US : Altera Corporation announced its Stratix® II FPGAs have been selected by ZTE for its new TD-SCDMA Remote Radio Units (RRUs). In the ZTE RRU, the Stratix II device performs all major digital intermediate frequency (IF) functions.

With this announcement, Altera now has enabled all the major wireless air interface standards in production around the world. TD-SCDMA is the third-generation (3G) mobile telecommunications standard for China, and has been adopted by the 3GPP standards body. The growth of the standard has led to increased interest and participation across the telecommunications industry. In addition, RRUs will be widely used because of the smart antenna requirement in TD-SCDMA.

The ZTE RRU offering provides new heights of functionality and capability. The Altera® Stratix II device performs functions that would have required multiple ASSPs, providing board space, reliability and power consumption advantages. In addition, the Stratix II FPGA allows remote in-field hardware upgrades of the RRU, which is impossible with ASSPs.

“The combination of the Stratix II FPGA flexibility, power efficiency, and cost-effectiveness with Altera’s proven digital IF intellectual property provides us with a superior solution compared to fixed-function ASSPs,” said Qi Jun, TD-SCDMA chief engineer at ZTE. “Altera enabled us to meet our aggressive schedules and stay ahead of the competition, and also provided a compelling path for cost and power consumption optimization with their HardCopy ASIC.”

“The flexibility and performance of the Stratix II devices make them a great replacement for ASSPs,” said Arun Iyengar, senior director, Altera communication business unit. “We are excited about working with a leader in the fast-growing TD-SCDMA market like ZTE. With an easy migration to HardCopy ASICs, Altera enables power, performance, flexibility and cost advantages that are unmatched by any other silicon vendor.”

For more information about Altera’s Stratix II FPGA family of devices, visit www.altera.com/products/devices/stratix2/st2-index.jsp. For more information about Altera’s HardCopy® ASICs, visit www.altera.com/products/devices/hardcopyii/hr2-index.jsp.