x2 Homepage

Wireless Communications

Networking Products

Headlines

News Releases

Trade Shows

Search the News Archives

TI DSP Solutions Enable Advanced Communications in the Networked Society

Communications in the digital society is not a vision of the future but a fact of life today. Global telecommunications, the Internet and World Wide Web, and an ever-growing mesh of wireless networks have become pervasive throughout our culture. Among the advanced hardware and software technologies that are responsible for the ever-increasing presence of communications, one of the most important is digital signal processing. And among the integrated circuit manufacturers that supply leading-edge system solutions based on digital signal processors (DSPs), Texas Instruments (TI) has proven to be a key technology innovator for both wired and wireless communications.

Communication systems rely on high-speed signal processing for compression, encoding, filtering and a variety of other essential operations. DSPs provide the number-crunching power that these systems need -- at a cost that is low enough to make digital communications economical for widespread use. Working together with DSPs are analog and mixed-signal components that amplify, filter, modulate, convert and perform other indispensable functions to bridge between the real world of analog signals and the digital realm of the processor. These devices, along with supporting memories, logic and software, form DSP solutions that help simplify complex system designs and save development time for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of communications products.

As the industry leader in DSP solutions, TI has played an important role in the advancement of digital communications. One of the first semiconductor companies to enter the DSP business, TI has supplied DSP technology and products to the electronics industry for 15 years. In 1996 TI's TMS320 DSP families accounted for nearly 45 percent of the programmable DSPs used in all applications, according to Forward Concepts, a firm that specializes in DSP market research. TI's strengths in mixed-signal, logic and memory components, and its application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) capabilities, give it an edge in developing complete DSP solutions for its customers.

In the wireless industry, for example, TI's DSP solutions have become dominant in the rapidly growing area of digital wireless communications, being used in more than half the digital wireless phones manufactured today. In the market for high-speed modems, TI is the premier supplier of programmable solutions. One out of every three modems shipped in the world includes a TI DSP solution. And in wired networks, DSP solutions provide key enabling technologies for equipments that facilitate access to the wide-area network. Each of these areas -- mobile phones, modems and access systems -- is vital to the continued growth of communications in the digital society; and in each area TI technology is helping OEMs advance their product offerings in the vanguard of the market.

Opening up the Wireless World

Wireless telephones are turning increasingly to digital technology to open more channels on existing airwaves, provide greater security for callers and offer new types of data services to mobile users. TI's focused approach in supplying DSP solutions for wireless communications is helping the wireless industry make the important transition from its analog youth to digital maturity. TI DSP solutions are found in wireless telephones and base stations in all regions of the world, supporting a wide variety of transmission standards. In addition, TI provides DSP solutions that support the FLEX advanced paging-messaging standard and is taking an active role in the development of standards for future wireless data communications.

Digital wireless telephones and base stations require high-performance, low power consumption, small size and light weight -- all at a low cost. To satisfy these requirements, TI introduced DSP solutions based on the TMS320C54x generation of TI DSPs, which features an architecture that specializes in tasks heavily used by wireless communications. Supporting 'C54x DSPs are advanced mixed-signal devices integrating voice-band and radio frequency (RF) interfaces on a single chip, as well as integrated power management devices and RF components. In addition, TI licenses software modules for all major wireless standard worldwide, including GSM in Europe, IS-136 and IS-94 in North America, and PDC in Japan.

Base station designers have also taken advantage of the wireless specialized architecture of the 'C54x generation in their systems. Today, as base stations are shrinking to desktop size, many designers are turning to the powerful TMS320C6x generation for new high-performance designs. TI's strengths in DSP and mixed-signal technologies, together with its integration and worldwide manufacturing capabilities, have made it possible to provide DSP solutions to the wireless industry that continually cut costs, increase performance, and reduce size, weight and power consumption.

High-bandwidth Modems

One of the most highly visible effects of the digital society is the Internet. Today, forward-looking companies are conducting business electronically, and Internet usage among household and small-office users has skyrocketed. Dial-in users still face a significant obstacle, though, in the limited bandwidth possible through ordinary phone lines. To break though this bottleneck, U.S. Robotics (USR) made use of TI DSP solutions to develop and introduce groundbreaking 56 kilobits-per-second (Kbps) modem technology known as x2™.

TI DSP solutions have been at the heart of USR modems for years. Use of a programmable TI DSP has allowed USR to differentiate its products and accelerate introduction of new technology. Meanwhile, TI has grown substantially in the modem chipset arena. To date, one in three modems shipped worldwide has a TI DSP. Further, TI was the first supplier to market a chipset supporting 33.6 Kbps and 56 Kbps technologies. Now TI customers deploying x2 technology from USR have the reprogrammability of the DSP solution to upgrade end users as the 56 Kbps evolves.

x2 is already the most widely deployed 56 Kbps technology in the industry. Deployed in over 800 cities nationwide and in high volume shipment since February, x2 is poised to become the industry standard. The programmable nature of the TI x2 modem chipset will allow customers to continue to upgrade their modems to incorporate new technology as it becomes available.

TI DSP solutions like the modem chipset allow product developers to easily upgrade end equipment with new technology through software reprogrammability both at the host level and at the DSP level. Software upgradeability protects end users against hardware obsolescence and appeals to systems suppliers as well. For instance, in March of this year Packard Bell NEC, the world's leading supplier of personal computers for the home, announced that it would include next-generation 56-kbps high-speed modem capabilities in future Packard Bell and NEC brand PCs.

Access: the Key to Wide-area Networking

Faster modems are vital not only for users, but for service providers as well. Since service providers concentrate many modems in the same equipment for access to the Internet, they must be concerned with the space required for each connected port, with the cost per port, and with upgradeability and interoperability of equipment among standards. Similar requirements apply to other equipment providing network access, such as digital subscriber loop (DSL) concentrators, which will ultimately provide broadband access rated in megabits per second over ordinary telephone lines.

Recognizing the importance of network access for these services, TI has recently formed an Access Products Organization within its Networking Business Unit. The new organization will serve to focus the company's technological leadership in DSPs, mixed-signal components and networking hardware and software integration to create system-level DSP solutions for access equipments. OEM applications that will benefit from this TI business approach include routers, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) backbone switches, remote access servers, asymmetrical DSL (ADSL) modems, access concentrators and voiceband applications.

Among the products TI offers that are key to networking access is the TMS320C6x DSP generation. Capable of performing 1600 million instructions per second (MIPS), 'C6x DSPs offer ten times the performance of any other DSP on the market today. This high level of performance at a low cost per MIPS opens up new possibilities for communications system design in multichannel applications such as pooled modems, remote access servers, cable modems and voice mail systems. Combining 'C6x DSP technology with network application-specific functions allows OEMs a time-to-market advantage over pure hardwired approaches and the additional flexibility of upgrading via software. This, in turn, protects the end user's investment as standards evolve and compression algorithms improve.

DSP Solutions Bring Tomorrow's Communications

Tomorrow's communications are a step closer with the recent announcement of the Texas Instruments and U.S. Robotics strategic initiative to deliver a family of affordable, upgradeable "hybrid" modems which will support both dial-up access and ADSL. This product family will be called x2/DSL and will run on TI's TMS320C6x digital signal processing platform. These modems are scheduled to be available in the first half of 1998.

High-speed modem connection, wide-area access concentration, digital wireless mobility -- all of these important areas of the digital society are enabled by DSP solutions from TI. As communications become ever-more pervasive in our culture in the future, and as users demand ever-greater performance from their networks for voice, data and video services, DSP solutions will continue to increase in importance. Texas Instruments, with its manufacturing strength, innovation and leadership in DSP technology, will continue to provide DSP solutions that are essential for tomorrow's communications in the digital society.

# # #