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HSDPA picocell and WiMAX Solutions

13th September, 2004

Europe : picoChip announced the availability of complete software implementations for HSDPA picocells and 802.16 (WiMAX) basestations, the PC8218 and PC8520 respectively.

Both "off the shelf" systems run on the company's PC102 picoArray™, the world's most powerful DSP. The PC8520 and PC8218 will speed time to market for OEMs with robust, "carrier class", highly-integrated solutions that significantly reduce the system bill of materials (BoM).

Doug Pulley, co-Founder and CTO at picoChip, said: "Many OEMs are cautious about trusting reference designs, but we have demonstrated the capabilities and performance of our solutions. We believe these are leading solutions for 802.16 and HSDPA. Our partners are benefiting from the improved performance, higher integration, lower BoM and time to market savings that they enable; what is more, they can easily upgrade as standards evolve."

These WiMAX and HSPDA products were market driven, and were designed together with industry leaders. Both the PC8520 and PC8218 are being designed into commercial basestations, based on the PC102, which is currently shipping in production quantities.

Carolyn Gabriel, Research Director at Rethink Research Associates, added, "In these times there is a real necessity for speedy entry to market combined with product differentiation to succeed. picoChip have made this goal readily available to OEMs working with 802.16 and HSDPA. This is the first time anyone can easily harness the full power of the picoArray with fully characterised and interoperable solutions. Both markets value flexibility and upgradeability — negating the fear of obsolescence will be very attractive to operators. picoChip's growing customer base is evidence that manufacturers are paying attention."

The picoChip PC8520 WiMAX basestation solution provides a software-defined implementation of the 802.16-2004 PHY, for the 256OFDM mode with "carrier-class" reliability and performance. The PC8520 enables basestations to be WiMAX-certified™. The reference design supports includes subchannelization and antenna diversity. This is a flexible solution; the software upgrade to 802.16e for mobility, including scalable PHY and advanced FEC, will be available next year.

The PC8218 HSDPA picocell replaces the company's previous reference design by integrating the complex Iub interface, significantly reducing system BoM and simplifying integration. HSDPA increases the speed of WCDMA basestation up to 14.4Mbps and is increasingly seen as a critical requirement by operators. The PC8218 implements all baseband processing for WCDMA FDD 500m 32 user picocell for voice, DCH data or HSDPA services.

Delivering 200GIPS and 40GMACs the PC102 picoArray device is the highest performance DSP on the market. In a typical basestation, a single PC102 replaces a number of conventional DSPs and FPGAs, yet is easy to programme in assembler or standard ANSI C. The comprehensive toolchain allows applications to be easily and efficiently programmed, simulated, verified and tested in a single environment — significantly reducing development time and cost.

Time to market is further accelerated through the use of picoChip's extensive software libraries, which provide a speedy, cost-competitive and low risk route to market for fully compliant wireless infrastructure. The system is also well suited to any other advanced wireless technology, including 4G research and software defined radio (SDR or JTRS), smart antennas and MIMO.

The PC102 processor array is available now. picoChip is currently working with lead customers on projects that include the PC8218 HSDPA picocell and PC8520 WiMAX basestation solutions, which will be generally available from December 2004.

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