The architecture of choice for next-generation wireless. Expressly designed to address the new air-interfaces, picoChip’s multi-core DSP is the most powerful baseband processor on the market. Ideally suited to WiMAX, HSPA, UMTS-LTE, 802.16m, 802.20 and others, the picoArray delivers ten-times better MIPS/$ than legacy approaches. Crucially, the picoArray is easy to program, with a robust development environment and fast learning curve.

Researchers are continuing to strive for ever-greater spectral efficiency to squeeze more and more capacity from the available spectrum. Advanced new OFDM and CDMA technologies which include Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC), Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO), Multi-User Detection (MUD) and Beamforming techniques are under development for 3.5G and 4G systems. The constant pressure to reduce system costs is stimulating the use of advanced digital control and signal processing techniques in applications like Linearisation of Wideband Power Amplifiers.

All these emerging technologies demand enormous processing power, usually combined with a high degree of flexibility and reconfiguration. picoArray architecture delivers the capabilities required for these advanced new technologies because it provides:

• Massive processing power which scales linearly through adding additional devices into large arrays of picoArrays
• Optimisations for FEC and Correlation which are extremely powerful yet flexible (PC102)
• Support for Extended Arithmetic and Floating Point operation
• Extremely predictable and scalable parallel processing architecture which is fully reprogrammable enabling the design and debug of extremely complex systems in market-winning timescales.
• Flexibility to allow “tuning” of algorithms in light of field deployment experience without risk of product recall.
• MIMO and multi-antenna systems are becoming the norm; suiting the parallel nature of the picoArray
• OFDM and variants becoming ubiquitous; PC20x family have powerful co-processors to make this efficient

picoChip is already the industry-standard solution for WiMAX, and is developing solutions for other standards. More details...