US : QUALCOMM introduced its new infrastructure reference design for Ultra Mobile Broadban (UMB) networks. Based on QUALCOMM's OFDMA Cell Site Modem CSM8900 and technologies from leading component and software providers, the base station reference design is intended to help enable OEMs reduce their development costs and quickly commercialize new UMB infrastructure products.

"Our new reference design provides a simple, well defined path for equipment manufacturers to introduce new UMB base stations and gain an early foothold in the high-speed mobile broadband market," said Ed Knapp, senior vice president of marketing, QUALCOMM Flarion Technologies. "It is important to QUALCOMM to facilitate the development of next generation mobile broadband technologies. The UMB reference design is a major milestone in our efforts to enable OEMs to accelerate the design of infrastructure products with the best possible mobile performance."

QUALCOMM's UMB reference design provides a well architected, flexible solution for the physical layer (Layer 1), as well as for Layers 2 and 3, giving vendors the ability to accelerate their next generation development efforts. Using this design, both large and small OEMs are able to leverage QUALCOMM's extensive R&D experience with OFDMA-based technologies, reducing typical barriers to market entry. The reference design employs QUALCOMM's CSM8900 to provide physical layer functions. The resulting UMB reference design supports a flat, all-IP network architecture.

In addition to leveraging QUALCOMM's expertise in OFDMA, the new UMB base station reference design uses best-of-breed technologies from Freescale Semiconductor, Cavium Networks and Green Hills Software. Freescale Semiconductor's MPC8548 PowerQUICC(TM) III processor is used for the control plane and Layer 2 functions. Cavium Networks' OCTEON(TM) Processor provides market-leading performance for Layer 3 and Layer 3+ networking applications. The UMB reference design also incorporates Green Hills Software's u-velOSity realtime operating system (RTOS) and will utilize the MULTI Professional Edition integrated development environment.

"Next generation mobile devices require wireless networks to provide high- bandwidth voice, video and data access with robust quality of service, security and application-aware features," said Rajiv Khemani, vice president of marketing and sales, Cavium Networks. "We are pleased to enable secure, application-aware functionality in QUALCOMM's reference design using Cavium's OCTEON processor, which will help fuel the adoption of rich media services in mobile networks."

"The MPC8548 is proving to be a very successful product for Freescale, in both control and data plane applications," said Jeff Timbs, director of marketing for Freescale's Networking Systems division. "The MPC8548 gives QUALCOMM's reference design the ability to achieve high levels of performance within constrained power and price budgets. Moreover, its flexible set of networking interfaces reduces system costs by eliminating glue logic and will enable OEMs to leverage millions of lines of code that are successfully running on PowerQUICC devices.