Multi-standard accelerator supports 3G-LTE, WiMAX, HSPA+ and TDD-LTE base stations

Jun 24, 2008 12:02 PM

In a bold move to fundamentally advance next-generation broadband wireless base station design, Freescale Semiconductor has introduced the industry’s first multi-standard baseband accelerator device. The first accelerator to support 3G-LTE, the MSBA8100 also supports the emerging wireless WiMAX, HSPA+ and TDD-LTE standards, enabling manufacturers of wireless infrastructure equipment to create substantially lower-cost, differentiated channel cards.

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For carriers, this advance in silicon design brings deployment of LTE and other next-generation wireless networks closer to reality. The MSBA8100 multi-standard baseband accelerator supports legacy 2G/3G technologies as well as the newest wireless standards. Freescale is the first semiconductor company offering a customized and off-the-shelf solution fully addressing these standards. Target applications include next-generation stand-alone or unified 3G-LTE, WiMAX, HSPA+ and TDD-LTE equipment, as well as products that support established radio standards.

Eliminating the need to develop costly FPGA or custom ASIC devices, the baseband accelerator, together with Freescale’s MSC8144 quad core digital signal processor (DSP), provides a flexible solution for a range of base station designs. This advanced Freescale technology is designed to enable OEMs to create wireless base station equipment delivering over 100 Mbps data rates for low latency packets, at prices affordable enough to fuel mainstream deployment.

Freescale’s MSC8144 DSP combined with the advanced MSBA8100 accelerator maintains the same flexibility as a DSP-plus-FPGA solution — at lower cost and without the expense associated with specific adaptation of a standard product. Additional bill-of-materials savings may be realized because the solution eliminates the need for expensive dedicated devices at the midterm prototype design stage. The same DSP-plus-baseband accelerator combination can be used from prototyping through final system production.

For rapid system prototyping and development, an MSBA8100ADS development board is available from Freescale, facilitating advanced development of software. The board ships with the MSBA8100 device and the MSC8144 DSP interconnected via the on-board 4x serial RapidIO switch, allowing real system-level design and development.

The board also includes an AMC expansion connector for integration with other boards over the 4x serial RapidIO interface or an ATCA chassis, as well as optimized device drivers for MSC8144 to configure, control and communicate with the MSBA8100 device. Freescale provides a robust development tools suite for its DSP products, including an integrated development environment (IDE) within the Freescale CodeWarrior toolset. In addition, reference software kernels are available to assist with customer development work.

The MSBA8100ADS development board will be available for early adopters based on acceptance into the Freescale alpha customer program. MSBA8100 device samples are expected to be available during the third quarter of 2008.