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Lime Microsystems launched the world’s first reference design for a MicroTCA broadband wireless transceiver. Targeted at small cell WiMAX base station applications - femtocells and picocells - the transceiver has six user-selectable channel bandwidths from 1.5 MHz to 14 MHz and can be digitally configured to operate in bands from 2 GHz to 4 GHz.

The reconfigurable design supports a variety of network configurations, bandwidths and data rates. This minimizes costs and inventory for wireless system OEMs and operators.

Using a high level command set, the design can be configured for half-duplex and full-duplex operation in frequency-division multiplex (FDM) and time-division multiplex (TDM) modes. The board can also be used as a ‘plug-and-play’ transceiver for rapid evaluation and deployment of WiMAX base stations based upon ACTA or MicroTCA standards.

The zero-IF transceiver uses 12-bit baseband ADCs and DACs. A 40 MHz sampling rate is derived from a low-noise clock. Its serial RapidIO interface supports a throughput of up to 3.125 Gbps and can communicate via any advanced mezzanine cards (AMC) ports. A single port carries I/Q and control traffic and an I/Q record and playback capability simplifies testing. A full-speed USB interface is provided for PC controlled stand-alone operation.

The development platform will be available from Dec. 1, 2007 at a one-off price of $12,000.