Bluetooth baseband processor available on FPGA

NewLogic today announced the immediate availability of its Boost Lite Bluetooth baseband processor core for use in Xilinx Virtex-II and Virtex-E FPGAs.

NewLogic today announced the immediate availability of its Boost Lite Bluetooth baseband processor core for use in Xilinx Virtex-II and Virtex-E FPGAs.

The Boost Lite core is developed, sold, and supported by NewLogic Technologies AG, a new Xilinx AllianceCore partner.

The core targets Bluetooth enabled personal, home and business mobile devices and appliances.

Unique to this solution is a Virtex-II FPGA based hardware development board.

"We chose the Xilinx Virtex-E architecture as the preferred platform for the first version of our Boost Lite development system and were extremely impressed with the capabilities", said Phil Woodhead, vice president of sales and marketing at NewLogic Technologies.

"When Virtex-II architecture with enhanced memory blocks and DSP features became available, we immediately adopted these devices for our next generation Boost Lite Bluetooth development systems".

"Bluetooth is becoming a default technology for short range wireless connectivity between mobile and portable devices and the challenge for manufacturers is to keep up with changing standards", said Mark Bowlby, manager of the AllianceCore program at Xilinx.

"Xilinx and NewLogic are working together in the Bluetooth SIG with the common goal of providing Bluetooth solutions that are suitable for these constantly evolving specifications".

The Boost Lite core performs all baseband functions and is qualified by the Bluetooth Qualification Board (BQB).

It is compliant with the latest v1.1 Bluetooth specification and performs the key functions of data serialisation, cyclic redundancy checking, encryption, and forward error correction.

The core has selectable operating frequency modes (12, 13 or 16MHz) and low power modes (sniff, hold, and park).

All Bluetooth packet types as well as TDMA/TDD frames are supported and the core also processes voice traffic by means of an optional continuous variable slope delta modulation (CVSD) encoder and PCM interface.

The Boost Lite product is a complete solution that customers can use right away to develop their Bluetooth systems.

A Boost Lite development board for Xilinx Virtex-II and Virtex-E FPGAs is available for Bluetooth system development purposes.

The baseband processor residing in the Virtex-II FPGA interfaces to an external SiliconWave radio module and ARM processor.

The core also comes with an optional software stack that includes the Link Control (L2CAP), Link Manager (LMP) and HCI layers of the Bluetooth protocol stack.

The Boost Lite baseband processor core is available for immediate use in the Xilinx family of FPGAs.

The core is available directly from NewLogic Technologies with an encrypted netlist version for a single project starting at $25,000.

Synthesisable netlist and RTL source code versions, as well as a full Bluetooth protocol software stack can also be licensed.

Virtex-II and Virtex-E FPGA development boards, and training courses are available separately.

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