Xilinx announces digital pre-distortion reference design for Freescale's LDMOS power amplifiers

The folks at Xilinx have announced a new digital pre-distortion (DPD) reference design based on its Virtex family of platform FPGAs and XtremeDSP solutions. This reference design is optimized for use with Freescale Semiconductor's RF power laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor (LDMOS) devices for wireless infrastructure.

The Xilinx DPD reference design can be used to develop LTE, WiMAX, WCDMA and TD-SCDMA multi-carrier systems and complements existing Digital Front End reference designs available from Xilinx. Demonstration of the DPD reference design is available at this week's Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain, at the Xilinx stand, hall 1 booth E47 and the Freescale stand, hall 8 booth 8B91.

Power Amplifiers account for a significant portion of a base station's operating expenditure (OpEx) due to their lack of efficiency with complex signals. Designers can use digital pre-distortion (DPD) to improve efficiency and reduce cost. This technique preconditions the signal entering the amplifier to compensate for the non-linear transfer characteristics of the power amplifiers, resulting in a more linear, higher output power radio. Alternatively, the technique allows the system designer to choose a smaller output stage if desired, thereby saving both cost and power.

This new reference design is said to require less than a quarter of the available slices and a third of the memory resources in the smallest DSP-optimized Virtex-4 SX device, providing system designers the lowest cost and power and the most flexible and adaptable solution in the market today.

Pricing and availability
The Xilinx DPD reference design and application notes will be available free of charge in April 2008. For more information visit www.xilinx.com/esp/wireless or contact dpd@xilinx.com.