As the shape of 4G communications networks becomes more clearly defined, developers are already working on solutions for this next major evolution in wireless communications. Standards and initiatives such as WiMAX, UMTS-LTE, UMB, FuTURE, and IEEE 802.16m are rapidly moving from the drawing board to reality.

picoChip’s products are field-proven in realizing the OFDMA modulation and MIMO antenna techniques that will be central to 4G designs. Our architecture can support all of the different air-interfaces, and we have a roadmap that delivers support for all the major standards from a common platform. picoChip is already the industry standard for WiMAX, and we recently announced a reference design solution for UMTS-LTE.

Our approach, combining the programmability and extreme processing power of the picoArray with robust, carrier-class software, is a perfect match to the fast-changing environment of these emerging standards. Designers can rely on a single hardware platform to implement multiple standards, allowing design re-use where there are commonalities, and differentiation where the market demands it. Our LTE design, for instance, shares a simple common hardware platform with our market-leading WiMAX solution.

And, because the picoArray is programmable, our solutions can be reconfigured as standards evolve. For example, in WiMAX we have already proven this with seamless software-only upgrades from 16d, to the e, to Wave 2 and MIMO – with a roadmap to Release 1.X and 16m.

With ten-times better MIPS/$ than legacy approaches, the picoArray is the ideal platform for implementing advanced wireless technologies that will deliver higher data rates, greater spectral efficiency and more capacity. Our in-house research and development teams and third party design partners are designing with technologies such as adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), MIMO, multi-user detection (MUD) and beamforming. And we are at the forefront of work on advanced digital control and signal processing techniques in applications like linearization of wideband power amplifiers.

All of these emerging technologies demand enormous processing power, scalability, flexibility and programmability. The picoArray architecture matches all of these requirements.

• Massively parallel
  Outstanding processing power
  Scales linearly with additional devices
  Suits MIMO and multi-antenna systems
• Fully programmable
  Enables fast design and debug of extremely complex systems
  Allows risk-free tuning of algorithms in light of field deployment
• Optimized for 4G
  FEC and correlation
  Extended arithmetic and floating point operations
  Powerful co-processors for efficient OFDM implementations