Altera and Elektrobit have announced development kits for designing applications in compliance with the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI) Reference Point 3-01 specification for remote RF heads.

The kits include a Stratix II GX FPGA development board and Nios II embedded processor core from Altera, Elektrobit’s IP cores, and the design software for emulating system configuration and control behaviour.

The Stratix II devices included with each kit combine an FPGA architecture with up to 20 full-duplex, multi-gigabit transceivers.

The Nios II family of embedded processors consists of three cores that implement a common instruction set architecture and supported by a single software tool chain.

The RP3-01 specification describes data and control requirements between the basestation baseband and remote radio heads. It also includes all the operational, administrative, maintenance and performance related design elements. 

Two OBSAI RP3-01 development kits will be available in Q3 2006. The RNS RP301 EVA BB1 baseband kit provides USB data through the RP3-01 protocol using optical fibre and costs €15,000. The RNS RP301 EVA RF1 RF kit allows clock recovery measurements and costs €20,000.

For more information go to: www.altera.com/.../m-elk-obsai.pdf