TurboConcepts successfully completes research project FlexDEC-5G for designing FEC decoders for 5G

TurboConcept has completed a three years research project (2017-2019) in cooperation with eSoftThings and French universities University of South Britany (UBS) and IMT Atlantic (IMTA). The FlexDEC-5G project was co-funded by the European commission through the ERDF, by the Brittany region and by Brest and Rennes cities. The project was also supported by the French research clusters Images&Reseaux, iD4Car and EMC2.

The project aimed at developing new Forward Error Correction (FEC) decoders for the 5th generation of wireless networks. 5G New Radio (NR) is the global standard for a unified air-interface that will enable in additional to the mobile broadband application new uses cases as Ultra-Reliable low-latency communication applications (URLLC) and Machine Type Communications (MTC). These wide variety of uses cases induce the need for scalable and flexible FEC decoders that can support the corresponding range of data-rate and latency constraints. The 5G NR specifications was established in 2017 and adopts as FEC technologies LDPC codes for data channels and Polar Codes for control channels. In addition to 5G NR specifications, base stations and terminal silicon also need to implement legacy LTE physical layer, which employs Turbo Codes (traffic channels) and Convolutional Codes (control channels).Objectives

The objective for TurboConcept in the project was to design, develop and demonstrate new architectures for building decoders for all the flavors of FEC technologies used in both 4G and 5G networks (LDPC, Polar, Turbo and Convolutional Codes). The targeted applications are not only wireless broadband but also the connected vehicle (V2x, infotainment,...), the industry 4.0 and more generally the Internet of Things.

Outcomes

The innovative and unique architectures demonstrated in the frame of the project have been leveraged into new products commercialized by TurboConcept for 4G and 5G markets:

• TC5210: an LDPC decoder for 5G NR supporting also Wifi 802.11ac and DOCSIS 3.1
• TC5310: a Polar decoder for 5G NR
• TC1770: a CTC/CC decoder for LTE Cat-1, Cat-M1, Cat-M2 and NB-IoT and satellite IoT

These new products consolidate our 4G/5G portfolio and addresses our customer needs for both base station and end user equipments (UE). They are silicon proven and deployed in the field in large scale systems.