chain solutions for WiMAX applications, including three RF transceiver reference designs that support 802.16d and 802.16e. The reference designs, on display at TI's booth (525), include the board, design database, schematics and bill of materials.
Convergence of WiMAX and cellular telecommunications is on the agenda for Comsys Communication and its partner Signal Processing, which are detailing the 4G capabilities of ComMAX, a flexible multimode OFDMA baseband processors.
ComMAX is targeted at manufacturers of multimode mobile WiMAX terminals, the two companies said, running mobile WiMAX and cellular technologies. ComMAX provides a comprehensive broadband solution with MIMO capability that can operate over multiple bands, and which offers substantial cost and power-savings, they said
Comsys says ComMAX was designed to enable service continuity over existing cellular technologies and is optimized for WiMAX operation. Integrating an advanced MAC engine with optimized neighbour-cell management, ComMAX supports full mobility at high vehicular speeds. The processor and accompanying reference designs will be available in the market during 2007.
Copyright The Associated Press 2006. All Rights Reserved
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