Analog Devices, Inc. announced its collaboration with Intel Corporation to create a flexible radio platform that addresses 5G network design challenges and will enable customers to scale their 5G networks more quickly and economically. The new radio platform combines the advanced technology of ADI’s radio frequency (RF) transceivers with the high performance and low power of Intel Arria 10 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) giving developers a new set of design tools for more easily creating optimized 5G solutions.

The communications market is moving at a rapid pace to keep up with the strains put on bandwidth and latency as more people transact business digitally and consume and transmit data from everywhere. A significant increase in traffic over existing wireless networks is occurring in both private networks and public spaces. As a result, wireless operators are looking to shorten development times and cost-effectively implement new solutions that increase the capacity, performance and reliability of 5G networks. Through a mix of open standards and existing communication links, mobile network operators are developing a broader set of specifications and supporting a growing span of use cases.

“This new radio platform reduces the overall cost of design and quickens our customers’ time to market without sacrificing system-level performance,” said Joe Barry, Vice President of the Wireless Communications Business Unit at ADI. “By coupling ADI’s transceivers featuring advanced digital frontend (DFE) functionality with Intel’s leading FPGA technology, our customers’ solutions can achieve the high level of performance they require while increasing their flexibility to more efficiently resolve emerging network issues.”

The high-performance, O-RAN compliant solution uses ADI’s market-leading software defined transceiver, which includes an innovative DFE capability, with Intel’s Arria A10 FPGA to create a highly flexible architecture. The collaboration will allow designers to customize frequency, band and power to achieve higher system performance at lower cost.

“This collaboration between ADI and Intel enables the development of new radio solutions for 5G networks,” said CC Chong, Senior Director, Head of Wireless & Access, Programmable Solution Group at Intel. “We look forward to working with ADI to expedite hardware development by offering FPGA platforms that are flexible to meet changing requirements, are easy to use, and remove many of the complex barriers of RF and digital product development.”