WiMAX transceiver cuts equipment down to size

A WiMAX mini-PCI reference design provides the industry's lowest cost WiMAX-compliant customer premise equipment.

Atmel Corporation is working with Wavesat to create a WiMAX mini-PCI reference design that provides the industry's lowest cost WiMAX-compliant customer premise equipment (CPE).

Developed to provide OEMs with a quickly deployable WiMAX end product, the reference design will include Atmel's MAX-Link AT86RF535A 3.5GHz WiMAX-specific transceiver, Wavesat's DM256 baseband, interfaces, all external filters and components and software in a mini-PCI module.

With an expected BOM of under $100, this design is projected to save OEMs 25% in cost compared with competing WiMAX CPE solutions and will be available in July.

The low bill of materials (BOM) cost of the reference design is largely attributable to Atmel's AT86RF535A MAX-Link low IF transceiver.

The MAX-Link transceiver achieves -34dBm of TX-EVM, including balun, exceeding the requirement for WiMAX certification, and has fewer external components than conventional, off-the-shelf 802.16 radios.

It includes a bandwidth-programmable integrated channel filter for receive and transmit, complete integrated synthesiser, digital gain setting for the receive path with 96dB gain range, digital transmit power control with more than 50dB control range, integrated image rejection and LO leakage digital control settings and detectors.

It does not require any external SAW filters.

Unlike dual conversion radios, the AT86RF535A does not require offset cancellation circuitry, a high resolution controlled TCVCXCO, or a high-resolution synthesiser.

It requires only 10us to switch between TX and RX modes - a significant savings over the 100us typically required by dual conversion radios.

An integrated on-chip programmable synthesiser provides frequency resolution up to the required -30dB subcarrier certification limit.

The 10us settling time supports RX/TX frequency switching in hybrid frequency division duplexing (HFDD) systems.

The AT86RF535A's supply current is 200mA in receive mode and 320 mA in transmit mode at -5dBm including balun.

This comparatively low power consumption reduces the average power requirement of the mini-PCI by more than 30% to just 3.2W.

The high level of integration of the AT86RF535A, combined with its low IF architecture, result in a mini-PCI WiMAX end-product that has 20% fewer components and $30 less cost in the BOM than any currently available reference design.

The mini-PCI board with Atmel RF will be included in Wavesat WiMAX reference kits.

Kits will include a complete WiMAX system, software license with full maintenance contract, and reference design including BOM and Gerber files.

Atmel's AT86RF535A MAX-Link radio is available now in an 8 x 8mm 56-lead QFN package and is priced at $18 in quantities of 10,000.

Atmel is developing additional MAX-Link radios to be introduced in 2006 and 2007 that will cover the full range of WiMAX frequency profiles.

Evaluation kits for the AT86RF535A MAX-Link transceiver are available from Atmel for $2500.

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