U.K.-based Cambridge Consultants, a technology engineering company, announced that it has been commissioned by 802.16e chip developer picoChip to help create software-defined radio (SDR) reference designs for the Mobile WiMAX market, using the picoArray digital signal processing device.

Cambridge said the designs will provide the air interfaces required for both base station and mobile station equipment in WiMAX 802.16e wireless networks, but in software-upgradeable forms. This flexibility will allow the electronics OEM community to develop and deploy while the WiMAX specification is maturing, allow vendors and service providers to make equipment changes and upgrades in the field via simple software patches, according to Cambridge, which also has an office in Boston.

The reference designs will be delivered in early 2006, and Cambridge said in its statement announcing its agreement with picoChip that picoChip will be providing the designs to customers for trials, and testing them at the first 802.16e Plugfest next June (The WiMAX Forum has yet to formally indicate when the first 802.16e Plugfest will be, though officials have confirmed it will occur during 2006 prior to anticipated certification testing in late 2006).

The software defined radios in development exploit the architecture of picoChip's devices, which feature a multi-core array of 16-bit DSPs, plus co-processors to accelerate specific functions, all interconnected by an extremely fast bus. The architecture provides extremely high performance in a form that is very easy to program - allowing signal processing tasks to be divided into smaller elements, which can each be assigned the appropriate processing resources. In addition to optimizing performance, this architecture requires considerably less silicon area, and consumes less power, than alternative design approaches such as a high performance DSP or FPGA.

PicoChip is based in Bath, England. The company most recently made news last month, with the announcement of a contract with Russian equipment vendor InfiNet Wireless. Robert Stubblebine, CEO of InfiNet Wireless, said at that time that it was important to the vendor to have an SDR-based solution that would allow it to offer an 802.16d Fixed WiMAX that could be easily upgraded to support 802.16e. Mobile WiMAX proponents also have publicly reiterated on many occasions that 802.16e’s commercial success depends in some large part on the ability to make it a software upgrade to Fixed WiMAX.

"The mobile WiMAX spec will evolve over the next few years, and the speed with which new iterations of base station and mobile station designs can be released will be crucial for operators targeting this exciting market for broadband mobile wireless," said Tim Fowler of Cambridge Consultants.