Powerwave Technologies Introduces Universal WiMAX Digital Radio Head
Designed for operation with next-generation base stations, Powerwave's universal WiMAX DRH is an IEEE 802.16e transceiver, featuring Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) electrical or optical interfaces, which can be optimized for customer specific applications. The CPRI interface supports redundancy and carries bi-directional signal and control data, including alarms for antenna VSWR, LNA failure, digital input overdrive, and erroneous configuration requests from the baseband unit.
Powerwave's universal WiMAX DRH offers up to 20 MHz of instantaneous, multi-carrier operation. The built-in flexibility of the WiMAX DRH allows key parameters, such as channel bandwidth, output power and Time Division Duplex (TDD) ratio to be changed in order to optimize coverage and capacity, without requiring firmware upgrades. Channel bandwidth configurations of 10 MHz and 10 MHz + 10 MHz are supported as standard, with 5 MHz + 5 MHz + 5 MHz and 20 MHz available as firmware upgrades.
Powerwave's universal WiMAX DRH also features digital channel filtering, digital up and down conversion, RF up and down conversion, power amplification, low-noise receive amplification and TDD duplexing. A high-rejection sub-band RF filter, based on Powerwave's proprietary ceramic technology, offers exceptional unwanted signal rejection with very low loss in the TX/RX paths (26 W per path transmit power, 2.5 dB typical receive noise figure), and enables the unit to meet stringent out of sub-band emissions requirements, including FCC 67+10log(P) without need for external filtering, which can increase insertion loss, power level errors and cost.
"Powerwave is pleased to lead the industry in bringing new technologies to market that enable its customers to deploy state-of-the-art wireless coverage and capacity solutions," said David Porte, vice president, Global Business Development, Powerwave Technologies. "With the introduction of the universal WiMAX digital radio head, we continue to demonstrate our commitment to supplying our valued customers around the globe with complete hardware, software and services that reduce capital and operating expenditures, and increase wireless networks performance."
Leveraging high-efficiency wideband power amplifiers and Powerwave's proprietary digital predistortion (DPD) and crest factor reduction (CFR) technologies, the universal WiMAX DRH offers class-leading efficiency that delivers twice the output power of competitive solutions, as mentioned previously, with 26 Watts per path for less than 250 Watts of DC input, inside a single, compact 10kg, 8.5-liter package.
Powerwave's universal WiMAX Digital Radio Head has been optimized for the 2.5 GHz WiMAX band, with variants for the 2.3 GHz or the 3.3 to 3.6 GHz bands. Supporting two TDD transmit (Tx) and two receive (Rx) channels (2T2R), the universal WiMAX DRH can be expanded to support up to four receive and transmit paths for advanced antenna systems.
Currently available in rack-mount format for 2.5 GHz, Powerwave's universal WiMAX DRH can be configured for different power levels, alternative rack configurations, or fully weather- and lightning-proofed outdoor units suitable for rooftop or tower-top deployments. The rack-based product has a temperature range of -5°C to +55°C and the outdoor product has a range of -40°C to +55°C. To complement the WiMAX DRH, a Direct Digital Radio (DDR) variant can be supplied for in-building coverage and capacity enhancement.
SOURCE: Powerwave Technologies, Inc.