Baseband platform speeds basestation design

Platform will allow wireless telecommunication system vendors to expedite their go-to-market schedule with this "baseband-in-a-box" solution.

Tundra Semiconductor has released the market's first end-to-end RapidIO-enabled MicroTCA platform for wireless baseband.

The platform, offers end-to-end 10Gbit/s RapidIO Interconnect for chip-to-chip and board-to-board links across the backplane.

The platform will allow wireless telecommunication system vendors to expedite their go-to-market schedule with this "baseband-in-a-box" solution.

Production-ready components, available now, will speed wireless infrastructure design cycles and free up resources to focus on application firmware and software development.

Leveraging the industry's leading semiconductor components, vendors can go to market in full volume production ahead of their competition.

"The baseband platform is a unique solution designed to specifically address wireless basestation vendor requirements", says Kathy Brown, Product Manager for Communications Infrastructure, Digital Signal Processor Systems, Texas Instruments.

"Basestation manufacturers rely on TI's high performance DSPs to accommodate bandwidth intense applications, and this new platform allows our customers to focus on custom basestation development with a production-ready, interoperable hardware system in place".

"This industry-leading combination of high performance products will change the way our customers develop wireless baseband stations", says Daniel Hoste, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tundra Semiconductor.

"This 'baseband-in-a-box' solution is a revolutionary way for customers to take advantage of the best the market has to offer, in an off-the-shelf solution leveraging the MicroTCA and RapidIO standards".

"This platform offers the processing power and configurability that designers of embedded solutions need to build reliable, high performance RapidIO-based systems for a wide range of scalable and high bandwidth applications".

Four leading vendors supply the components of this industry-first RapidIO platform: the Mercury Ensemble MSW-100 RapidIO MicroTCA switch module includes Tundra's Tsi578; the CommAgility AMC-6487C baseband AMC includes Texas Instruments TCI6487 multicore DSPs and Tundra's Tsi578 Serial RapidIO switch; the Tundra Tsi574 is a Serial RapidIO signal analyser; and Fabric Embedded Tools makes the RapidFET Probe.

The AMC Baseband Card provides multicore DSP performance to address the processing needs of LTE, WiMAX and eWCDMA, leveraging RapidIO.

The combined Mercury Ensemble MSW-100 MicroTCA switch module and Tsi574 signal analyser solution deliver optimum 10Gbit/s RapidIO backplane design.

System configuration and bring up is enabled by the RapidFET Probe portable diagnostic tool.

Individual components in this combined solution can be purchased now, from the respective component vendors.

TI's recently announced TCI6484 EVM can be added to the baseband platform, for those customers choosing to use high performance single core DSPs for wireless applications.

"RapidIO is the interconnect of choice for next generation wireless infrastructure systems, with up to 10Gbit/s data transfer rates across the backplane and chip-to-chip", says Tom Cox, Executive Director, RapidIO Trade Association.

"Now, designers can jumpstart their basestation design with an off-the-shelf solution, using proven interoperable components from leading RapidIO providers".

Tundra is displaying its "baseband-in-a-box solution" this week at the TI Developer Conference in Dallas, Texas.

Back to top