Silicon Labs, Beceem partner on WiMAX VoIP gateway reference design

AUSTIN, USA: Silicon Laboratories Inc. has partnered with Beceem Communications to deliver a VoIP broadband gateway reference design for 4G-WiMAX service providers.

The WiMAX VoIP gateway reference design is based on Beceem’s recently introduced BCS5350 single-chip WiMAX customer premises equipment (CPE) solution. It also incorporates Silicon Labs’ Si32176 ProSLIC devices to provide the interface that enables the use of traditional home telephones for VoIP services over WiMAX.

“With its market-leading low power consumption and small footprint, Silicon Labs’ Si32176 ProSLIC is the perfect complement to our high-performance, single-chip WiMAX CPE solution,” said Aditya Agrawal, senior director of marketing at Beceem Communications. “The highly integrated reference design streamlines the development process, giving manufacturers greater flexibility and faster time to market in the increasingly competitive 4G marketplace.”

The reference design uses Silicon Labs’ Si32176 ProSLIC integrated SLIC/codec devices to add one or two telephone ports to a 4G-WiMAX broadband gateway. Beceem’s highly integrated BCS5350 device implements the entire PHY, MAC and RF functionality of a mobile WiMAX terminal on a single chip.

The broadband gateway solution enables WiMAX service providers to deliver broadband and fixed-line telephony service wirelessly to subscribers as an alternative to wired broadband services such as ADSL or VDSL over telephone wires, data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS) over coaxial cable and passive optical networks (PON) using optical fiber.

“The market-leading semiconductor solutions from Beceem and Silicon Labs will enable WiMAX gateway vendors to deliver products with the high performance, low cost, low power consumption and small size that their customers demand,” said Carlos Garcia, vice president of Silicon Labs’ Wireline division. “We expect that our jointly developed VoIP reference design will be well received by the growing 4G-WiMAX market.”

According to Infonetics Research, the WiMAX market is rebounding from the recession and showing positive signs of growth, with major rollouts underway in the US, Japan, Russia and India.

“We forecast around 125 million WiMAX subscribers by 2014, with 20 to 25 percent of them using VoIP over their WiMAX connection,” said Richard Webb, principle WiMAX analyst at Infonetics Research. “WiMAX operators will need a broad range of VoIP-enabled devices to serve this growing need.”