The WiMAX Forum has defined 2nd phase specifications (Wave 2) of Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) to ensure vendor interoperability and compatibility among systems and terminals. picoChip’s software-defined architecture is ideally suited to facilitating this evolution, allowing migration to Wave 2 and IO-MIMO via the PC8532 software upgrade to its established IEEE 802.16e solutions.

The PC8532 was the first basestation reference design to support WiMAX Wave 2 and IO-MIMO, and scales from access point (femtocell) to sophisticated multi-sector macrocells. It is used for WiMAX certification and has demonstrated compatibility between systems running WiMAX Forum Certified™ 16d, 16e SISO, and 16e Wave 2 MIMO, all from a common hardware platform.

The two key evolutions within Wave 2 are increased support for mobility, and the use of MIMO (Multi Input Multi Output) antenna techniques. MIMO increases data-rate and reliability by simultaneously sending and receiving data by multiple antennas. The 2 x 2 MIMO system used in WiMAX significantly reduces CAPEX and OPEX for carriers, by increasing coverage and data-rate. As a result, Wave 2 delivers maximum download and upload transmission speeds of 40Mbit/s and 12Mbit/s respectively. picoChip's programmable PHY supports Wave 2 and IO-MIMO in both uplink and downlink.

The PC8532 is an upgrade to picoChip’s established PC8530 802.16e-2005 reference design.