Xilinx and AXIS Announce Integrated Radio Card Platform for W-CDMA, WiMAX Standards

Platform delivers high power amplifier efficiency and reduces operating and capital costs for wireless base station OEMs

GSPx, SANTA CLARA, Calif., October 30, 2006 – Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), the leading FPGA supplier to the wireless infrastructure market, and AXIS Network Technology today announced the immediate availability of CDRSX, a common digital radio system (CDRS) development platform that increases power amplifier (PA) efficiency and reduces capital and operating costs for W-CDMA and WiMAX base stations. The CDRSX development platform consists of the Xilinx W-CDMA and WiMAX digital front-end (DFE) reference designs and the flexible AXIS Virtex™-based development board to provide a power efficient, quick time-to-market route from concept-to-production for wireless digital radio cards.

”Xilinx and AXIS Network Technology have produced an extremely power-efficient digital radio development platform that offers a significant time-to-market advantage for OEMs developing remote radio heads for W-CDMA and WiMAX systems,” said Omid Tahernia, vice president and general manager of the Processing Solutions Group at Xilinx. ”As operators strive to reduce their capital and operating costs, wireless OEMs are looking to exploit the significant benefits FPGAs bring to digital radio applications.”

The CDRSX Development Platform enables capital and operating cost savings by allowing base station OEMs to use lower cost, lower power PAs to reduce the operating power in the radio head. The Platform permits developers to quickly tune the system for optimum efficiency. This provides a huge cost saving as the PA and transceiver stage consume approximately 40-60 percent of the base station’s total cost.

AXIS CDRSX Board Key Features
The AXIS CDRSX Development Platform offers OEMs the flexibility to quickly adapt to changes in specification or air interfaces. The Platform includes a specially designed board containing RF preamps, ADCs, DACs, a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA to provide interface support for CPRI, OBSAI and digital I/Q connectivity and a Xilinx Virtex-4 SX55 FPGA for implementing digital radio signal processing functions, and an operating system for control of the board via Ethernet connection. The board has two transmit and two receive paths, plus two additional receive paths for digital pre-distortion (DPD), and it can support any 20 MHz spectrum in the 400 MHz to 4 GHz frequency range. It’s capable of driving the PA from 2 W – 40 W, while providing an effective receiver noise figure per path of 3 dB. The user can set up and control the board using a graphical user interface that enables key signal processing parameters to be displayed and adjusted quickly and easily.

“The market is looking for flexible, cost-effective solutions that can be used to develop initial systems and then go from concept-to-production as quickly and easily as possible,” said Simon Mellor CEO of AXIS Network Technology. “The level of integration we’ve achieved together with Xilinx provides added flexibility and a ready-to-go solution for systems OEMs. The modularity of AXIS products enables the functions developed in CDRSX to be easily migrated to a full production capable radio without any algorithm changes. This has already attracted several OEMs in a range of markets including mobile wireless, defense and homeland security.”

Xilinx W-CDMA and WiMAX DFE Key Features
The CDRSX Development Platform integrates digital up conversion (DUC), digital down conversion (DDC) and crest factor reduction (CFR) functions from Xilinx, providing an output peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of only 5.60 dB for W-CDMA and a reduction of up to1.57 dB for WiMAX radios. The Xilinx W-CDMA DFE includes a 3 carrier DUC, 3 carrier CFR and 6 carrier DDC. It provides ~2.5 watts of dynamic power consumption, while consuming only 55 percent DSP48 usage in a Virtex-4 SX25 FPGA.

The Xilinx WiMAX DFE offers DUC/DDC support for 3.5/7MHz channels (IEEE802.16-2004) and 5/10 MHz channels (IEEE802.16-2005); CFR and AGC are also supported. The WiMAX DFE is designed to work in UMTS clock subsystem frequencies and only consumes 39 percent DSP48 usage in a Virtex-4 SX25, for a 1x1 configuration.

Price and Availability

The CDRSX Development Platform is available now from AXIS (www.axisnt.com) and is priced at $34,995 USD. Additional information is also available at www.xilinx.com/wireless/CDRSX. Xilinx W-CDMA DFE reference design is immediately available at www.xilinx.com/esp/wireless/rf/wcdma-ref.htm. The Xilinx WiMAX DFE reference design is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter 2006.

Xilinx also provides a wide range of IP for baseband solutions targeted at W-CDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA and WiMAX industry standards. For more information on other Xilinx solutions in wireless equipment, please visit: www.xilinx.com/esp/wireless/index.htm

About AXIS Network Technology

AXIS Network Technology is a UK-based radio solutions provider formed in 2005 with the aim of developing production ready modular solutions for a range of compact radio infrastructure applications. The company has designed and developed a number of products which enable designs developed in the CDRSX environment to be seamlessly transferred into cost-effective, production-ready product platforms covering a range of different transmitter/receiver combinations and which are available in different form factors, including microTCA. AXIS Network Technology also offers consultancy services for OEMs looking to develop and source their own radio platforms.

More information is available at www.axisnt.com.

About Xilinx
Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.