News & Events
Intersil's CommLink Pre-distortion Linearizer to Offer Cellular Infrastructure Designers Cost Savings and Greater Efficiency
-- Intersil to demonstrate new digital pre-distortion linearizer at CTIA, Orlando March 18-20
IRVINE, CA, March 19, 2002 Intersil (NASDAQL: ISIL), a leading developer of silicon technology for integrated communications applications, announced today that the CommLink ISL5239 digital pre-distortion linearizer is in final development and will begin sampling in June. The ISL5239 will allow designers of cellular base stations and power amplifiers to reduce the cost of wideband single-carrier and multi-carrier cellular base stations by increasing power amplifier efficiency and eliminating costly combining components.
Intersils ISL5239 will perform non-linear processing on composite multi-carrier digital signals to provide up to full fifth-order pre-distortion of a 20 MHz wideband input signal to the multi-carrier power amplifier (MCPA) so that the resulting output signal to the antenna is efficiently linearized. The capabilities of the ISL5239 permit less costly MCPAs to be designed by power amplifier designers and implemented by base station OEMs.
Intersil recognizes base station designers are driven to reduce the cost of their designs while increasing flexibility and performance, said Ken Schultz, vice president of the Wireless Metropolitan Area Networking group at Intersil. With the ISL5239, Intersil addresses the technical features required by designers and reduces by nearly half in some cases the power amplifier and other component costs associated with implementing multi-carrier base stations.
The ISL5239 will provide several key features to base station and power amplifier designers. The device is software definable so that designers can implement adaptive correction algorithms tailored specifically to the amplifier of their choice. In addition to correcting phase and amplitude non-linearities, the device also provides compensation for power amplifier thermal memory effects. An evaluation board and Windows software tool with a Matlab interface enables designers to have full programmatic control of the ISL5239 in order to conduct hardware-in-the-loop algorithm development. The device seamlessly interfaces to other key Intersil software radio components so that a complete software defined digital pre-distortion solution can be implemented with excellent performance and unmatched flexibility.
At Intersil, we continue to apply our years of IC and systems expertise toward solving fundamental signal processing problems, which have historically limited widespread multi-carrier cellular transmission. The ISL5239 is yet another example of Intersils commitment to providing the infrastructure market with high performance, cost effective solutions, said Juan Garcia, marketing director of MAN Infrastructure Products for Intersils Wireless Networking Business.
The ISL5239 is designed to support all existing and next generation cellular standards. Samples of the ISL5239 in 160 lead CABGA packages will be available in the second quarter of 2002.
Existing cellular operators face challenges associated with adding capacity to their existing base station network while new operators face the challenge of designing networks that will scale as capacity needs increase in their served markets. To address these challenges, base station designers are rapidly migrating to multi-carrier base station architectures that permit multiple cellular channels to be transmitted by a single radio.
Base station designs use expensive cavity combiners to sum the outputs of multiple single-carrier power amplifiers (SCPAs) to transmit only a few carriers. As the number of transmitted carriers increases, the complexity and cost of the combining network increases. The use of multi-carrier signal processing devices, such as the CommLink ISL5217 programmable upconverter, enable multiple carriers to be digitally processed, combined in a passive manner and then amplified by a MCPA. Todays MCPAs are significantly more expensive than SCPAs given the stringent linearity requirements mandated by transmitting multiple wideband carriers at high power levels within the emission standards set by regulatory authorities.
As the rollout of third generation cellular protocols draws near, base station designers around the world are also working feverishly to meet the aggressive needs of wide bandwidth transmission for the likes of UMTS, CDMA2000 and TDS-CDMA. Unlike existing protocols, the bandwidth demands of next generation cellular transmission require even SCPAs to operate in a highly linear mode when transmitting even a single 5MHz channel. As a result, linearization capability, such as that provided by the ISL5239, is required when dealing in single carrier transmission of these protocols. By providing 20 MHz of linearized output capability, the ISL5239 provides base station designers the capability to efficiently operate in both single and multi-carrier third generation cellular transmission environments.
About CommLink Products
Intersil develops and markets software defined radio (SDR) integrated circuits including digital up- and downconverters and data conversion devices that are designed to accommodate all current and next-generation cellular protocols. Intersils SDR technology also addresses the stringent needs of the smart antenna application within the cellular marketplace that addresses the frequency capacity limitations that are inherent in current base station cellular technology. For further information, visit Intersils CommLink website at http://www.intersil.com/design/commlink. About Intersil
Intersil is a global leader in designing innovative wireless networking and high performance analog solutions that enable wireless access to video, data and voice in homes, offices and public places. Creating advanced power management products, Intersil provides reliable solutions for file servers, portable information appliances and over half of all computer microprocessors manufactured today. With a rich high performance analog and mixed signal portfolio, Intersil brings added value in providing complete silicon, software and reference design solutions to new products that bring portable connectivity to people wherever they live, work or travel. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Intersil has offices in cities throughout the US, Europe and Asia. For more information about Intersil or to find out how to become a member of our winning team, visit the company's Web site and career page at: www.intersil.com
CommLink is a trademark of Intersil Corporation.
