Continuous Computing and picoChip Announce Agreement to Create LTE Hardware-Software Reference Design

Continuous Computing and picoChip today announced that they will collaborate to produce a comprehensive Long Term Evolution (LTE) femtocell and picocell reference implementation. The results of the joint work will enable Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) to quickly get to market with a variety of small form factor LTE products, including femtocell and picocell base stations. Smaller eNodeB products, such as those based on the MicroTCA form factor, are expected to be important for LTE deployments worldwide. In a separate announcement made today, Continuous Computing also disclosed that its Trillium LTE software now supports the latest March 2009 3GPP E-UTRA LTE specifications.

Executives from picoChip and Continuous Computing believe that their memorandum of understanding, details of which were disclosed at the LTE World Summit in Berlin, is the industry’s first alliance for LTE femtocells / picocells which extends from a hardware reference design and physical layer implementation (PHY) all the way up through Layer 2 and Layer 3 LTE protocols.

Dozens of operators across the globe have announced support for LTE and are expected to commence subscriber field trials later this year. Continuous Computing and picoChip are uniquely positioned to bring together the key hardware and software technologies required to enable successful LTE implementation. While each of the constituent LTE products in the joint project is currently available from Continuous Computing and picoChip today, pre-integrating them into an optimized reference implementation will save NEPs substantial time and money.

Specifically, Continuous Computing will integrate its Trillium LTE-Uu, S1AP, and X2AP protocol stacks with picoChip’s PC8608 and PC8609 PHY software reference designs running on the picoChip PC7608 hardware platform. The resulting reference implementation will offer 10MHz channel bandwidth with global application – supporting both time-division duplex (TDD) and frequency-division duplex (FDD) modes of operation – and aggregate throughout performance of up to 86Mbps, a more than 4X improvement over today’s top data rates of 21Mbps with enhanced High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+).

“Small form factor LTE products, such as femtocells and picocells, are expected to be critical to LTE deployments worldwide,” said Mike Dagenais, president and CEO of Continuous Computing. “Having standards-compliant, integrated products can significantly compress NEPs’ development timelines, enabling them to accelerate their participation in the burgeoning LTE market and early operator trials.”

“picoChip is at the forefront of LTE infrastructure technology development, building on our core competencies in OFDMA and HSPA femtocells,” said Nigel Toon, president and CEO at picoChip. “The expansion of our collaboration with Continuous Computing on the LTE femtocell and picocell reference design is reaffirmation of our commitment to LTE. In light of our close and successful HSPA femtocell association, Continuous Computing was the obvious choice of partner in bringing our LTE offerings to market quickly and cost-effectively.”