Freescale Semiconductor will launch a new base station SoC (station-on-chip) that improves power amplifier (PA) efficiency and significantly reduces base station power and costs.
While macrocells remain essential to the world’s wireless infrastructure systems, operators are increasingly looking to metrocells to provide ubiquitous coverage in dense urban areas and throughout large enterprises to address flood of mobile data.
Freescale Semiconductor today said the new B3421 base station SoC integrates digital front-end (DFE) technology and assist telecom operators to add capacity and deliver enhanced coverage in user-dense environments.
Tareq Bustami, vice president of product management for Freescale’s Digital Networking business, said: “The new QorIQ Qonverge B3421 device targets the rapidly growing metro segment and reinforces our commitment to wireless networking leadership, as we continue to invest to stay ahead of market requirements.”
ABI Research says outdoor small cells will have a year-on-year unit growth of 125 percent predicted for 2014 for a value of almost $3.6 billion.
Recently, Tata Elxsi, which has 4000 engineers and technologists, said it would be demonstrating its latest TDD and FDD LTE solutions, addressing home, enterprise and outdoor small cell requirements at MWC 2014. Tata Elxsi’s pre-integrated L1 and L3/L2 software for both LTE and WiMAX, on silicon and SoC platforms, is enabling custom eNodeB and UE solutions for TV White Space, Smart Grid and Public Safety applications.
Recently, Stefan Pongratz, director of Dell’Oro Group’s RAN and Small Cell Programs, said: “Service providers will deploy almost 670,000 small cell backhaul links between 2013 and 2018. Licensed non-residential small cell BTS shipments will grow from 160,000 in 2015 to 625,000 in 2018. SP Wi-Fi revenues to more than double between 2013 and 2018.”
Freescale Semiconductor says the B3421 device is fully optimized for concurrent LTE and WiFi operation, and supports LTE-TDD, LTE-FDD and LTE-Advanced wireless standards. Advanced 4×4 MiMO algorithms and 3GPP standard up to Release 11, advanced interference cancelling schemes, eICIC and carrier aggregation improve spectral efficiency.
