Continuing the flow of wireless technological improvements from north of the border, Burnaby, British Columbia-based PMC-Sierra Inc. introduced its Power Amplifier Linearizer and Distortion Inhibitor-10 chip, designed to allow traffic over digital third-generation wireless standards, including wideband CDMA, cdma2000 and EDGE to be transmitted through a digitally controlled power amplifier architecture.
PMC-Sierra said the PM7800 PALADIN-10 digital signal processor eliminates transmitter distortions and improves spectral efficiency in base transceiver stations, lowering the cost per watt. The DSP is also designed to transform existing analog amplifier designs into multicarrier capable, digitally controlled wideband power amplifiers able to handle the higher data rates and increased call capacity of 3G wireless services.
“Analog power amplifiers end up being 50 percent to 70 percent of the cost of wireless systems,” said Kevin Huscroft, acting vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra’s Wireless Products Division and the company’s chief technology officer. “The main advantage of the PM7800 PALADIN-10 DSP is it lowers the component cost, lowers the maintenance cost, increases reliability and provides better capacity for wireless operators.”
Overcoming the inherent limitations of analog power amplifiers has been the biggest hurdle in lowering the costs of base-station deployments due to time-consuming calibration procedures needed prior to deployment. PMC-Sierra said the PALADIN-10 chip overcomes that extra expense by automatically adapting to and compensating for each amplifier’s unique distortion pattern. This also eliminates the need for tuning and alignment during manufacturing and in the field.
The chip is also designed to overcome the challenges of distortion, interference and noise faced by wireless system designers by providing digital adaptive predistortion enabling the design of linear-response transceivers and improved fidelity of transmitted power spectral densities for single and multicarrier signals up to 10 megahertz, according to the company.
These features are designed to allow wireless base stations to support emerging 3G wireless standards while extending system performance to include advanced base transceiver stations such as smart antennas, enhanced power management and “hot swap” redundancy architectures.
“Since [radio frequency] amplifiers are one of the most expensive components in a base station, PALADIN offers the capability of using fewer amplifiers, which promises a significant reduction in wireless infrastructure cost,” added Will Strauss, president and principal analyst of Forward Concepts.
PMC-Sierra said the PM7800 PALADIN-10, available in a 304-pin super ball grid array package, will be priced at $320 in volume quantities with samples available during the first quarter of 2001.
