Comba Telecom nabs wireless solution contract with Bangkok Metro Railway

The Bangkok Metro Public Company Limited (BMCL) has tapped Comba Telecom to provide an end-to-end wireless solution for 2G and 3G voice and data communications. Comba's wireless solution will provide coverage for the entire length of the BMCL's underground railway network.

Comba Telecom is known for its multi-operator base station coverage solutions, which cover single and multiple bands. Comba solutions are designed to be rapidly rolled out and ensure high performance while keeping visual perception low.

The Company also offers a versatile ultra-wide band multiple ports solution that allow different systems and different frequency bands to share antenna systems.

The BMCL's Metropolitan Rapid Transit (MRT) in Bangkok is comprised of 18 stations, concourses, tunnels, platforms, and the concourses' retail stores. It serves more than 240,000 passengers on a daily basis.

BMCL has complete control of all commercial activities and developments on its premises. The Thai company owns and operates its own neutral host network, which it pledged in support of updated wireless telecommunications services.

Comba Telecom will modernize and expand BMCL's legacy 2G system into a multi-system (2G/3G) active distributed antenna system (DAS) solution.

Eric Ng, general manager of Southeast Asia for Comba Telecom, explained that the Company implemented a modular DAS solution for the Bangkok MRT. The scalable system is easily expandable and future proof, allowing BMCL to open up new subway lines or implement 4G technologies according to its future requirements.

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Freescale DSP enhances Huawei TD-SCDMA base station performance

Thanks to Freescale Semiconductor and its MSC8156 digital signal processor (DSP) solution, Huawei was able to take the performance of its TD-SCDMA wireless networks to new heights, allowing for the delivery of scalable, low-cost, energy-efficient base stations.

Freescake's MSC8156 DSP combines six fully-programmable enhanced 1 GHz SC3850 DSP cores to provide a high level of performance and integration. Its MAPLE-B accelerator is integrated on-chip and supports hardware acceleration for Turbo and Viterbi channel decoding as well as the DFT/iDFT and FFT/iFFT algorithms. It supports multiple networking protocols through its internal RISC-based QUICC engine subsystem, ensuring data is reliably transported through packet networks and significantly offloading processing from the DSP cores.

In addition to having a large embedded internal memory, the MSC8156 supports a variety of advanced high-speed interface types. It has two RapidIO interfaces, two gigabit Ethernet interfaces for network communications, a PCI Express controller, two DDR controllers for high-speed, industry standard memory interface, and four multi-channel TDM interfaces. Its pin compatibility with all MSC825x and MSC815x DSP devices grant the MSC8156 a high degree of scalability.

“Huawei is committed to offering customer-centric solutions and products,” said Chen Xi, chief technology officer of Huawei’s Wireless Network Business Unit, ” which leverage the performance and programmability of Freescale’s MSC8156 DSP.”

According to Mr. Xi, Freescale's highly efficient DSP cores and accelerators significantly enhanced overall base station efficiency. Huawei gained the ability to boost system flexibility and provide the industry’s highest number of TD-SCDMA carrier waves in a base station.”