Xilinx announced a collaboration with Texas Instruments (TI) to develop digital front-end (DFE) solutions in an effort to increase energy efficiency of lower antenna count radios. The solution couples Xilinx’s Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC family and adaptable RF IP with the AFE7769 quad-channel RF transceiver from TI.

This combination allows developers to address the OPEX and CAPEX concerns of larget operators and private networks.

The next generation of LTE and 5G small cells need to address the need for new functionality in the radio due to the necessity of support for wider bandwidths and new use cases that include enhanced mobile broadband, machine type communication, and ultra-reliable low-latency communication.

Per Xilinx, its Adaptable Digital RF IP includes specialist functionality of Crest Factor Reduction (CFR) and Digital Pre-distortion (DPD. It is the only solution that can support a wide range of radio bandwidths and carrier configurations.

Additionally, being integrated with the PHY processing implemented in the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC device, it can handle the signal dynamics of multi-RAT and 5G waveforms.

To see a demonstration of a small cell 4T4R radio solution that can cover bandwidth requirements up to 200MHz (for LTE and 5G NR) follow the link below.

This demo is based on the Xilinx ZCU102 Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC evaluation platform, the AFE7769 evaluation module (AFE7769EVM) from Texas Instruments, and 28dBm SKY66318-21 PA from Skyworks.

https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Xilinx-Xclusive-Blog/Xilinx-Collaborates-with-Texas-Instruments-and-Skyworks-to/ba-p/1174463