At the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Texas Instruments (TI) plans to show off four new products. Each is designed in its own way to help TI customers with their complex wireless infrastructure application design needs for 3G and beyond. The products include a single-core DSP, an HSPA+ development platform, a single-chip wireless transmit processor and a 4-channel wideband digital repeater evaluation module.
The TMS320TCI6484 single-core DSP is the first baseband processor capable of supporting both MAC and PHY functions on a single chip. This can eliminate the need for a RISC co-processor. OEMs can either reduce their system cost through chip reduction or increase their system density supporting more carriers or channels per card. The DSP also includes high performance accelerators and peripheral interfaces that are optimized for cellular infrastructure products. This level of integration, packed into a 23x23mm chip, allows base station manufacturers to increase the channel or carrier capacity by 50%.
TI’s HSPA+ development platform enables base station manufacturers to design a single product that spans HSPA, HSPA+ and LTE (Long Term Evolution). HSPA+ offers many benefits for wireless infrastructure base station manufacturers. Essentially, HSPA+, as defined by release 7 of the 3G mobile data protocol, introduces the concept of a flat architecture for cellular infrastructure. This new approach makes the base station into an IP router, connecting to the Internet with modern IP link layer technologies like Ethernet and eliminating expensive leased T1/E1 lines. With data speeds of up to 42 Mbps on the downlink and 11 Mbps on the uplink, HSPA+ is a significant step toward LTE.
On the analog front, the GC5322 is a single-chip wireless transmit processor that combines digital upconverter, crest factor reduction and digital pre-distortion linearization functions. The GC5322 device increases the efficiency of multicarrier power amplifiers (PAs) in the RF transmit signal chain and eliminates the need for high-performance RF power amplifier components. This enables base station OEMs to achieve power efficiencies of 25% or more for Class AB PAs and reach 40% or more for Doherty PAs.
Finally, the TSW4100 is a 4-channel wideband digital repeater evaluation module (EVM). TI claims it reduces time-to-market by up to 80%.
