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News Article

Nujira speeds up envelope tracking adoption


A new approach eases the implementation and configuration of ET-enabled RF front ends

Nujira has developed a toolkit that radically simplifies the deployment of ET and enables handset designers to achieve maximum RF front end system performance with minimal design effort.

Nujira will be showing EasyET at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, taking place from 24th to 27th February.

EasyET is a combination of PA characterisation tools, reference hardware and a suite of software that reduces ET development time for platform vendors and handset OEMs by up to three months. By maximising flexibility, Nujira says EasyET enables rapid development and performance tuning of multiple region-specific RF front end platform configurations.

Julian Hildersley, VP of Applications at Nujira, says, "We know ET is a complicated technology to get right. The hardware challenges of ET have largely been resolved, but new demands on the RF front end have made software development much more complex. One of Nujira's strengths is our system and software expertise and, with the introduction of EasyET, we are streamlining the design flow and removing the software bottlenecks for chipset vendors and handset OEMs.

"You can compare ET to the introduction of fuel injection in the automotive industry - while the additional system complexity initially lengthened the development cycle, the technology quickly became universally adopted because the ultimate benefits were too significant to ignore. The benefits of ET are apparent to everyone and EasyET makes unlocking them significantly easier."

ET introduces a new set of variables into the low-level firmware associated with transmit power control, linearisation and production calibration. The adoption of ET also coincides with the introduction of more complex multimode multiband (MMMB) power amplifiers (PAs), and the move from GPIO controlled PAs to MIPI RFFE serial control, which now requires vendor-specific programming sequences to control each individual RF front end component. As a result there has been a significant jump in complexity for low-level firmware development to support the RF front end.

Software complexity is further increased because platform vendors increasingly need to deliver and support multiple regional reference designs to handset OEMs, with each design supporting a different set of frequency bands and multiple sources of hardware components. 

EasyET allows a single firmware build to support multiple RF front end configurations and components by simply modifying configuration tables stored in Flash memory. EasyET also includes the device characteisation and platform configuration tools allowing chipset vendors and OEMs to generate the required configuration tables.

Hildersley continues, "Everyone benefits if the adoption of ET can be accelerated, which is why we have always focused on simplifying ET implementation. Having a high performance ET IC simplifies the problem, but the increasing software complexity in the RF front end is a very real challenge for the handset industry. EasyET solves it."

Nujira says its EasyET design flow features a comprehensive set of hardware and software tools that include:

    ET Surface Explorer - This is an advanced ET PA characterisation system, which now supports a variety of third party test and measurement platforms, and can also be run on the target hardware platform

    EasyET Configuration Manager - A set of software configuration tools, which make it easy for platform vendors and OEMs to mix and match RF front end components, and export the required control and calibration tables without rewriting any firmware;

    EasyET Universal RFFE Driver - A low-level software architecture for the RF front end driver, enabling chipset vendors to support multiple components and optimise performance with a single firmware build. All component-specific ET IC, PA and switch parameters (including RFFE timing and programming sequences) are stored together with calibration data in flash-based configuration tables, rather than being hard-coded into the firmware

    A range of hardware reference designs featuring Nujira's NCT-L1300, an ET IC and ET PAs from a number of tier 1 suppliers

Nujira is currently deploying EasyET with a number of leading platform chipset partners, and will be releasing EasyET to selected OEMs in April.

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