Wireless Solutions with FPGAs
In a connected world, Intel has you covered.
Intel® FPGAs Built for RAN
The race to 5G is on and quickly looking beyond. Intel FPGAs perform with groundbreaking soft logic and integrated chiplet technology – performance where it matters, flexibility when you need it.
Be the first to market with Intel’s enablement platforms optimized for efficiency and reduced development costs.
Catch the Next Radio Wave
As the demand for wireless connectivity continues to grow, wireless radios are being deployed in increasingly diverse scenarios, whether is it macro coverage, user capacity with mMIMO, or throughput with mmW. From commercial mobile networks to private enterprises and manufacturing plants, radios are complex systems that deal with many frequency bands, output power levels, bandwidths, different standards, functional splits, and RF/antenna requirements. Radios must be more flexible and powerful than ever before while operating reliably in tough thermal environments and meeting cost targets.
Intel SoC FPGA’s offer best-in-class performance per watt to meet the growing demands across a broad range of wireless radio applications allowing vendors to innovate and differentiate, defining unique feature sets and intelligence in the radio.
Build more cost-effective and more efficient 5G radios with Intel® Agilex™ FPGAs
As coverage increases, higher transmission power over the air is required. Unfortunately, this results in increased power consumption. These two factors have become more critical than ever, emphasizing the significance of a highly efficient power amplifier enabled by an optimized digital front end. Intel and its partners' turnkey macro cell enablement packages leverage Intel-optimized IP and software to enable system designers to achieve lower overall system power consumption and increased coverage, all while accelerating time-to-market. Intel's macro cell solutions are flexible and field-upgradable, which reduces operational costs and capital expenses while enabling future-proof deployments.
Get massive performance with Massive MIMO - increase the user experience with higher user capacity, faster data rates, and lower latency. Dense urban areas require increased user capacity while rural areas need more coverage. mMIMO solves these challenges with a single solution. Dense urban areas with their many obstacles - buildings, people, pets, and other random objects - present more interference to wireless signals than they would face in wide open spaces with the occasional rocks or trees in the way. Massive MIMO and beam forming technology dramatically enhances user experience in these scenarios by directing radio signals towards the user more efficiently. Intel offers advanced solutions to accelerate mMIMO adoption; comprehensive Fronthaul including eCPRI and O-RAN protocols, optimized Beamforming IP, and Low-PHY complete enablement packages on Intel FPGAs.
Small cell radios are becoming increasingly important in the world of wireless communication, especially in the context of 5G private networks. Small cells provide a crucial solution for operators and enterprises to meet the growing demand for high-speed connectivity and data rates. The deployment of small cells allows service providers to improve network coverage and increase capacity in areas where there is a high demand for services. By utilizing turnkey solutions like those offered by Intel, operators can reduce development costs and speed up time to market, delivering better connectivity to consumers and businesses.
mmWave radios play a crucial role in enabling the next generation of wireless communication technology, 5G. They operate at extremely high frequency bands, providing gigabit-level data rates and ultra-low latency connections. mmWave technology is essential for supporting high-bandwidth applications like virtual and augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things. By leveraging the vast bandwidth available at mmWave frequencies, service providers can deliver the high-speed and reliable connections needed to support the growing demand for data-intensive applications and services.
Fronthaul Gateway
Radio units come in all shapes and sizes with unique bands, antenna configurations, bandwidths, subcarrier spacing, multiplexing, functional splits, and connectivity requirements. The fronthaul gateway aggregates these diverse radio connections, including both legacy 4G (Split 8) and newer 5G (Split 7.x), and consolidates them into an ORAN compliant fronthaul while offering Layer 1 offloading capabilities. Intel provides a comprehensive cell enablement package that accelerates the development process, minimizes operational and capital costs, and shortens the time required to bring fronthaul appliances to market.
Intel® FPGA SmartNIC N6000-PL Platform
Whether you’re supporting brownfield or greenfield deployments, Intel’s FPGA SmartNIC N6000-PL Platform enhances the overall performance, scalability, and capability of your network to unleash its full potential. Intel and partners offer a turnkey vRAN acceleration enablement platform leveraging Intel’s N6000-PL Platform driving fast vRAN adoption and high performance – significantly reducing operational and capital expenses while accelerating time to market.
The Distributed Unit, the Heart of the Cell Tower
Distributed units come in all shapes and sizes. Intel FPGAs enable both inline and sidecar processing applications with low latency, high bandwidth, and 5G-ready security. Over-the-wire RTL reprogramming allows operators to scale and upgrade hardware like software.
Intel IP portfolio is built to enable a broad set of unique RAN and DU configurations for any deployment.
Cloud DU
vRAN is here, as the Radio Access Network’s computation moves closer to the cloud, within a virtualized deployment sits an FPGA tackling a RAN workload. Intel FPGAs do the heavy lifting with highly efficient parallel processing while maintaining the flexibility of a virtualized network. Operators rely on FPGAs to efficiently offload low latency high throughput applications resulting in less CPU cycles.
Tradition DU
FPGAs offer a valuable solution for enhancing the performance and efficiency of traditional distributed units in cellular networks. Through the offloading of data processing responsibilities, adapting to dynamic standards, leveraging Crypto engines, flexible IO expansions, network slicing, and over-the-wire RTL enhancements, service providers can achieve faster processing speeds, reduced latency, and lower power consumption. This empowers providers to satisfy the expanding need for data-intensive applications and services while optimizing network performance and enabling the extraction and monetization of valuable data insights.
Light DU
No matter the network scale, Intel has you covered, from implementing distributed units in dense urban environments to smaller private networks. The demand and unique possibilities within factories and workplaces are growing, our experts and IP portfolio can help you implement any type of high-bandwidth low-latency network at low cost, minimal development time, and maximum flexibility.
Solutions and Technologies
Accelerate Time to Market
Through Intel® FPGAs streamlined design flow and production ready IP.
High Performance IP
IP optimized by industry veterans.
Simplified Design Flow
Intel's tools offer a fluid framework for design, validation, and testing.
Broad IP Support
Leverage Intel's Premier Customer support, consisting of industry veterans with a wealth of experience.
Advanced silicon and chiplet technology play a crucial role in modern FPGA system-level design by providing scalability combined with the flexibility of a programmable fabric and the performance of hardened functions. The integration of multiple components onto a single package gives several options for designers to pick and choose the optimal configuration. Additionally, the use of chiplets enables customization to meet specific needs, resulting in cost savings and a high degree of flexibility in the design process. The use of silicon and chiplet technology is essential in modern high-end FPGA system-level design.
At Intel, we understand the importance of differentiation and configuration, yet similarly, we believe in the importance of pre-designed, pre-verified, and reusable IP blocks that can be easily integrated into a larger FPGA design. In combination these two contrasting factors provide a cost-effective, efficient, and flexible solution for digital design, enabling faster time-to-market, improved design quality, and reduced development efforts.
Intel’s enablement package model is valuable to customers in their product development as they can reduce design, integration, and verification time by leveraging a fully integrated workload pre-validated on hardware. These designs serve as a blueprint, reducing the time and effort required to design a complex product from scratch. Additionally, Intel’s enablement packages have been thoroughly tested and validated, reducing the risk of design errors, and improving the reliability of the final product. By providing a proven and tested design, Intel’s enablement packages help customers save time and resources, reducing the overall cost and headache of product development.
The deployment of 5G technology brings numerous benefits, but also raises concerns about security. 5G networks are expected to handle critical communication, making it essential to implement robust security measures to protect against cyber threats. Inadequate security measures in 5G networks can lead to data breaches, network outages, and other security incidents that can have serious consequences. It is essential to ensure the security of 5G networks from the start to prevent these potential threats and to maintain trust in the technology. Learn more about Intel’s advanced security features that are built-in into every device we ship.
The demands for PTP synchronization scale across multiple verticals and are becoming a network prerequisite with requirements becoming ever-so stringent. All communication networks require an appropriate level of clock synchronization across the different devices that comprise the network. Traditional PTP implementations employ open-source servos, which may be inadequate for many real-world network deployments. To address this issue, Intel has developed a proprietary PTP servo that can be used in all cases. The Intel PTP Servo software can be run on Intel Xeon® CPU-based motherboards, Intel Agilex® SoC FPGAs, and network interface cards (NICs) with an external digital clock synthesizer (DCS) and 1588 support.
Silicon, IP, Development Kits and Tools
| 10nm Intel® Agilex™ FPGA | 14nm Intel® Stratix® 10 FPGA | 20nm Intel®Arria® 10 FPGA | N5X eASIC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Small Cell 1T1R-4T4R |
AGF006 | 1SX040-1SX085 1ST040-1ST085 |
10AS027-066 | |
Macro 2T2R-8T8R |
AGF006 (2T2R) AGF008-014 (4T4R-8T8R) |
1SX040-1SX110 1ST040-1ST110 |
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mMIMO Aggregator 32TR/64TR mMIMO 16T16R DFE |
AGF027 AGF014 |
1ST280 - |
||
mmWave 1T1R-4T4R |
1SX040-1SX110 1ST040-1ST110 |
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| Fronthaul Gateway | ||||
Baseband vRAN |
AGF027(Traditional), AFG014 (light, vRAN) | 1STX110 | 10AS1150 | E15 |
| Hardened IP | F-Tile Ethernet, E-Tile Ethernet | E-Tile Ethernet | ||
| Interface Soft IP | O-RAN, CPRI, eCPRI, 10GE, 25GE, JESD204B, JESD204C, 1588V2.1PTP | |||
| DSP IP | 5G Polar, LDPC-[V], Turbo-[V], [I]FFT&CP+/-, FIR, DUC/DDC, PRACH, CFR, DPD (Third Party) | |||
| Enablement Packages | 4T4R 200MHz 4G/5G NR O-RAN/LL1/DxC [Sail River] 32T32R/64T64R 200MHz 5G NR ORAN/Beamforming/LL1 [Olympia Bridge] 4T4R Arria 10 + ADI Matura Radio Enablement [Small Cell] 5G FEC Reference Design Package |
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| Hardware Platforms | 4T4R 100MHz 5GNR O-RU [Developed by Whizz Systems, Intel, and ADI: 2021] 8T8R 200MHz 5GNR O-RU [Developed by ADI and Intel: 2022] 32T32R 200MHZ 5GNR O-RU [Developed by Intel: 2023] |
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| Development Boards | Intel® Agilex™ F-series SoC (no FMC) HiTek eSOM SoC (with FMC) WNC Silicom N6000 |
Raysoar Thunderbird Stratix 10 |
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Design
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Documentation
Browse Intel’s wireless white papers and wiki contributions.