Mobile telephony or cellular communication systems have undergone a number of technology evolutions since they were first introduced. The latest of these being the move to 3G networks and the transition from voice services to multimedia data services. However cellular communication systems continue to evolve with new standards such as high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) and cdma2000 1x EV DV standards being ratified and work has already begun on 4G technology with the goal of achieving data rates of up to 100Mbps.
The 3G, HSDPA and cdma2000 1x EV DV standards are all based on the principal of multiple users sharing a single radio channel simultaneously and this has dramatically increased the complexity of the signal processing required within a base station. Base stations must now handle greater capacity, process higher data rates and support several multimedia standards while operators require equipment that can be cost efficiently configured to multiple site scenarios and allow easy deployment of new services.
Aspex’s high-performance Linedancer
family of devices enable base station manufacturers to deliver
equipment which is:
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Common hardware platform supporting multiple standards and configurations, as well as advance techniques such as Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC), Multiple Input,
Multiple Output (MIMO), Multi-User Detection (MUD) and Beamforming
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Fully software programmable devices avoids on-site maintenance when new features or services are introduced
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Low component cost, low development cost, low cost of ownership
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Linedancer provides more than 4,000 parallel processing elements and a powerful, linear communication network which enables additional devices to be simply connected to deliver the required processing power, and is ideally suited to the following base station tasks:
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Chip rate processing
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Smart antenna processing
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PA linearisation
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In addition Linedancer overcomes a number of the issues associated with traditional processing engines used in wireless systems – DSPs and FPGAs. FPGAs are expensive and power hungry; like ASICs they involve a long hardware design cycle; and prevent the deployment of software defined systems. Even the latest DSPs fail to deliver the processing power required by today’s cellular communication standards so multiple DSPs must be linked together which increases the complexity of the code.
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