Xilinx Announces Digital Pre-Distortion Reference Design for Freescale's LDMOS Power Amplifier Devices

Industry leaders collaborate to substantially decrease radio development time, increase efficiency and reduce cost for wireless infrastructure

BARCELONA, Spain -- Feb. 11, 2008 -- Xilinx Inc., the world's leading supplier of programmable logic solutions, today announced a new digital pre-distortion (DPD) reference design based on its Virtex(TM) family of platform FPGAs and XtremeDSP solutions that is optimized for Freescale Semiconductor's RF power laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor (LDMOS) devices for wireless infrastructure. The Xilinx DPD reference design can be used to develop LTE, WiMAX, WCDMA and TD-SCDMA multi-carrier systems and complements existing Digital Front End reference designs available from Xilinx. Demonstration of the DPD reference design is available at this week's Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain, at the Xilinx stand, hall 1 booth E47 and the Freescale stand, hall 8 booth 8B91.

"Digital Pre-Distortion technology has become a critical component of the RF power amplifier design, as it enables to further increase the linear efficiency of the system. Cooperation with Xilinx enables Freescale to validate its RF Power solutions for real life DPD environment and opens the door to true system level optimization," says Gavin P. Woods, vice president and general manager of Freescale's RF Division.

Power Amplifiers account for a significant portion of a base station's operating expenditure (OpEx) due to their lack of efficiency with complex signals. Designers can use digital pre-distortion (DPD) to improve efficiency and reduce cost. This technique preconditions the signal entering the amplifier to compensate the non-linear transfer characteristics of the power amplifiers, resulting in a more linear, higher output power radio. Alternatively, the technique allows the system designer to choose a smaller output stage if desired, saving both cost and power.

"The close collaboration with Freescale to test and validate our advanced DPD algorithms with their LDMOS devices will directly benefit our customers by saving development time and provide the ability to quickly adopt the technology into current radio designs," said Vin Ratford, vice president & general manager, Processing Solutions Group at Xilinx. "Designers can effectively use Xilinx FPGAs and XtremeDSP solutions to accelerate the development of this complex, high performance functionality, unlocking the opportunity to roll out efficient radio designs over a shorter period of time than previously possible with older ASSP and ASIC design methods."

This new reference design requires less than a quarter of the available slices and a third of the memory resources in the smallest DSP optimized Virtex-4 SX device, providing system designers the lowest cost and power and the most flexible and adaptable solution in the market today.

Pricing and Availability

The Xilinx DPD reference design and application notes will be available free of charge in April 2008. For more information visit http://www.xilinx.com/esp/wireless or contact dpd@xilinx.com

About Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs

The Virtex-5 family represents the fifth generation in the award-winning Virtex series. Built upon the industry's most advanced 65nm triple-oxide technology, breakthrough new ExpressFabric(TM) technology and proven ASMBL(TM) architecture, the Virtex-5 family includes four domain-optimized platforms for high-speed logic, digital signal processing (DSP), embedded processing and serial connectivity applications. Production devices are shipping now and may be purchased online or through Xilinx distributors. Visit http://www.xilinx.com/virtex5 for more information.

About Xilinx XtremeDSP Solutions

Xilinx is the world's leading supplier of high-performance reconfigurable DSP solutions optimized for performance, price and power. Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions come complete with silicon platforms, design tools, development boards and kits, reference designs and a host of signal processing IP for wireless and multimedia video applications. The XtremeDSP silicon portfolio delivers maximum flexibility with three device platforms: the Virtex-4 SX platform with over 250 GMACS at 500MHz, Virtex-5 SXT platform for ultra-high bandwidth with over 350 GMACS at 550MHz and integrated low-power serial connectivity, and the Spartan-3A DSP platform with the most price-performance optimized devices offering over 30 GMACS at 250MHz. Detailed information is available at http://www.xilinx.com/dsp.

About Xilinx

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