OMAP- VoxTM platform drives 3G to the masses

The range of capabilities and the degree of complexity built into wireless handsets will increase as technology advances and will make the wireless handheld the personal computing device of choice. Paul Werp explores the applications that will drive adoption of 3G and
ultimately usher in 4G.

Paul Werp is Mobile Connectivity Solutions Business Director for Texas Instruments’ Wireless Terminals Business Unit. In this role, he is responsible for the overall MCS business line, which includes GPS, Bluetooth®, UWB, WLAN and digital TV technologies for mobile devices. Werp also drives the business strategy with its associated P&L, develops and defines the MCS product roadmap and manages customer relationships.

Previously, Werp was the worldwide director of marketing for TI's Cellular Systems group. In this position, he defined and developed the OMAP software platforms roadmap, and managed software-system strategy and implementation, as well as the OMAP ecosystem of partners and developers. Prior to joining TI in 1995, Werp was a product marketing engineer for Hewlett Packard's RF semiconductor division, now part of Avago Technologies. Werp earned a master's degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas.

Worldwide demand for 3G wireless technology is taking off. 3G wireless handhelds are coming with seemingly limitless advances in modem and
applications technologies. Phones are offering connectivity options spanning Bluetooth®, mobile Wireless LAN (mWLAN), A-GPS, and mobile Digital TV (mDTV). With the accelerating expansion of 3G UMTS/WCDMA, it's time to take the benefits of 3G to the masses, meeting market demand in a cost effective manner while meeting the specialized needs of all markets and handset tiers.

Handset manufacturers are simultaneously designing handsets for 2.5G and 3G and dealing with the consequent R&D resource requirements, while addressing the increased need for handset customization and differentiation. This puts tremendous strain on R&D resources and design cycle times. Overcoming these challenges requires new approaches to the development effort. Rather than servicing the needs of a particular tier or geography as a unique engineering problem, it is necessary to develop methodologies that enable hardware and software solutions that scale across market tiers and standards while facilitating the smoothest possible transition from 2.5G to 3G technology in mass market handsets.

Texas Instruments (TI)'s OMAP-VoxTM integrated wireless handset platform addresses the market needs during this transition from GSM/GPRS/EDGE to UMTS. The OMAP-VoxTM approach is based on the philosophy that handset manufacturers need a smooth migration path from 2.5G to 3G with a high level of hardware and software reuse to deliver reduced time to market and lower solution costs.

3G: Market requirements and implications

The 3G market has high expectations for applications and modem performance. High-end 3G wireless users expect a wide range of high performance applications seamlessly supported on their handsets, including video conferencing, internet browsing, content rich multi-player network games, multi-mega pixel camera, and mDTV. They also expect their phones to seamlessly switch between applications - for example, putting a Bluetooth®-enabled call on hold to take another call while muting a webcast that was playing in the background. In addition to high-tier handsets that support all of these features, there will be increased demand for products that support certain subsets of these features but not all of them. For example, some handsets will be focused on video games, while others will focus on music download and playback with specialized camera functions. Mass market consumers expect these features to trickle down quickly and cost effectively into their handsets with functionality beyond what was typical at the corresponding tiers in 2G.

Each region of the world will require differentiation along other vectors, such as language support and applications. Applications widely sought in one part of the world may not be as popular elsewhere. For example, karaoke is important in Japan and parts of Asia, while sports like baseball, soccer, cricket, and rugby have huge audiences in specific regions. Such sports, music and other customizations will lead to increased use of application services and thus to higher ARPU.

Given the R&D resource and time-to-market requirements in handset designs, the traditional market tiers - value phone, feature phone, smart phone and multimedia -rich smart phone - need to be addressed in a flexible manner. Manufacturers need to use the same hardware and software platforms to address multiple market segments. This requires that the hardware platform have sufficient processing power and flexibility to address multiple solutions. It also requires that there be maximum leverage from 2.5G devices to 3G designs.

The traditional approach to handset design has been to have separate product lines for each market tier. This approach served wireless device manufacturers well in the 2.5G market. Now, it's time for a better
approach, one that effectively utilizes R&D resources, provides flexibility and customization capability with quicker time-to-market.

OMAP-Vox™ Roadmap

Based on TI's OMAPÔ technologies, the leading wireless handset architecture, the OMAP-VoxTM platform provides highly scalable solutions that address the different market tiers, while ensuring a high level of design reuse across tiers and across modem technologies. The OMAP-VoxTM family of devices marries the power of integrated OMAP applications processors to advanced modems. The platform offers complete system solutions encompassing integrated modem and applications processor, RF, analog and power management functions, complete field tested protocol stack software, applications software suites, a pre-certified form-factor handset reference design, and a complete development toolkit.

TI's OMAP-VoxTM modem technology is optimized to efficiently run a dynamic mixture of applications and baseband communications on common hardware. Scalable hardware architecture has sufficient performance to permit modem and applications to share resources and run on a single processing core - composed of one ARM and one DSP. With flexible, open interfaces for all modem and applications components, the OMAP-VoxTM platform can be upgraded to support additional features.

OMAP-VoxTM technology enables R&D leverage through extensive modem and applications software reuse from 2.5G to 3G. Time-to-market is further shortened through access to the OMAP Platform Ecosystem, a worldwide network of application software developers, system integrators and development tool makers. This enables manufacturers to quickly bring a variety of handsets to market to meet the high-volume needs of the 2.5G mass market and then migrate them to 3G. Sasken Communications Technologies Ltd., headquartered in Bangalore India, and with operations worldwide, is one of the leading OTCs helping companies to bridge the 2.5G to 3G divide.

Other Benefits of OMAP-VoxTM include:

Security features: The inclusion of TI's M-Shield™ advanced security technology includes hardware accelerators that support terminal security, transactions security and content security without the latencies and risks associated with software-only solutions.

Lower system cost: Since the OMAP-VoxTM platform integrates modem and applications technology into the same device, there are fewer components than with separate applications processors, thereby reducing system cost. It also reduces the number of memory components needed, by using the same memory subsystem for modem and applications, further reducing cost.

Smaller form factor handsets: TI's OMAP-VoxTM technology enables smaller form factor handsets by requiring fewer components on the board.

Flexibility for advanced modems: Architectural flexibility in the OMAP-VoxTM family provide more than enough processing power for GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS standards. The device roadmap anticipates
such technologies as HSDPA.

Connectivity, Entertainment and OMAP

Cutting-edge mobile entertainment applications will propel 3G to become a high-volume, high-revenue market. TI's wireless portfolio already delivers compelling, high-performance mobile entertainment and multimedia features for the market through its widely adopted OMAP platform. In fact, TI's OMAP processors power the vast majority of 3G FOMA handsets, which deliver mobile entertainment capabilities to more than 15 million subscribers in the rapidly growing Japanese market.

TI's OMAP 2 architecture has redefined mobile entertainment. OMAP 2-enabled handsets deliver a consumer electronics-quality user experiences to the mobile phone, including such applications as mobile TV, hi-fi music with 3D effects, up to DVD-quality video, high-end gaming console functionality, best-inclass color display and up to 6-megapixel-quality digital photography. And TI's recently announced OMAP 3 architecture promises even more in terms of performance.

Looking Ahead

Silicon technologies will continue to evolve beyond 65 nm. Lower power and higher performance foundry technologies will be incorporated into cellular baseband modems. Digital RF solutions like TI's DRP™ architecture will revolutionize RF implementations, further driving down costs and improving performance. Applications will drive adoption of 3G and ultimately usher in 4G. The range of capabilities and the degree of complexity built into wireless handsets will increase as technology advances and will make the wireless handheld the personal computing device of choice. We look forward to the world beyond 3G. In the meantime, we will address the needs of the 3G market with optimized solutions that are flexible enough to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving global 3G market.