Texas Instruments has announced a scalable, programmable development ecosystem enabling base station OEMs to support multiple carriers of established and evolving wireless standards from a single platform. Based on TI's multicore TMS320TCI6487 and TMS320TCI6488 digital signal processors (DSPs) and multi-interface software libraries, the development platform covers all major air interfaces including GSM-EDGE, HSPA, HSPA+, TD-SCDMA , LTE and WiMAX. With a single development platform, OEMs largely "design once-deploy multiple" base stations, is said to significantly reduce design costs, while speeding the deployment of new 3G features and beyond 3G standards.
In addition to reducing development time, TI says it makes designing easier by supporting both MAC and PHY layer processing on the same platform. The 'high performance' DSP platform also eliminates the need for an expensive, power-hungry FPGA, with the exception of WiMAX designs. CommAgility, a designer and manufacturer of high performance embedded signal processing cards, uses TI's multicore DSP to support its AdvancedMCT module AMC-6487 product, targeted at high-performance processing roles in wireless baseband and other applications. The board is designed around three TMS320C6487 DSPs or the pin-compatible TMS320C6488 DSP and an optional WiMAX-required FPGA, providing wireless baseband developers the processing power they need to support their high-capacity solutions.
"As wireless air interfaces continue to evolve across global cellular networks, operators can greatly benefit from a multi-standard, multi-carrier base station processing platform," said Nadine Manjaro, senior analyst for mobile networks at ABI Research. "The flexibility and
efficiency of TI's new multi-standard ecosystem will allow operators to upgrade easily between GSM/WCDMA/HSPA and LTE, all from a single platform."