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Tait Leverages Altera-Based Product Platform to Deliver Rapid Innovation & Reduce Costs
Tait Electronics is a leader in professional wireless communication products and systems with over 35 years of experience in the global Private Mobile Radio market. When Tait decided to design a single platform for a series of new product lines, they turned to Altera® products to help with the integration challenges resulting from a wide range of product requirements. The low cost of Cyclone devices enabled them to utilize Altera FPGAs as an alternative to standard technologies for the implementation of their embedded applications and signal processing solutions. Altera had all the tools and support in place to allow Tait’s software and hardware development engineers to get up and running quickly. This was especially important for Tait’s software developers since this discipline is typically on the critical path in major development projects such as this one.
Nios II Processor Reduces Power Consumption
Altera’s versatile Nios II processor enables Tait to integrate the complete digital and baseband solution into a single device, which is a huge advantage when product cost and size are two of the major challenges. Tait’s portable products, bill of material (BOM) cost, size, and power consumption reduction opportunities are drivers for enhancement. Using the same hardware platform, Tait can achieve a 5 percent improvement in battery life by adopting the Nios II processor, which is a significant improvement and one that easily justifies changing to the Nios II processor.
In migrating to the Nios II processor, Tait retained the same hardware platform, and the majority of the effort was associated with the low-level software and FPGA VHDL design. The change took less than 9 months to port to a stage where it was able to be regression tested for validation. Porting to other products is expected to take less time now that the majority of the effort has been completed. The performance of the Nios II processor in terms of processing capability, FPGA footprint, and effect on current consumption is such that Tait will incorporate it into their next generation of products.
Advantages of a FPGA-Based Product Platform
Now that Tait is using FPGAs in their high-volume products, some of the advantages of doing so become apparent. Since the FPGA is used for the majority of the digital and baseband solutions, they can easily upgrade the hardware as Altera’s technology improvements provide opportunities for reductions in cost and/or power consumption. The first of these opportunities was identified with the release of the Cyclone II family of devices. By changing from first-generation Cyclone device to a Cyclone II device in the TM8100, one of Tait’s high-volume products, they reduced the BOM cost by over 2 percent.
This change required relatively little engineering effort—mainly layout and power supply related—and the elapsed development time from beginning to completion is about 3 months. Modifying the FPGA design was a simple matter of redefining the I/O pins and pressing the "compile" button in the Quartus II software. A return on investment (ROI) of 550 percent made the enhancement easy to justify. Tait identified further cost reduction opportunities for products that use first-generation Cyclone devices. As in the previous case, BOM cost reduction is around 2 percent, and the low engineering requirements mean that the resulting ROIs are greater than 500 percent.
By utilizing Altera solutions, Tait created a versatile, high-performance platform that enabled them to rapidly develop a range of products that met the specific communications needs of its customers. This resulted in the successful release of the TM8100, TM8200, TM9100, and TP9100 families of radio terminals. This development advantage plays an ongoing key role in Tait’s ability to react quickly to the ever-changing communications marketplace, and allows them to be successful in competing with some of the largest communications companies in the world.
"Altera products provide us with the flexibility to configure combinations of complex embedded and signal processing functions that are not available in a single off-the-shelf processor solution. With Cyclone devices, we can create the exact combination of peripherals and functions we require, including complex multi-rate channel filters, automatic gain control, frequency control loops and complex high-performance modems.
It must also be noted that the FPGA solution wouldn’t have been as successful in meeting project constraints if it weren’t for Altera’s easy-to-use and powerful Quartus II development tools. Altera’s tools allowed us to quickly prove and utilize FPGA technology, and to swiftly adapt to changing requirements during the development phase."
Tony Berggren
Radio Architectures Technology Leader
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