BATH (WiMAX Day). Early last week picoChip, a supplier of multi-core DSP, announced the creation of its PC6532 Wave 2 femtocell, the next version of its industry-standard WiMAX base station reference design. The PC6532 supports Wave 2, which offers increased support for mobility and full IO-MIMO with Matrix A and Matrix B downlink and both MRC and UL-CSM uplink.

The new reference design integrates full PHY and MAC into a single picoArray-based PC205 processor. The picoChip WiMAX architecture is scaleable from femtocell access points to sophisticated multi-sector carrier macro cells with full support for IO-MIMO and beamforming. Both reference designs run on a single processor: the PC205 integrates an ARM processor for MAC functionality, and picoArray multi-core DSP for software defined PHY.

While the PC6530 Wave 1 WiMAX reference design is available now and has already passed IOT testing, the software upgrade to the PC6532 Wave 2 WiMAX femtocell reference design will be available in the second fiscal quarter of 2008.