The collaboration combines digital beamforming and state-of-the-art transceivers to push Massive MIMO into mainstream applications
Analog Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADI) global semiconductor pioneer bridging the physical and digital worlds to enable innovation at the Intelligent Edge, and Marvell Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MRVL), a major player in semiconductor solutions for data infrastructure, announced the next generation 5G Massive MIMO (mMIMO) reference platform with support for Open RAN.
The combination of ADI’s latest RadioVerse® tranceiver SoC and baseband processor Marvell OCTEON® 10 Fusion 5G, the industry’s first 5nm digital beamforming solution for 5G, improves time-to-market for advanced mMIMO radio units and O-RAN support by enabling up to 40% less power consumption, smaller size and weight inferior.
The OCTEON 10 Fusion baseband processor also provides flexible L1 implementation, with hardware and software reuse between RU (Radio Unit) and DU (Distributed Unit) to facilitate the evolution of L1 divisions among operators worldwide in coming years, while the SoC RadioVerse provides a broad range of digital RF front-end capabilities, including field-proven DPD.
“As mMIMO radio functionality grows in complexity, it is necessary to approach the application with more specialized SoCs”, he has declared Alex Jinsung ChoiPresident of O-RAN ALLIANCE. “Reference designs such as the one created by ADI and Marvell help catalyze the O-RAN market for 5G mMIMO radio units by enabling advanced configurations that meet network operators’ high expectations for power efficiency and performance.”
Together, the Transceiver SoC RadioVerse and the processore OCTEON 10 Fusion, support the entire signal chain with unmatched RU system efficiency. The transceiver SoC RadioVerse ADRV9040 includes state-of-the-art digital features, including linearization algorithms to increase power amplifier efficiency and performance, as well as digital channel filters that reduce interface speeds. The OCTEON 10 Fusion 5G baseband processor features specialized and optimized accelerators for efficient processing of complex beamforming algorithms, along with dedicated processors for the baseband Low PHY that can be configured for various O-RAN split 7.2 configurations x.
“Developing O-RAN mMIMO radio units presents several challenges for infrastructure providers, such as obtaining application-optimized semiconductors”he has declared Joe Barry, Vice President of Marketing, Systems & Technology nella Communication and Cloud Business Unit di ADI. “The performance and efficiency of this platform makes cutting-edge technologies available to both established and emerging vendors.”
“Marvell is delighted to partner with ADI to take mMIMO radios to the next level,” he said Will Chu, Senior Vice President, Processors Business Group di Marvell. “The combination of Marvell’s OCTEON 10 Fusion 5G baseband processor and ADI’s RF transceiver technology provides OEMs with an Open Radio 5G reference design that scales the capabilities and performance of next-generation mMIMO beamforming to the lowest possible powers” .
Il reference design, Expandable to support a 64T64R configuration, supports 32 transmit and receive antennas (32T32R) with 400 MHz operational bandwidth and 300 MHz instantaneous bandwidth. The OCTEON 10 Fusion 5G baseband processor and RadioVerse SoC leverages hardware accelerators as well as state-of-the-art RF and digital baseband processing nodes at 16nm and 5nm respectively, delivering up to 40% reduction in power consumption for bits compared to the previous generation. The platform enables NES (Network Energy Savings) modes, which offer additional energy savings.
The platform will be on display at Mobile World Congress at the ADI booth (Hall 2, 2B18) and the Marvell booth (Hall 2, 2F34).