Picochip extends lead in public access femtocells and announces dual-mode LTE/HSPA+ capabilities

By supporting the lub standard associated with traditional cellular network architectures and picocells, in addition to the Iuh standard adopted for femtocells, Picochip continues to drive the progression of its high-volume system-on-chip (SoC) technology into the enterprise and public access space. Meanwhile, plans for a dual mode platform supporting both LTE and HSPA+ will allow operators to deploy “small cells” that are ready for the move to LTE.

“Many carriers and vendors are attracted by the cost advantages of femtocells and wish to benefit from the economies of scale enabled by standard silicon SoC, but also want to continue to support their centrally-managed Iub architecture for public access basestations,” confirmed Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. “With the PC333 SoC and support for Iub, Picochip can address that desire. Moving to address the public access market is a logical next step for Picochip, and the femtocell ecosystem as a whole. Femtocells already outnumber conventional macrocells in the United States, meaning that Picochip’s baseband is very widely deployed, proven and trusted.”

In bringing together its industry-leading PC333 product for HSPA+ and its recently announced PC500 LTE platform, Picochip becomes the only company to offer an optimized solution for designers of dual mode (LTE and HSPA+) ‘small cell’ basestations. This enables operators to deploy LTE in an evolutionary manner, while simultaneously maximizing return on investment in their existing 3G networks. This will be crucial for operators looking to deploy femtocells in congested city centers or busy stations, providing coverage for existing 3G customers and ensuring that the system is future proof for the move to LTE.

“The improvement in carrier economics from the economies of scale of femto architectures is dramatic. Basestations using cost-effective commercial SoC platforms are moving out of the home and into enterprise, metropolitan and rural usage,” said Rupert Baines, VP Marketing at Picochip, speaking at the Femtocell Americas conference (13 – 14 December, Miami, USA). “It doesn’t matter if you describe them as femtocells, picocells or small cell basestations. What’s important is the fact that the Picochip product portfolio addresses all these different segments, from cost-sensitive residential chips already shipping in very high volumes, through to high-performance public access, all with our field-proven, robust PHY. Adding support for Iub and LTE is part of that, with a path to an integrated single chip dual-mode basestation.”

Picochip’s PC333 enables femtocell designs that serve up to 64 users, and with smartSignaling(tm) supports an additional 400 smartphones, conforming to the 3GPP local area basestation (LABS) specification. It employs advanced technologies such as receive diversity, MIMO, soft handover and increased UE speed and supports 3GPP Release 8 with 42Mbps down / 11Mbps uplink. It is the market’s highest-performing femtocell device and runs the latest version of Picochip’s widely deployed and tested baseband.

The PC500 is the latest evolution in Picochip’s LTE roadmap, enabling a powerful processor for an LTE ‘small cell’ meeting 3GPP Release 9 for both FDD and TD-LTE versions. It is code-compatible with Picochip’s award-winning PC960x µTCA-based LTE eNodeB development system developed in partnership with Continuous Computing (CCPU). Picochip and Wavesat recently announced passing a significant milestone with end-end interoperability between this platform and Wavesat’s UE reference design. The PC500 provides a low-risk platform for carrier-class enterprise and metro femtocell LTE products, and has a clear path to optimized single-chip dual-mode devices.