Altera announces 5 Gbps microwave backhaul solution

SAN JOSE, USA: Altera Corp. announced the availability of high-performance, cost-effective and scalable microwave backhaul solutions based on the company's industry-leading FPGAs and QAM modem IP cores from Escape Communications, a leading provider of design and product solutions for wireless communications electronics for telecom and aerospace applications.

The offerings address traditional microwave backhaul markets (6 - 42 GHz) and emerging applications in the E-band (70/80 GHz) and V-band (60 GHz) all-outdoor radio (ODR) markets. The solutions are easily scaled to meet individual link capacity requirements between cell sites and the core network, allowing mobile operators to maximize throughput capacity and spectrum efficiency with the most cost-effective FPGA and mixed-signal solution.

Escape Communications has extensive technical experience in developing microwave backhaul solutions that feature intellectual property (IP) modem cores for high-bandwidth, high-order quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) operations and a complete field-proven embedded software stack including drivers, functional libraries, and operator applications like web-GUI and SNMP as well as extensive diagnostic tools.

The Escape backhaul modem IP is optimized for use on Altera Cyclone V, Arria V, and Arria V SoC FPGAs operating at bandwidths of up to 1 GHz and modulation types from QPSK to 4096 QAM. A link operating at 1 GHz can provide in excess of 5 Gbps throughput.

When combined with Altera's carrier-grade Ethernet switch IP, the solution accelerates the performance of traditional microwave backhaul architectures. This enables robust Quality-of-Service (QoS) switch operation in concert with adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) and several LTE Advanced features, including carrier aggregation and support for frequency (SyncE) and timing synchronization (IEEE 1588v2) compliance.

"As deployment of 4G networks heightens the need for capacity, our microwave backhaul solution is positioned to help operators meet the increasing bandwidth demands of current and future networks," said Scott Bibaud, senior VP of the Communications and Broadcast business unit at Altera. "With Altera's silicon and Ethernet IP and Escape's field-proven core modem IP, equipment makers can achieve product differentiation and feature agility."

Michael Stewart, CEO and founder of Escape Communications, added: "We're providing mobile equipment makers with a baseband solution offering a complete field-proven software stack, market-leading modem features, performance, and carrying capacities at the lowest total cost of ownership. Our solution has ASSP-like power consumption, but unlike ASSPs, our solution is field-upgradable so our customers can continue to innovate and compete on features, not just price."

Altera and Escape are optimizing the modem IP cores for use on Altera's next-generation Arria 10 FPGAs and SoCs. The balance of high-performance and low-power capabilities of Arria 10 FPGAs and SoCs is ideal for wireless base stations, mobile backhaul and remote radio head designs.

Altera and Escape Communications' fully tested and field-proven microwave backhaul modem solution is now available for customer evaluation and is offered as a turnkey hardware and software solution.