CommAgility and AxisNT Demonstrate Interoperability for WiMAX And LTE Wireless Baseband Applications

AMC-3C87F (click image to zoom by 3.4x)

18th November 2008 -- CommAgility and Axis Network Technology announced today that they are working together to develop solutions for WiMAX and LTE (Long Term Evolution of 3GPP) baseband processing for wireless base stations. At the LTE World Summit (www.lteconference.com) in London, the two companies are demonstrating the interoperability of AxisNT's Remote Radio Head (RRH) with CommAgility's AMC-3C87F signal processing board.

The fully-working demonstration system shows data being generated on the CommAgility board, passed to the AxisNT RRH over CPRI and then output as a OFDMA modulated RF signal. This RF signal is then displayed on a spectrum analyser to show 8W output power at 64QAM meeting the ETS 302 544 spectral mask and stringent EVM specifications.

CommAgility's AMC-3C87F provides a mix of DSP and FPGA processing power together with flexible, high bandwidth I/O connectivity. It includes three Texas Instruments TCI6487 multi-core DSPs running at 1GHz and a Xilinx Virtex-5 SX95T FPGA It provides a complete three sector WiMAX/LTE PHY capability on a single-width Advanced Mezzanine Card (AdvancedMC).

AxisNT's integrated remote radio heads (RRH) are available for a complete range of WiMAX and LTE applications. AxisNT's patented Amplifier technology enables its RRHs to provide market-leading uplink and downlink performance, which improves network coverage and capacity for its customers. The convection-cooled RRHs use substantially less power than traditional basestations, and can reduce the site CAPEX and OPEX of a wireless network by as much as 90%. Axis Radio Remote Head technology is suitable for TDD and FDD mode.

"This engagement is an excellent example of how TI's third-party ecosystem speeds development of a complete DSP-based wireless PHY implementation with off the shelf components," said Dr. Arnon Friedmann, marketing director for TI's wireless infrastructure group. "CommAgility and AxisNT have demonstrated their ability to provide solutions for WiMAX and LTE applications, based around TI's high performance embedded processors."

"WiMAX and LTE will provide true mobile broadband, but make high demands for signal processing performance," said Edward Young, managing director of CommAgility. "By partnering with companies such as AxisNT, we are able to meet these requirements and enable our boards to be easily integrated into complete wireless broadband systems."

"By working together to demonstrate interoperability, AxisNT and CommAgility have shown that we can provide the levels of performance that operators are demanding," said Simon Mellor, CEO and co-founder of AxisNT. "The commercial success of Next Generation Networks will be crucially dependent on flexible radio systems that can deliver high power and high efficiency to minimise both OPEX and CAPEX."