Wavesat, one of a handful of commonly-recognized developers of chipsets for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems, has teamed up with Murandi Communications to develop 802.16 WiMAX-compliant reference designs and to support OEM product development.

With WiMAX Forum product certification likely early next year, vendors such as Murandi are starting to work with semiconductor developers on product refence designs. The other WiMAX chipset developers include Intel and Fujitsu Microelectronics.

Under this agreement, Montreal-based Wavesat will provide Murandi, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with priority access to its chip technology, technical design support and development tools. Murandi will develop WiMAX-certifiable reference designs for base stations, customer premise equipment, and point-to-multipoint and point-to-point applications for licensed and unlicensed frequency bands using the Wavesat chipsets. Murandi will work with OEM customers to manufacture products. The first reference design will be available in the fourth quarter this year.