29 May 2014

Hittite and Xilinx demo complete radio solutions

In booth #1841 at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2014) in Tampa, FL, USA (3-5 June), Hittite Microwave Corp of Chelmsford, MA, USA (which designs and supplies analog, digital and mixed-signal RF, microwave and millimeter-wave ICs, modules and subsystems as well as instrumentation) and Xilinx Inc of San Jose, CA, USA, which provides all-programmable field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), systems-on-chip (SoCs) and 3D ICs, are giving demonstrations of complete radio solutions for 60GHz millimeter-wave small-cell backhaul and 1024QAM microwave radio cellular backhaul.

Complete 60GHz small-cell backhaul demonstration

Hittite’s 60GHz silicon germanium (SiGe) transceiver chip-set interfaces directly to the Xilinx 256 QAM millimeter-wave ModemSmartCORE IP to support up to 750Mbps data throughput capacity and configurable channel bandwidths from 50 to 250MHz with frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) modes to formulate a lower-power-consumption small-cell backhaul radio solution.

Hittite’s 60GHz transceiver chip-set is a complete millimeter-wave to baseband solution. The transceiver incorporates universal IQ interfacesfor direct modulation and demodulation and the chip-set implements the entire transmitter and receiver chains with on-chip frequency synthesizers, frequency converters and the transmit power amplifier and receive low-noise amplifier (LNA). Hittite will release its next-generation 60GHz transmitter and receiver chipset later this year with increased output power (>15dBm), a new frequency synthesizer with support for 64-QAM modulation and covering 57-66GHz in 250MHz step size, an integrated power detector, and analog or digital gain control, all in 4mm x 6mm surface-mount packages. 

Xilinx’s 256-QAM millimeter-wave modem (part of its SmartCORE IP portfolio) is a highly configurable point-to-point and point-to-multipoint capable modem. It consumes less than 5W of power at >1Gbps data rates and incorporates all the key features and capabilities that users require to accelerate the development of next-generation backhaul solutions. It supports RS and LDPC forward error correction (FEC), CPRI for fronthaul or 10GbE for backhaul, as well as the JESD204B interface for emerging data converter devices. The core can be extended to also support wider-band supports such as 500MHz with up to 3.5Gbps throughput.

1024QAM microwave radio split-mount outdoor unit (ODU) backhaul demonstration

Hittite’s transceiver chip-sets interfaces directly to the Xilinx QPSK to 1024QAM SmartCOREIP modem to construct a fully functional split-mount outdoor unit (ODU) microwave radio. The 6-42GHz transceiver chip-set is a simplified, cost-effective solution consisting of highly integrated intermediate-frequency (IF) transceiver ICs, high-linearity microwave IQ transmitter and receiver ICs, low-phase-noise microwave synthesizers ICs and the transmit power amplifier, all with what is claimed to be industry-leading performance and surface-mount packaging.

The Xilinx modem implements all the features of modern microwave radio backhaul, including QPSK to 1024QAM modulation with software-configurable bandwidths of 3.5-112MHz. The modem supports Gigabit Ethernet with software-configurable features including closed-loop digital pre-distortion, automatic correction of TX and RX IQ impairments, equalization, and XPIC and ATCP configuration support.

Tags: Hittite

Visit: www.hittite.com

Visit: www.xilinx.com