LONDON — A U.K. startup focusing on configurable transceivers for broadband wireless applications, that has established a development group in Lithuania, has started sampling its first product * a reference design targeted at picocell mobile WiMAX basestations.

Lime Microsystems Ltd. (Guildford, England) said its has worked with a major tier one OEM to develop the RF transceiver so that it works in a microTCA based architecture and platform, and that it is working closely with other partners on separate form factor designs using its chips.

"Platforms of this kind and of this complexity do not come in isolation. We have established many partnerships and are looking at other ventures with baseband and RF amplifier vendors to establish our multiband transceivers in a variety of platforms, Ebrahim Bushehri, CEO and founder of Lime Microsystems told EE Times.

The transceiver has six user-selectable channel bandwidths from 1.5MHz to 14 MHz and can be digitally configured to operate in bands from 2 to 4GHz. The reconfigurable design supports a variety of network configurations, bandwidths and data rates, reducing development and inventory for wireless system OEMs and operators.

A follow-on, more tightly integrated version of the chip will offer a wider bandwidth, from 700MHz up to the 5.8GHz being specified in some geographic areas for Mobile WiMax. The early designs are scheduled to be made on a "mature SiGe process, but Bushehri said the company has plans to migrate the single chip version being defined for manufacturing using a 0.13 micron CMOS process.

Using a high level command set, the evaluation design can be configured for half-duplex and full-duplex operation in both frequency division multiplex and time division multiplex modes. The board can also be used as a Ôplug-and-play' transceiver for evaluation and deployment of WiMax basestations based on ACTA or MicroTCA standards.

The development platform will be available within weeks at a one-off price of $12,000. It includes the two-chip transceiver, 12-bit baseband ADCs and DACs, an MCF52223 microcontroller and an Altera Stratix II GX FPGA to allow designers to evaluate their systems. The FPGA also allows a RapidIO interface to be added that would support a throughput of 3.125 bits/second and that can communicate via any extra advanced mezzanine card ports.

Bushehri founded Lime Microsystems in 2005. The company is backed by two leading venture capital groups, DFJ Esprit (formerly Prelude Trust) and ACT. Currently, it has 17 people split between the U.K. operation, which focuses on IP development and silicon design, and a smaller "implementation team in Vilnius, Lithuania to work on final layouts.

The basis of the latter group goes back to contacts Bushehri made while doing consultancy work at the Middlesex University Microelectronics Centre on projects with major OEMs and research groups such as Nokia, Qinetiq and Fraunhofer IAF.

The company secured £325,000 (about $600,000) from an initial round in February 2006, "but we have since had additional tranches from our main backers, ACT Venture Capital and DFJ Esprit, said Bushehri. He declined to specify the exact amount raised.

The company's single-chip broadband, multi-band transceiver chip, which will be compatible with a two-chip reference design, should be sampling in the first quarter of 2008. This is a revision of the initial silicon planned by the company in early 2006, "to incorporate significantly more IP and functionality, and which reflects our partners' and potential customers' needs in terms of performance and the broadband wireless sectors' evolving standards, and to ensure we can offer system solutions where interoperability between the main circuit functions can be ensured, said Bushehri who added that the names of some of the companies Lime has been working with, both tier one IDMs and OEMs, would be revealed early next year.

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