TI’s small cell chips win big at Femto Forum Industry Awards

Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN) announced it has won the Femto Forum Femtocell Industry Award for “Enabling Technology” for its latest small cell base station System-on-Chips (SoCs).
The Femto Forum, an independent industry and operator association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, recognizes achievement and contributions to the femtocell industry. The awards were presented at a gala dinner at the Femtocells World Summit in London.
“It is becoming clear that femtocells are set to play a crucial role in LTE networks – yet UMTS services aren’t going anywhere and will continue to carry the bulk of traffic for years to come,” said Aditya Kaul, the lead judge for the category and practice director of mobile networks for ABI Research. “Texas Instruments is playing a key role in the development of multi-mode femtocells, thereby establishing future-proof networks that also meet the needs of the present.”
As industry solutions for metro, pico and enterprise small cell base stations, TI’s TMS320TCI6612 and TMS320TCI6614 SoCs offer developers hardware and software devices with dual-mode support to help operators migrate from 3G to 4G. Based on TI’s KeyStone multi-core architecture, scalable small cell SoCs encompass a mix of processing elements including radio accelerators, network and security coprocessors, combined fixed-and floating-point digital signal processors (DSPs) and an ARM RISC processor, providing the foundation for layers one, two and three and transport processing for high-performance small cell base stations.
Additionally, the TCI6612 and TCI6614 SoCs leverage TI’s resources including an all-inclusive software suite and full portfolio of analog products for a solution based on faster development time and reduced development cost for small cell developers.
“We are very proud to be recognized by the industry for our enabling technology for small cell base stations,” said Kathy Brown, manager of TI’s wireless base station infrastructure business. “With this win and our decade-long experience in wireless infrastructure, TI is reinforcing its commitment to the small cell market and delivering the necessary technology and tools to make development easier.”
The TCI6612 and TCI6614 SoCs will begin sampling in the third quarter of 2011. Solutions incorporating a digital radio front end will follow. Azcom Technology, a technology service company based in Italy, currently offers a small cell base station platform to kick-off development.
Would you like all your dreams to come true? Follow Marc Speir on twitter @truthorcon.