Cyclone III FPGAs in Wireless Applications
Cyclone® III FPGAs deliver abundant memory and dedicated multipliers at a very low cost and very low power to provide the best solution for many emerging wireless applications, including:
- Macro/Micro base station RF card/remote radio heads
- Macro/Micro base station channel card
- Pico/Femto base stations
- WiMAX customer premise equipment (CPE)
- Software defined radio (SDR) – enabling complete waveform integration under 1 watt with low static power for battery operation
Take a look at some of the most significant Cyclone III FPGA wireless application advantages:
| Table 1. Key Wireless Application Advantages of Cyclone III FPGAs |
| Feature |
Advantage |
| High Memory and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Multipliers at all Densities |
- Up to 4 Mbits of on-chip memory architected to process memory intensive algorithms such as forward error correction (FEC)
- Up to 288 embedded 18-bit x 18-bit multipliers at 260 MHz performance
- Able to implement functions at low cost
- Digital upconverters (DUC)
- Digital downconverters (DDC)
- FFT/IFFT
|
| High Density |
- Able to implement complete IF and baseband functionality for picocell base station on one low-cost, programmable device.
|
| TSMC's 65-nm Low-Power (LP) Process Technology |
- The industry’s lowest power FPGA, ideal for higher temperature applications.
|
As shown in Figure 1, a midrange Cyclone III FPGA can also be used effectively as a DSP coprocessor in WiMAX picocell base stations to implement scalable OFDMA engines and DDC and DUC functions. This strategy allows you significant flexibility to partition the functionality between the DSP processor and the FPGA for optimum performance, lowest power consumption, and lowest cost.
Figure 1. Implement IF and Base Band functionality for picocell base stations in Cyclone III devices
Get to market faster and reduce costs. To get started, Altera offers:
| Table 2. Wireless Design Resources |
| Category |
Resource |
Description |
| Development Kit Resources |
 |
Cyclone III FPGA Starter Kit |
This FPGA Starter kit is ideal for quick "out-of-the-box" evaluation experience. For display applications user I/O pins can be configured for LVDS, mini-LVDS, RSDS, or PPDS column driver interfaces. |
| Software and Intellectual Property Resources |
 |
Reference Designs |
Reference designs from Altera and partners for common wireless communications systems components such as scalable OFDMA reference design, digital down conversion (DDC) and digital up conversion (DUC), and bridges to DSP processors. |
| DSP functions |
Library of intellectual property (IP) cores from Altera and partners for the following DSP functional areas: filtering, modulation, demodulation, transforms encryption, decryption, correlation, error detection, error correction, signal generation, and synchronization. |
| Nios® II Embedded Processor |
The world's most versatile processors supported by easy-to-use development tools and a portfolio of FPGA development kits. |
| Video-on-Demand Resources |
 |
Design Low-Power Wireless Systems with New Low-Cost FPGAs |
15-minute executive overview on the features and benefits of Cyclone III FPGAs for typical wireless communication system designs including pico/femto base stations and software defined radio (SDR), QuickCast video format. |
| White Papers |
 |
WiMAX Picocell Base Station Designs Using DSP Coprocessing with
Cyclone III FPGAs |
Discusses implementation of OFDMA, DDC, DUC, and other WiMAX picocell base station functions in a low cost FPGA to reduce costs and meet stringent power consumption requirements. |
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