Broadcom unveil BCM51030 Universal Digital Front Ends for Wireless Base Stations

The Broadcom BCM51030 devices leverage Broadcom's innovative VersaLine Digital Pre-Distortion technology to adapt in real time to any combination of wireless protocols, including 2G, 3G and 4G signal combinations, power amplifiers and frequency bands. This versatility allows radio access network OEMs to quickly address a diverging set of spectrum allocations and protocol combinations demanded by operators worldwide while supporting the widest bandwidth and highest power amplifier efficiency for macro cell wireless base stations in the industry, saving power consumption by up to 80 percent. The ability to quickly adopt to new protocols and PA technology can shave months to years off of development time compared to custom DFE implementations, which require extensive optimizations to DPD algorithms for each and every system variable change to maintain acceptable bandwidth and power efficiency levels.



Analysts predict an average of six connected devices per person by 2016, resulting in an exponential growth in wireless traffic that continues to challenge current networks while spectrum—an already finite and regulated resource—will become even more limited. Broadcom's BCM51030 devices improve the efficiency of existing macro-cell infrastructure and promote the re-use of spectrum in non-adjacent cells through small cells, remote radio heads and active antenna systems while delivering the wider bandwidth required to support a fragmented spectrum.



BCM51030 Key Features



-Adapts automatically to any signal combination of MC-GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, LTE, and LTE-A

-Supports any PA technology (AB, Doherty, envelope tracking), transistor architecture (LDMOS, GaS, GaN)

-Tx and Rx processing including digital upconversion, crest factor reduction, digital predistortion, and digital downconversion

-CFR and DPD Tx functions maximize higher-power amplifier output with minimal backoff

-Includes dual channel and quad channel devices that can be chained together for 8-16+ channel systems

-Complete analog, digital monitor system with user-programmable alarm responses maximize PA reliability

-Includes JESD204A/B serial interfaces to digital to analogue converters and analog to digital converters to reduce signal requirements and save power



Ron Jankov, Broadcom's Senior Vice President & General Manager, Processors and Wireless Infrastructure

The need to deliver significantly higher wireless bandwidth within the constraints of a lower power envelope, spectrum fragmentation and scarcity is driving the market for a disruptive digital front end technology for next-generation base stations, RRH, AAS and small cells. Broadcom's BCM51030 devices with VersaLine DPD linearization offer OEMs and operators compelling differentiations in bandwidth, power savings and versatility.



Joe Madden, Principal Analyst, Mobile Experts

With the deployment of LTE, mobile infrastructure radios will need to be scalable in new directions. In particular, new base stations will need multiple radio channels to handle MIMO and AAS signals. In addition, with Carrier Aggregation and new LTE frequency bands, the instantaneous bandwidth of a mobile link will be increasing by at least a factor of four over the next two years. The market absolutely needs scalable semiconductor solutions that can handle multi-channel, wideband carriers at a wide variety of power levels. The demand for SoCs to support metrocell and macrocell radios will grow to hundreds of millions of dollars over the next four years.