CIE Components in Electronics
CommAgility, a Wireless Telecom Group company, has announced the CA-K2L-RF2, a standalone high performance processing module that includes ARM- and DSP-based cores with two integrated wideband RF transceiver channels.
Based on CommAgility’s existing AMC-K2L-RF2 board, the new CA-K2L-RF2 module provides a competitively-priced option to provide LTE and LTE-Advanced capabilities in private, customised and specialised networks. It measures 175mm (L) x 122mm (W) x 28mm (H), making it easy to fit into compact systems. Flexible off-board communications is provided via electrical and optical Gigabit Ethernet and CPRI, providing connectivity to networks, host processors and additional RF.
The module is optionally available with CommAgility’s SmallCellPHY-TI and SmallCellSTACK software, which is pre-integrated and tested to reduce risk and effort. This industry-leading software reflects the investment of over 100 years of effort and is used by top-tier telecommunications equipment vendors around the world. CommAgility can customise the software to ensure the best possible fit for specialised applications.
“With the new CA-K2L-RF2, we have taken our experience with our existing AMC cards, and used it to develop a powerful, flexible and cost-effective option that is suitable for deployment in higher volumes,” said Edward Young, vice president and general manager at CommAgility.
A Texas Instruments (TI) AFE7500 analog front end provides flexible, high quality RF capabilities. High performance processing is provided by TI’s TCI6630K2L KeyStone II System-on-Chip (SoC), which includes four C66x DSP cores and two ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processors, all operating at up to 1.2 GHz. To keep the cores free for receiver algorithms and other functions, the TCI6630K2L SoC includes wireless base station coprocessors which offload layer 1 and layer 2 processing demands.
The CA-K2L-RF2 supports wireless baseband processing and a 2×2 MIMO air interface in applications including small cells and radio test systems, for standard or specialised LTE and LTE-Advanced systems up to Release 10 and beyond. It is highly flexible and can be used either as a complete baseband and RF small cell solution, or as a baseband unit with its CPRI interface linking to a separate Remote Radio Head (RRH).
The module operates over an extended temperature range of -40 to 70°C with conduction cooling, making it suitable for outdoor and rugged applications.
Flexible RF capabilities include Tx output power up to 24dBm average, RF bandwidth up to 20MHz, and FDD/TDD support. Build options cover most LTE bands, with others possible with additional customisation. Using external cavity filters, the card can be directly deployed as an LTE small cell.
The CA-K2L-RF2 will be available in Q1 2019.
