Broadcom Introduces World's First Microwave Outdoor Unit on a Chip

Designed to address the need for higher bandwidth and faster time-to-market in microwave split-mount and full/all outdoor units (FODU/AODU), the BCM85810 RF system-on-a-chip (SoC) is based on a flexible architecture, enabling various types of system architectures such as split-mount (IDU-ODU) and all-outdoor (All-ODU) on a common hardware platform. With only two variants to cover all standard point-to-point microwave frequency bands and all channel bandwidths, the BCM85810 single chip solution simplifies system manufacturing, deployment, and inventory management. With support for high modulation, the BCM85810 delivers a significant improvement in spectrum utilization and capacity.

Industry analysts predict mobile data traffic will quadruple by 2015 as the number of mobile users and use of multimedia services continues to rise. To manage this massive growth in wireless traffic and evolution of 4G/LTE networks, mobile operators are investing in next generation mobile backhaul networks to meet the performance and bandwidth requirements of backhauling data from the cell sites to the core networks. Analysts predict the microwave backhaul market to exceed $6B with microwave unit shipments nearing 3 million by 2015.(1)

Key Facts:

• Combines functionality of up to ten off-the-shelf ASSPs including synthesizers (IF and RF), LNA, AGCs, BPF Bank, LPF Bank, IR Mixers, VGA and VVA with wide dynamic range, PA driver and Power detectors
• Only two variants to cover all standard point-to-point microwave spectrum
• Wide AGC dynamic range ( > 70dB)
• Internal power controls
• Maintains Rx output power over full input power range
• On-chip selectable baseband filters
• ETSI and FCC compliance

Availability
The BCM85810 is now available. A complete reference design, system analysis and comprehensive development kit are also available.

Dan Charash, Senior Director & General Manager, Microwave, Broadcom Corporation commented:
The introduction of our BCM85810 single chip solution marks the expansion of Broadcom's microwave backhaul portfolio into the RF domain, as we have successfully done in multiple solutions including Wi-Fi, cellular, Bluetooth, and cable modems.The combination of our new RF solutions with our leading baseband solutions delivers a significant reduction in system size, cost and power consumption while dramatically improving system performance.