Small cells were a major focus last week at Mobile World Congress, with several semiconductor companies launching new products to power and connect everything from femtocells to enterprise small cell networks. Silicon vendors are increasingly focused on software, particularly when it comes to small cells.
Broadcom
Broadcom (BRCM) is clearly aiming to become a player in this space; the company launched three new product lines this week. It has a family of SoCs (system-on-chip)s that it says is the first to integrate both 3G and LTE, although its competitors might dispute that claim. The company says the new series can support 256 active LTE users on the 40MHz channel, and can support 64 active 3G users. For homes and small businesses, the company has launched a new femtocell that it says is the first to integrate the RF transceiver and the baseband modem, reducing power consumption and cost.
Finally, Broadcom has a development platform for multiple access radio technology that integrates the hardware and software components needed for small cell base stations. “This platform demonstrates Broadcom’s ability to combine technology innovations from a number of areas to deliver a complete offering to the market that no other company can provide,” said Broadcom VP Eric Hayes.
The company says it knows the small cell silicon space is already crowded, but is committed for the long term. “We have the staying power to be in this market,” said Greg Fischer, Broadcom’s VP for Broadband Carrier Access. “It is a long-term proposition. We have intellectual property assets and financial assets and a lower bill of materials than anything we have seen. And we have a broad portfolio … within Broadcom and there is a lot of synergy that comes with that, [for example] tri-mode cells: 3G LTE and Wi-Fi.”
Texas Instruments
Software is clearly a key part of small cell solutions; Texas Instruments has also introduced a SoftarePac base station development tool this week. The company says the solution will cut time to market for small cell base stations, and scales all the way up to macro base stations.
Texas Instruments (TXN) also said this week that ZTE has chosen its Keystone mulitcore SoCs for its small cell base stations. Like Broadcom, TI says its solution can support LTE and 3G communications simultaneously.
And Texas Instruments says it is part of a “future=proof” solution for the small cell backhaul dilemna. TI says it is collaborating with Sub10 Systems on a network synchronization solution that it says will be a new industry standard. The solution combines TI’s multicore digital signal processors with Sub10 Systems’s point-to-point millimetre wave radio links, which connect the cell sites back to the core network. “We need a device that is powerful, scalable and flexible enough to support an expanding range of radio products while minimising the development time and cost,” said Sub10 CEO Stuart Broome. “TI’s C6678 multicore DSP gives us exactly what we want.”
Freescale
As small cells become a more important part of mobile networks, the next step will be bringing them together into their own mini-networks. Self-organizing network (SON) software plays a key role in this, and that’s why Freescale (FSL) has teamed up with SON developer AirHop to integrated AirHop’s software with Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge chipsets for small cells.
“Specifically for a small cell, customers really expect turnkey solutions, or at the very least they expect the silicon vendor to also supply the layer-one software,” said Stephen Turnbull, marketing manager for wireless access products at Freescale. “So providing software and complete software solutions is becoming more and more important for silicon vendors. In our case we do a complete Layer One solution for LTE and for wideband CDMA and as part of that we provide network monitoring baords, sometime called network listening boards or sniffing. And this is where you dedicate an antenna to measure what other cells are broadcasting in the area, what other UEs are present in the area, aside from those that are actually connected to the base station. We then gather that data, the key parameters and measurements, and pass that up the higher level stack, which then will take action on that, and that’s where the SON software from AirHop comes in.”
For more on SON and Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge, see the full interview with Turnbull below.
