Mobile WiMAX Basestation (BTS) Processor and Software Solution - WinMax - Wintegra

Wintegra announced its WinMax, a family of processors and software solution for WiMAX basestation (BTS) applications. WinMax provides an integrated silicon and software solution for the MAC and transport functions of mobile WiMAX basestations. It also offers a common architecture that is scalable from picostations to multi-sector macro basestations. WinMax provides a BTS solution that is cost-competitive with ASICs, yet offers the benefit of full programmability and field upgradeability.

Colin Alexander, Wintegra, said:

Because the WiMAX standard is still evolving, designers need a flexible platform to meet a wide range of needs in terms of functionality and performance. WinMax has been targeted at meeting this need, and is also cost effective in terms of both Bill of Materials (BOM) and development. We have customer designs where WinMax has removed between 5 and 7 other devices from the customers’s alternative designs. In addition, our silicon architecture and  SMTP superiority offers scheduling and features beyond any other device. Our parallelism offers unique advantages other devices cannot provide. We intend to support the WinMAX system with a series of reference platforms that will reduce development time and thus improve time-to-market

Data path and control path implementation mean that the MAC and other components are implemented as a set of building blocks, which can be customized by the designer to meet the demand for advanced features such as AAS, MIMO and subchannel diversity requirements. This flexibility extends to future enhancements and standards such as wav-2, 16j relay stations, 16h for unlicensed frequency bands and the 16m next generation mobile network standard.

The WinMax system is a true software-based solution executed on the WinMax Access Packet Processor. The WinMax processor itself is based on the recently introduced WinPath2 family of processors, which utilizes the same data path software (DPS) and WDDI API software architecture as the company’s successful WinPath1 processors. Using the new processors, basestation designers will be able to realize any specific feature within the WinMax system without the need for a new system-on-chip (SoC) revision. Indeed customers have been developing software for their systems using a software-compatible WinPath device for over a year now. Some customers have already begun full mobility field trials using the Wintegra solution.

The features, performance and power characteristics of the WinMax devices have been specifically tailored to the needs of the rapidly expanding WiMAX market. WinMax features a flexible datapath engine architecture based on Symmetric Multi Thread Processor (SMTP) technology. It offers market leading density in terms of the number of sectors and subscribers per sector that can be supported. UP to 4 MAC instances can be accommodated on a single part and allows flexibility and future-proofing of basestation designs. The single chip approach, in combination with a common software architecture, allows the implementation of either integrated or separate transport interfaces. Integrated 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces are provided, allowing the same software and hardware architecture to be extended across multiple products in a family that can encompass macro, micro and pico BTS versions.

A flexible interface to PHYs has been developed, which allows different PHY technologies and vendors to be supported. A previously announced reference design with picoChip gives manufacturers the opportunity to develop their product using an already working reference BTS implementation.

Integral to the WinMax concept is a software suite of DPS modules that provide the user with a suite of low level protocol and interworking implementations. DPS executes on a series of custom-designed RISC processor cores collectively called WinComm and are accessible from the on-chip host processor through a software API called the WinPath Device Driver Interface (WDDI). This architecture allows the control and data path functions to be integrated on the same device, with the host device handling termination and management functions, and the WinComm engine handling the switching, interworking, or backplane data path functions from the line interface.

The software features on the programmable engines and parallel hardware provide support for common WiMAX tasks, as well as accelerators to optimize performance. A number of optional blocks are supported by the Wintegra MAC layer, including: multiple programmable power-saving options, Payload Header Suppression (PHS), with 256 rules per channel identifier; scheduling and shaping; multiple priority class; policing; security sublayer; multi-zone and multicast/bicasting.

Source: WinMax  Mobile WiMAX Basestations (BTS) - Wintegra