Up/Downconverter Cranks Up Bandwidth And Sensitivity

Apr 25, 2011 4:10 PM, MD&D News Staff

The Texas Instruments GC6016 software-defined digital up/downconverter supports one to 48 channels across four transmit and eight receive streams with up to 155-Msample/s composite bandwidth.

Promising to improve the performance of narrow/wideband 2G, 3G, and 4G basestations, digital repeaters, software defined radios, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transceivers, and wideband digitizers, the Texas Instruments GC6016 debuts as the industry’s most powerful software-defined digital up/downconverter, according to the company. It supports one to 48 channels across four transmit and eight receive streams with up to 155-Msample/s composite bandwidth (see the figure). Channels are configurable for data rates as wide as 184 Msamples/s with a 98,304 decimation and interpolation range. Other features include fractional re-samplers, crest factor reduction, 48-bit numerically controlled oscillators, and automatic gain control supporting up to four transmit and eight receive antennas simultaneously with multi-band and multi-mode configurations. Sampling in a 23- by 23-mm thermally enhanced plastic ball-grid array (TE-PBGA) package, the GC6016 costs $64.95 each in lots of 1000. To peruse a datasheet, go to http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/gc6016.pdf.