Coresonic demos 'smallest' WiMAX solution

The LeoCore WiMAX personality pack and associated firmware allows WiMAX connectivity to be added to any new chip design, such as media processors for digital cameras, application processors for UMD devices and other products that could benefit from the addition of WiMAX or other high-speed wireless communications, with just 1.5mm x 1.5mm of additional silicon in a 65nm semiconductor manufacturing process. The personality pack provides a complete mobile WiMAX solution from RF interface through FEC to CPU interface for the MAC layer.

"When we tell potential customers that they can add WiMAX connectivity with such little additional silicon and such low power, their immediate reaction is one of disbelief so they ask us to prove it; this is exactly what we will be doing with our WiMAX personality pack demo," said Rick Clucas, CEO of Coresonic. "Some market commentators are suggesting that if WiMAX can be added to existing products for under $10, then the WiMAX market could take off rapidly. Others are indicating that LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the way forward."

Clucas explained the key point with Coresonic's solution is that the LeoCore technology can add WiMAX connectivity to any device with very little incremental cost and size. In addition, since the solution is programmable, customers will be able to quickly adapt their products to whatever standard they need to address by licensing new firmware such as LTE.

The LeoCore technology also eliminates the bottlenecks inherent in traditional baseband processing solutions, producing a viable solution for WiMAX as well as LTE and other standards. The processor directly addresses the need for flexibility whilst driving power efficient performance and minimizing implementation time and cost. It does this by focusing on three critical issues: data processing, data flow and programming efficiency. Full mobile WiMAX wave 2 solutions only require a maximum clock speed of 250MHz to run on LeoCore. Coupled with the very small gate count, even in a worst case scenario of constant full usage and no power management, the power consumption using Coresonic's technology would still be less than 50mW in a 65nm process. When power management and real-life usage patterns are added, the actual figure would be a fraction of this.

Coresonic's solution is available for license as semiconductor intellectual property and firmware, and the FPGA-evaluation platform is available for onsite demonstration or purchase. The demo system runs at 80MHz, enough to perform 5MHz single antenna WiMAX channels as well as other standards such as Wi-Fi.

Keywords: smallest WiMAX   FPGA evaluation   mobile WiMAX