Silicon Laboratories Inc., a provider of high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs, has signed a partnership deal with Beceem Communications, a WiMAX (News - Alert) solutions vendor, to deliver a voice over IP broadband gateway reference design for 4G-WiMAX service providers.
The WiMAX VoIP gateway reference design is based on Beceem's (News - Alert) recently introduced BCS5350 single-chip WiMAX customer premises equipment (CPE) solution.
"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 (News - Alert).
"The highly integrated reference design streamlines the development process, giving manufacturers greater flexibility and faster time to market in the increasingly competitive 4G marketplace," Agarwal added.
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.
Both the companies believe that this broadband gateway solution will enable 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," Carlos Garcia, vice president of Silicon Labs' Wireline division, said.
"We expect that our jointly developed VoIP reference design will be well received by the growing 4G-WiMAX market," Garcia added.
Silicon Labs has also announced the filing of a patent infringement lawsuit against Airoha Technology Corporation, a Taiwan-based IC maker, in the U.S. Federal District Court in Austin, Texas.