It may not be news to place an FPGA close to an IF/RF interface in a handheld or base station design, but Lattice Semiconductor Corp. has taken integration a step further this week. The company announced on Oct. 26 a collaborative project with Affarii Technologies Ltd. on development of an integrated Remote Radio Head (RRH).
We have seen a handful of designs in Multiple-Input/Multiple-Output systems, used in WiMax access points and software-defined 4G base stations, in which an FPGA of a Virtex or Stratix class is used close to the antenna. Lattice’s innovation was to leverage the expertise of Affarri to develop a more cost-effective RRH based on theECP3.
