The modular TDP creates an eNodeB design to accelerate development and reduce costs for both frequency division duplex (FDD) and the time division duplex (TDD) variants of LTE. This approach gives system developers the flexibility to leverage the LTE eNodeB TDP at their desired level based on product and the time-to market requirements.

The LTE eNodeB TDP brings together the company’s new platforms customized for LTE baseband processing and the multi-mode digital front end (DFE) radio, with a flexible platform addressing layer-2, transport and related security functions from Wintegra, Inc. Each company’s platform includes cost-optimized Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the new broadest portfolio of available LTE intellectual property (IP) and the application software, and scalable development environments (tools, boards and reference designs). The company is also collaborating with Agilent Technologies Inc. to validate the compliance of hardware and the software modules using standard test equipment.

Competition among wireless operators is focused on quick changing market dynamics, including evolving air interfaces, new types of applications, and higher bandwidth services, and this calls for the wireless industry’s migration to reprogrammable and reconfigurable hardware to fuel innovation for the next generation, said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. Xilinx’s software defined radio or common platform approach to radio and baseband development helps telecommunications equipment manufacturers to focus their R&D efforts on product differentiation, and thereby create products that are more market-adaptable for their customers, the wireless operators, by moving the value from fixed hardware to flexible software.

The combination of constant air interface standards evolution with the exponentially increasing cost of semiconductor and ASIC development is necessitating the use of software-defined radio architectures by telecommunications equipment manufacturers in order to address the requirements of the operators in the most cost-effective manner, stated Manuel Uhm, director of wireless communications at Xilinx and member of the board of directors of SDR Forum. Xilinx’s LTE eNodeB TDP greatly facilitates this disruptive shift by providing a complete basestation design that can be used as a common platform for the development of multi-mode basestations.

The company is showcasing the flexibility of LTE eNodeB TDP at Mobile World Congress 2009, from February 16 to February 19, 2009 in Xilinx Booth # E47 (Hall 1). The demonstrations consist of multi-mode radio and the LTE baseband uplink and downlink applications.

Comprehensive LTE eNodeB TDP:

The LogiCORE library offers pre-validated and optimized IP cores, like LTE Turbo Encoder and Decoder, thus developers can focus their efforts on the product differentiation. Adding to these capabilities are new LTE Channel Encoder and Decoder cores that are optimized for the high performance, low latency transmissions, and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) Encoder designed to develop the data rate performance of wireless networks. The cores are generated to the user-specified parameters with Xilinx CORE Generator software tool to dramatically reduce development cycles. This automated approach also fully exploits capabilities of Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions to build lower cost, faster performance, reduced power dissipation, and the lower latency into LTE baseband designs.

The company’s new LTE DFE TDP features a whole optimized set of IP for the multi-mode radio design, incorporating Digital Up Conversion (DUC), Digital Down Conversion (DDC), Crest Factor Reduction (CFR), and Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) for LTE, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX, W-CDMA, CDMA2000 and the multi-carrier GSM. These designs is verified and tested on company’s CDRSX2 radio development board, in conjunction with the power amplifiers from a number of vendors, and show transmission efficiencies of up to 40%.

The company anticipates realizing further performance, power and the cost advantages for its Multi-mode DFE and the Baseband TDPs over the coming year as it rolls out support for the new Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families introduced in January 2009.