Maxim simplifies LTE/3G base station design at MWC 2013
February 22, 2013 – In San Jose and Barcelona, Maxim integrated circuit introduced their new MAX2580 single-chip multi-standard RF to Bits® small cell radio transceiver. Aimed at the growing microcell and femtocell marketplace, the MIMO (2×2) radio design brings a single part solution with a minimum of external components to the system designer. This will accelerate the time to market for those building, home, outdoor and enterprise small and local cell systems as part of a larger Heterogeneous Network (HetNet).
The design supports all LTE bands from Band 1 to Band 41 with selectable channel bandwidths from 1.4MHz to 20MH. This includes support for FDD-LTE, TDD-LTE and WCDMA modes so it has applicability for all indoor and outdoor small cell solutions. The design features a high level of integration in a single design with a 2×2 MIMO RF to Bits architecture with internal high speed data converters, a complete RF front-end, IF amplifiers, fractional-N synthesizers, all the decimation, interpolation and channel selection filters, plus a parallel JESD207 data interface.
Maxim MAX2580 Block Diagram
For low power applications, the part incorporates an internal power amplifier (PA) pre-driver delivers 0dBm output power level. This pre-amp can be used to drive a standard large antenna PA for above 0dBm applications. For control of the device it features a standard JESD207 data interface for connectivity with multicore LTE baseband processors.
For quick implementation, the design is supporeted by a full system reference design and SDK. The ease of integration can be seen in the rapid development and release of products. At MWC 2013, the MAX2580 is being shown in a small cell application from Freescale. The unit being shown is an outdoor public access small cell application as an LTE/3G picocell that uses a Freescale BSC9132 base station SoC card, the MAX3580 RF transceiver card, 1W RF power amplifiers and network management cards all in a passively cooled enclosure. The unit features two Power Architectures e500 cores and two StarCore DSP cores with the Freescale MAPLE-B2P baseband accelerator platform. This solution, with the multi-mode support, allows the design to support LTE-FDD/TDD and HSPA+ simultaneously for up to 64 users.
The need for multimode small cells is increasing as mobile operators transition from high-mobility 2G voice coverage to high-capacity LTE/3G mobile data coverage. The cost drivers and capacity constraints will motivate them to implement heterogeneous networks, based around multimode small cells. The MAX2580 is sampling now to qualified customers and will be available in the second half of 2013.
