Chipmaker Xilinx is looking to meet the challenges of “5G” power and form factor requirements by going analog to reduce size and power consumption with an integrated system-on-chip.
The aim of the new Xilinx SoC is “to really enable a whole new level of design around the commercialization of 5G systems,” said Kirk Saban, senior director for FPGA and SoC product planning and marketing at Xilinx. Saban explained the wireless industry has seen a major shift toward the use of remote radio heads, the separation of baseband units, virtualization and active antenna arrays in 4G systems.
“The next innovation is this move toward large-scale antenna arrays,” Saban said, which is being driven by both the need for more bandwidth as well as the use of millimeter wave spectrum in 5G systems. (AT&T and Shenandoah Telecommunications are currently trying out FDD massive mulitple-input/multiple-output antenna systems from Blue Danube.)
The new Xilinx SoC reduces power consumption and footprint by up to 75%, the company said, to support massive MIMO and wireless backhaul applications in millimeter wave frequencies. Both reduced power consumption and the ability to support antenna arrays with many elements that are small in size are seen as key to 5G commercialization, Saban said – otherwise, the cost will simply be too high for 5G to be cost effective. New, smaller and more power-efficient form factors for 5G will also enable creative deployments such as antenna “tiles” that could be deployed on the sides of buildings and generally closer to end users to account for the short-range propagation characteristics of millimeter wave spectrum.
The 16 nanometer-based Xilinx SoC includes integrated analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, with direct RF sampling said to enable simplified design and better accuracy.
“Integrating RF signal processing into all-programable SoCs enables our customers to dramatically change their systems architectures,” said Liam Madden, corporate VP for FPGA development and silicon technology at Xilinx, in a statement.
Prestandard chip development for 5G is already happening at a frenzied pace, even though the standard itself isn’t expected to be fully realized until 2020. Intel, for instance, kicked off last year with the announcement that it would make 5G modems a major focus. Qualcomm has also made a major push to have early 5G chipsets available and last month announced its first 5G processor. AT&T, Ericsson and Qualcomm have plans to begin a series of 5G trials later this year using spectrum in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands.
