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Fidus Solution Portfolio
INDUSTRY: Communications
Wireless Access Point for high-traffic
outdoor venues
DESCRIPTION: This main control card is used in a pole-mount system that provides wireless access and backhaul functionality. Being an outdoor, pole-mount application, conductive cooling, and wide temperature operation were critical design factors. An onboard Intel® PowerPC® processor supervises a multi-port L2+ DRAM-enabled switching structure. Additionally, there is a robust, seamless switching power circuit to provide battery back-up and charging and lightning protection circuitry to help ensure reliable operation.
TECHNOLOGIES: Intel PowerPC, I2C, SPI, JTAG, PCI, Ethernet Switching, DRAM, battery charger, conductive cooling, FPGA, radio card support, multiple power source selection and switching
INDUSTRY: Communications
DSL Semiconductor
Qualification Platform
DESCRIPTION: This system was designed for a semiconductor manufacturer who needed both a reference design for their customers, as well as an experimentation platform for their new central office VDSL chipset. The reference portion of the design was limited to 4-layers and was specifically designed with commonly available components. The control plane of the design contained two ARM® processors, and a mail boxing system. As per CO requirements, the system was -48V powered.
TECHNOLOGIES: ARM, UTOPIA, Xilinx® Spartan®, -48V, Central Office, SRAM, line protection, Ethernet
INDUSTRY: Communications
WiMAX Pole Mount Beamformer
DESCRIPTION: This involved design was made by designing and connecting four unique circuit card assemblies, and a large pole-mount conduction cooled chassis. The complex electronics relied on several Xilinx® FPGAs, a Freescale® processor, multiple -48V isolated converters, a great deal of analog circuitry, including ADCs and DACs, RF circuitry (2.5 and 3.5GHz), and high-speed serial links.
One of the most elegant solutions within this design was the RF connection block that allowed multiple SMP RF connectors to blind mate directly to the antenna array.
TECHNOLOGIES: Xilinx® Virtex-4®, Xilinx® Spartan®, Freescale® PowerQUICC II® processor, gigabit transceivers, -48V, lightning protection, Ethernet, SMP, differential high-speed connectors, signal integrity
INDUSTRY: Communications
WiMAX Outdoor Access Point
DESCRIPTION: This full turnkey project involved all our disciplines: Hardware, FPGA, Layout, Embedded Software, Signal Integrity, and Mechanical. We brought in special dedicated test sets to verify operation and assess critical performance parameters such as EVM. We had custom cavity filters manufactured to achieve the performance goals.
TECHNOLOGIES: WiMAX®, pole-mount, mounting bracket, powder coat, CPLD, Ethernet, cavity filter, 3D mechanical, conduction cooling, EVM, OFDM, wireless, GDT, lightning protection
INDUSTRY: Communications
Fiber-Optic Transceiver
Proof-of-Concept
DESCRIPTION: This board is characterized by 10Gbps tracks carefully laid out on a mixed technology (Rogers/FR4) circuit board. With that said, ultimately this system was used to verify a new concept in high-speed transceivers. The high-speed test traffic was generated using an Altera® FPGA. This board, reflected our expertise in high-speed signal integrity and has paved the road to our efforts at 28Gbps+.
TECHNOLOGIES: 10Gbps, transceivers, Altera® FPGA, mixed technology, Rogers, FR4
