CommAgility Announces Complete PHY and MAC Card for LTE or WiMAX

LOUGHBOROUGH, United Kingdom, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- CommAgility announced today a new module that provides a complete Digital Base Band design including L1 PHY (physical layer) L2 RLC/MAC (Radio Link Control/Media Access Control), S1/X2 interface and security processing for LTE (Long Term Evolution) or WiMAX in the compact single width, full-size Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) form factor.

For these advanced wireless applications, the new CommAgility AMC-2C87W3 integrates the PHY, RLC/MAC, transport (including all backhaul and air interface security) and antenna connectivity requirements of eNodeB into a compact solution, and provides end-to-end data handling from raw radio IQ data through to backhaul IP packets.

The module incorporates the latest WinPath3 Network Processor from Wintegra, which provides a flexible means of handling the real-time IP packet and security processing and L2 RLC/MAC demands of wireless base stations. The WinPath3 is a device that supports symmetrical multi-processing with 12 DataPath cores with 64 parallel hardware threads for the user plane and two control processors for the control plane. The Wintegra processor also enables the AMC-2C87W3 to provide transport and security features, and means that all of the control functions required in a base station can be run on a single processor.

For high performance L1 PHY processing, two Texas Instruments TCI6487 multicore DSPs running at 1.2GHz provide the power required for a single sector 10MHz, 2x2 MIMO LTE system. A Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGA provides an FPGA resource for CPRI/OBSAI, DSP co-processing and board control logic.

The design supports an optimized interface between the WinPath3 processor and TI DSP, which enables further advanced control between these elements through a low latency MAC/PHY API.

Three flexible SFP optical sockets are configurable as CPRI/OBSAI or Gigabit Ethernet, and provide connectivity to Remote Radio Heads (RRH) and optical Ethernet backhaul. This means that system configuration and redundancy can be optimised to customer needs.

Timing and synchronisation support is provided by an integrated GPS or IEEE1588 capability with optional OCXO based holdover, which significantly reduces system complexity as no additional timing equipment is required. A TSI578™ Serial RapidIO (SRIO) switch from IDT is also included to link the devices in the module and provide AMC.4 compliant external 10Gbps connections.

"By combining high performance processors, flexible I/O and application-specific software, CommAgility has built a module that sets new standards in the level of integration, overall performance, power consumption and cost that can be offered in this small form factor," said Eran Kirzner, Engineering VP Wireless Systems at Wintegra. "These are all really key factors in building an advanced wireless base station design."

Edward Young, managing director at CommAgility, said, "This new module takes full advantage of the high performance, flexibility and efficiency of Wintegra's WinPath3 processor to provide a highly integrated solution for LTE and WiMAX."

CommAgility provides low level software which enables fast application porting to the card. In addition, multiple partners for software and Remote Radio Heads enable an integrator or equipment supplier quickly and easily to build a complete eNodeB which is highly compact and cost effective. The AMC card is also designed to leverage the LTE collaboration between TATA Elxsi and Wintegra and can run the extensive LTE protocol and PHY libraries that are available from both companies.  

The AMC-2C87W3 will be available in March 2010.

About CommAgility:

CommAgility is a leading manufacturer of signal processing AMC modules for wireless baseband applications, combining flexible CPRI/OBSAI antenna interfaces, the latest TI DSPs and Xilinx FPGAs, and high bandwidth on and off-card communications using Serial RapidIO and Ethernet. Customers around the world use CommAgility products to develop high performance applications in both wireless and non-wireless spaces, and recent designs include test equipment, trial systems and base stations for a wide range of wireless standards especially WiMAX and LTE.

Website: www.commagility.com

AdvancedMC is a trademark of PICMG. Other products mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE CommAgility