Lattice and Affarii put remote radio head on FPGA

COMPLETE RRH HARDWARE FOR WIRELESS INFRASTRUCTURE

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Lattice Semiconductor and Affarii Technologies have demonstrated the industry’s lowest cost, low power Remote Radio Head (RRH) solution at 1300mW per antenna. The integration of all RRH processing has been achieved on a single LatticeECP3-150 device.
The single chip solution supports 2x2 MIMO configurations for WCDMA, LTE and WiMAX applications and is part of an overall RRH hardware evaluation platform jointly
developed by Lattice and Affarii. The platform is comprised of the RF front-end, high-speed
data conversion devices and the digital signal processing portion. The functionality of the full
signal path package includes DDC/DUC, DPD, CFR and CPRI IP cores, supports multi-carrier
waveforms up to 20MHz bandwidth and is compatible with Class AB and Doherty amplifiers
using LDMOS and GaN transistors.
All features of this RRH solution, both hardware and soft IP, are fully integrated and supported by Lattice’s latest generation of design tools.
The RRH solution is built using Affarii’s digitalTRX technology that includes Digital Up/Down Converter (DUC/DDC), Crest Factor Reduction (CFR) and Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) functionality. When used with industry standard Doherty amplifiers the Digital Pre- distortion solution provides up to 30dB of ACLR correction with PA output efficiencies exceeding 40%, allowing flexible and efficient RRH designs. The solution is fully customizable, with end applications including WCDMA, LTE, WiMAX, and DVB-T/S/H.
The RRH solution is supported by a development and test environment that includes GUI-based design simulation, performance analysis and a production test API with design examples.

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Frontier aims for £20 digital radio

Verona all in one tuner for WorldDMB Profile 1 radios 

Frontier Silicon has developed an all-in-one tuner that it says will enable digital radios under £20, vital to support the switch-off of analogue radio services in the next few years. The Verona tuner has been designed to remove every aspect of cost while maintaining good quality, long battery life and excellent receiver sensitivity.  Frontier Silicon has managed to achieve this by utilizing its world leading Kino 3 baseband chip that includes enough on-chip memory to demodulate and decode all three WorldDMB standards in one.  Further cost savings have been achieved by reducing the module size to just 48 x 28 mm.  This amounts to a 65 percent size reduction resulting in the world’s smallest FM, DAB, DAB+, DMB-Radio combined module.

Radio manufacturers are able to enjoy the economy-of-scales afforded by low cost DAB, DAB+, DMB-Radio (collectively known as WorldDMB Profile 1) as markets around the world begin the migration from FM to digital radio. 

France is expected to begin digital migration this year with all receivers requiring a DMB-Radio tuner by 2013.  Italy and Germany are also scheduled to launch DAB+ this year joining established markets in Switzerland and Australia.

Anthony Sethill, CEO of Frontier Silicon, added, “Verona enables receiver manufacturers and retailers to make radios even more affordable, which will drive mass consumer uptake and provide the catalyst for digital radio migration across Europe during the next five years.”

Verona includes all interfaces necessary for a fully functional radio, needing only power supply, display, keypad, audio amplifier and speaker to complete a product.  A complete hardware and software reference design (called Venus) is available providing receiver manufacturers with a turn-key design for a mains and battery powered kitchen radio. Verona enters mass production this month with products appearing on the shelves from July.

Related DAB article

• New system will unite DAB and FM so listeners can choose stations by name (guardian.co.uk)
• The digital radio switchover looms | Open thread (guardian.co.uk)
• Radio lobby 'hides' 2m analogue receiver sales (go.theregister.com)
• Lords: Analogue radio must die (go.theregister.com)
• Radio may not go fully digital until 2020 (guardian.co.uk)
• Digital radio confusion could prompt backlash (telegraph.co.uk)