Flexible Solutions for VDSL2

Lower Cost, Lower Power

The cost of the network upgrade to provide next generation internet data rates to homes and businesses will be greatly reduced by implementing a Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) solution. This approach still requires the use of existing copper wires for the final connection (last mile) to the user. Use of copper reduces the cost but also limits the bandwidth.

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ClearSpeed attended the Collaboration Nation:Digital Britain event at the Congress Centre, London organised by the Technology Strategy Board. During the event, ClearSpeed presented results from a feasibility study into flexible data processing architectures for VDSL processing capable of incorporating techniques for improvement of the data rate on last mile copper wire connections.

This work attracted government funding in Autumn 2009. In the following months, engineers at ClearSpeed made a study of the state of the art techniques and research into improving the data rates of last mile copper wire connections; they then studied data processing architectures capable of implementing these techniques and algorithms together with the processing requirements of VDSL2.

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The result was an advanced SIMD-like signal processing architecture that is 30% lower power and 40% smaller (and therefore lower cost) over existing implementations and which offers greater flexibility for field upgrades as the specification and last mile improvement techniques evolve. This increased flexibility further reduces the lifetime cost to potential users as it avoids costly hardware upgrades.

A video of the event and the ClearSpeed presentation is available on the Digital Britain website.

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