Elektroniktidningen arcticle on how "FPGA’s want to get into LTE basestations"

Wintegra and Xilinx FPGA's and communication processors are a better alternative than DSPs for complex LTE system designs as suggested in this article.

Original article is in the Swedish magazine "Elektroniktidningen".  For the original text just click on the title (left).  It is on page 21 of the October issue.

For those who don't read Swedish, a translation is below:

FPGA's want to get into the LTE basestations.

In today's basestations it's the DPS's that are the workhorses. But in the more complex LTE system with higher datarates and requirements for lower latency as well as the cost pressure, FPGA's and communication processors are a better alternative, according to Xilinx and Wintegra.

In February the FPGA giant Xilinx and communications specialist Wintegra announced their cooperation within LTE. Now the first platform for the baseband part is available. The architecture uses three Virtex 6 from Xilinx and one WinPath 3 from Wintegra. Xilinx performs the physical layer in the basestation while  the Wintegra circuit works on layer 2 and 3. Besides this you need power amplifiers and antennas.

The combination of FPGA and communication circuits makes it possible to control the accelerating costs for developing new semiconductors. A 45 nm ASIC costs around half a billion Swedish kronor and increases with 10-20 % each process generation. Even though Xilinx FPGA's and Wintegra communication circuits are far from cheap the total cost will be lower, according to both companies.

Since the cooperation was announced Xilinx has continued to develop its coder/decoder, adopted it to the latest family the Virtex6, and developed a platform for the down link. Wintegra has increased its repertoire of functions with, among other things, encryption. A set of development tools has also been developed.