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Product category: Programmable Logic Devices
News Release from: Altera Europe | Subject: HardCopy structured ASICs
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 11 January 2005

Structured ASICs speed satellite modems
to market

Mark Vanderaar and Ganesh Narayanaswamy describe how HardCopy structured ASICs from Altera were used in a modem designed by Efficient Channel Coding for broadband Internet access through satellites.

Structured ASICs are a new class of devices that address the burgeoning costs of developing traditional ASICs and the time taken to obtain the first fully functional devices This article describes how HardCopy structured ASICs from Altera were used in the IPX-5100, a modem designed by Efficient Channel Coding (ECC) for broadband Internet access through satellites

The IPX-5100 interfaces with conventional geostationary satellites as well as the new iPStar-1 satellite providing broadband access rates up to 8Mbit/s download and 4Mbit/s upload.

The IPX-5100 uses ECC's adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) technology to dynamically change the channel coding and modulation technique "on-the-fly" according to the time-varying channel conditions.

These methods dramatically improve the satellite system capacity by customising the link to an individual IPX-5100, allowing optimised use of the limited satellite bandwidth.