Xilinx and BEEcube announced a highly scalable prototyping platform for 5G massive MIMO antenna systems.
The new MegaBEE prototyping platform supports up to 256×256 antennas and provides all the elements necessary to put a massive MIMO system on the air within LTE bands and without external hardware. The platform uses Xilinx’s Zynq All Programmable SoC.
MegaBEE said its clocking structure paves the way for antenna modules to be dispersed over a three mile radius while maintaining phase coherence, enabling the system to be used for distributed MIMO as well as massive MIMO systems with greater coverage and capacity.
“Xilinx devices have long been used in wireless infrastructure equipment due to their unique properties of being fully programmable and high performance. MegaBEE’s Linux cluster for distributed control is one of the most innovative uses of Zynq’s dual ARM cores that I have seen,” said Ivo Bolsens, Xilinx CTO and senior vice president.
“The MegaBEE platform delivers all the required elements for 5G massive MIMO prototyping in one box, greatly simplifying the task of building a system and freeing designers up to focus on algorithms instead of the interfaces around the periphery of their design,” said Chen Chang, BEEcube founder and CEO. “Our tier one customers have pushed us hard to create an easy-to-use yet powerful MIMO prototyping platform and together with Xilinx, we’ve done just that.”
http://www.beecube.com/products/MegaBEE.asp
