End-to-End RapidIO-enabled MicroTCA Baseband Development Platform

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 base station vendor requirements,” said Kathy Brown, product manager for communications infrastructure, digital signal processor systems (DSP), Texas Instruments (TI). “Base station manufacturers rely on TI’s high performance DSPs to accommodate bandwidth intense applications, and this new platform allows our customers to focus on custom base station 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. 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,” said Daniel Hoste , President and Chief Executive Officer, Tundra Semiconductor. “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”.

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 Analyzer solution deliver optimum 10 Gigabit 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 10 Gbps data transfer rates across the backplane and chip-to-chip. Now, designers can jumpstart their base station design with an off-the-shelf solution, using proven interoperable components from leading RapidIO providers,” said Tom Cox, Executive Director, RapidIO Trade Association.