John Glossner : SDR Insider
John Glossner
Sandbridge Technologies CTO & EVP. A fabless semiconductor company building SDR baseband processors.

February 2009

You are browsing the archive for February 2009.

Hong Kong scores a first with SDR-based HSPA+ mobile network

February 27, 2009

Telecom Magazine reports Hong Kong’s largest mobile carrier, CSL New World Mobility (CSL) is to replace its existing 2G/3G network using ZTE-designed Software Defined Radio (SDR) base stations offering HSPA+ capability and a migration path to next generation Long Term Evolution (LTE). At a joint conference in Barcelona, GSMA Mobile World Congress, last week, Tarek Robbiati, CEO [...]

Sandbridge SDR Selected as ACE/EE Times Insight Award Finalist

February 25, 2009

Under the category of Most Innovative Mobile Processor, Sandbridge Technologies SB3500 was selected as one of the EE Times Insight Award 2008 finalists. Here is the full list: Sandbridge SB3500 Flexible Baseband Processor Intel 45nm Atom Processor Qualcomm QSD8650 Mobile Processor (Snapdragon Platform) Samsung S5L8900B01 Applications Processor Texas Instruments 65nm OMAP3530 Applications Processor I wonder if a “productivity factor” can be used to determine the winner since my company [...]

ZTE first to demonstrate voice over EV-DO Rev B

February 25, 2009

ZTE announces another technological breakthrough by achieving the world’s first EV-DO Revision B (Rev.B) VoIP Call on its CDMA2000 system, marking the first time in the industry that a CDMA vendor achieves an impressive 9.3 Mbps download rate and 5.4 Mbps upload rate. Compared with mature commercial EV-DO Rev.A, what ZTE’s EV-DO Rev.B does is to only [...]

4G mobile designs call for programmable chips

February 25, 2009

Eyal Bergman, Director of Product Marketing at Ceva  comments at ElectronicsWeekly.com: The changing standards increase risk with a traditional, hardware-based design approach. IC designers using such an approach can either find themselves betting on the wrong standard and end up with an obsolete product before even being launched, or getting into costly investment by developing [...]

picoChip launches eight-user HSPA femtocell reference design

February 25, 2009

picoChip has announced the PC8219, a complete baseband solution for eight-user WCDMA femtocells designed to run on its established PC202 processor chip. The PC8219 is a complete eight-user femtocell baseband implementation, that is compliant with 3GPP Release 6 HSUPA and can support the new femto-specific features from Release 8. It runs on a PC202-10.

Software-defined instrument addresses multiprotocol wireless tests

February 25, 2009

National Instruments reports on a test tool they designed where the test measurements are performed using a software-defined instrument approach on a common processing platform. It is not exactly SDR but they are solving many of the issues SDRs must deal with.

Samsung Partners with Sandbridge to Develop Next-Gen LTE-Capable Platform

February 25, 2009

Tarrytown, NY, Suwon, S. Korea, February, 16th, 2009 – Sandbridge announced today that Samsung has partnered with Sandbridge to develop LTE capable platform based on Sandbridge cutting-edge technology. Specifically, Samsung will showcase several LTE devices, including the Sandbridge’s platform at the upcoming Mobile World Congress to be held in Barcelona, February 16-19. LTE communication system [...]

Octasic SDR targets GSM/EDGE basestations

February 25, 2009

Octasic Inc. announced Vocallo BTS, its Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform for GSM, EDGE and EDGE Evolution base stations. According to the company The Vocallo BTS Digital Signal Processor (DSP) integrates a complete Layer 1 baseband for up to 12 GSM carriers or 6 EDGE carriers or any combination. All this is achieved in a 15mm x [...]

Mobile World Congress (MWC): Observations from Barcelona

February 23, 2009

Last week the wireless industry met in Barcelona for the annual Mobile World Congress. I had the good fortune to attend the show and my company Sandbridge was an exhibitor. The big announcement at the show was Nokia’s license to Broadcom of their modem IP. This legitimizes Broadcom’s cellular offerings on top of an already strong broadband/peripheral [...]

T3G Completes World’s First TD-LTE End-to-End Application Demonstration on Multimode Soft Modem Platform

February 13, 2009

T3G announced that it is the leading TD-SCDMA terminal system solution provider, and has completed the world’s first TD-LTE [...]

NXP name dropped as ST-Ericsson powers ahead

February 13, 2009

EE Times reports STMicroelectronics NV and Ericsson have named their 50:50 joint venture that combines the efforts of Ericsson Mobile Platforms with ST-NXP Wireless — ST-Ericsson. They took our tongue-in cheek advice not to call the new group Saint Eric, but, as expected, the NXP name is to be phased out. Let’s hope the same doesn’t happen to NXP’s EVP!

Renesas : Development systems allows re-configurable communication

February 13, 2009

ASOCS and Renesas Technology Europe today announced availability of a GSM/GPRS/EDGE communication development system (CDS). Comprising of an ASOCS MP100 MultiComms processor and a Renesas Technology DRACO3 RF subsystem, the development system allows handset designers to rapidly prototype combined cellular and Internet products.

CEVA Unveils Industry’s Highest Performance DSP Architecture for 3.5G/4G Terminals and Infrastructure SoCs

February 13, 2009

Ceva has announced an SDR vector DSP processor (Ceva-XC) supporting LTE class 5 and WiMax 16m (and of course all the legacy systems). AND it’s for terminals. It includes optimizing compiler and up to 4 vector units with a claimed 200 GOPS on the 3-way VLIW 256-bit vector unit (which sounds similiar to Sandbridge’s November 2008 announcement).

ZTE SDR Solution Nominated for GSMA’s 14th Global Mobile Awards

February 11, 2009

PR Newswire reports ZTE Corporation ("ZTE"), a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions has been shortlisted for the Best Network Technology Advance Award at the 2009 Global Mobile Awards, the most prestigious mobile honours in the mobile communications field, for its cutting-edge SDR (Software Defined Radio) solution. ZTE is the only Chinese company nominated for this global award. ZTE's ZXSDR B8200 and ZXSDR R8860 are the company's two major SDR products. They are deployed by China Unicom in all of China's 18 provinces for its WCDMA networks. ZTE launched the world's first commercial SDR base station at the 2008 GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Software-defined test platform targets LTE

February 11, 2009

EE Times reports mimoOn and Cetecom have partnered using Sandbridge Technologies SB3500 SDR baseband for “world’s smallest mobile test implementation for 3GPP LTE.” The platform is 13cm x 16cm x 2cm and support 20MHz MIMO with 100Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink. [Full Disclosure: I work for Sandbridge]

SDR software mounts TI’s LTE-ready chip

February 11, 2009

EE Times reports that mimOn has ported its LTE software to a TI TMS320TCI648x targeting femtocell and macro basestations.

Analysis: SDR chip proves itself on BDTI benchmark

February 8, 2009

DSP Design Line reports The SB3500 is the first handset-oriented chip for which BDTI has published certified results on this benchmark, and its results are quite strong. The 500 MHz SB3500 can handle a total of six OFDM channels using its three DSP cores. Each of the cores runs four threads, with each thread running [...]

The 2008 VC Liquidity Drought In Charts

February 8, 2009

Techcrunch reports The financial meltdown of 2008 all but shut down venture-backed exits, as we all know. The National Venture Capital Association declared a crisis back in the second quarter, which got worse in the third quarter. This week, the NCVA released its numbers for the fourth quarter and, as expected, they are pretty [...]

Smartphones Set for Growth in 2009

February 8, 2009

Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff on Jan. 12 was among the latest to lower his estimate for 2009 handset volumes to negative 10%, down from negative 6.4%, based on low demand in Europe and the Americas. Modoff projected slowing growth in emerging markets. Asia and Africa are projected to be down in the low single [...]