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Intersil's Pre-distortion Linearizer Provides Cost Savings for Cellular Infrastructure Designers

-- Intersil's CommLink™ Pre-distortion Linearizer enters full production~-- ISL5239 helps designers increase power amplifier efficiency and eliminate costly components

IRVINE, CA, August 13, 2002 – Intersil Corporation (NASDAQ: ISIL), a world leader in the design and manufacture of high performance analog and wireless networking solutions, announced today that its CommLink ISL5239 digital pre-distortion linearizer (PDL) is now in full production. The ISL5239 allows 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 components. The PDL is also suitable for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint radio systems.

Designed to support all existing and next generation cellular standards, Intersil’s ISL5239 will perform non-linear processing on composite multi-carrier digital signals to provide up to a full fifth-order pre-distortion of a 20 MHz wideband input signal to the multi-carrier power amplifier (MCPA). 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.

“Cost, flexibility and performance are of primary concern for designers of base stations and power amplifiers,” said Richard Schmidmaier, product manager for CommLink DSP products. “Intersil’s new ISL5239 pPre-distortion linearizer provides 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 provides 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. An additional Matlab program that uses the evaluation board within a hardware-in-the-loop simulation is also provided to facilitate closed-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.

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 and combined, and then amplified by a MCPA. Today’s 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 TD-SCDMA. 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.

Availability, Packaging and Pricing
The ISL5239 is available now in a tiny 1.0 mm pitch, 15mm x 15mm, 196 lead Ball Grid Array package. The ISL5239 costs $47 in 1000 unit quantities. For more information about Intersil’s new CommLink Pre-distortion Linearizer go to the Intersil web site at: http://www.intersil.com/design/parametric/partsearch.asp?txtprodnr=ISL5239

Intersil + Elantec Means More for Our Customers
Intersil Corporation is a global semiconductor leader in the design and manufacture of high performance analog and wireless networking solutions. The acquisition of Elantec Semiconductor, Inc., expanded Intersil’s product portfolios to address four fast growing markets – flat panel displays, optical storage (CD and DVD recordable), power management, and wireless networking. Intersil brings added customer value in providing complete silicon, software and reference design solutions to new products that enhance the computing experience for people wherever they live, work or travel. 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 Americas Inc.