picoChip drives femtocell market with second generation single-chip baseband processor family

The picoChip PC302, the first member of the family, is a single-chip solution for HSPA femtocells compliant to TR25.820 and the newly standardized Iu-h interface. Supporting up to four users for residential and SME femtocell access points and with data rates of 14.4 / 5.7Mb/s in downlink and uplink respectively the PC302 enables the lowest bill-of-materials and lowest power for a femtocell available today. The PC3xx family also offers an upgrade path to more users (picocells), higher performance (Release 7 with HSPA+ and MIMO) and other air-interfaces such as LTE.

“With this second generation of devices, picoChip will deliver a highly-integrated yet flexible and cost sensitive solution for the femtocell market. Cost optimization is critical in this market and by moving to 65nm we deliver on that with the PC3xx family. We have some great customers, industry leaders and Tier One OEMs through to consumer electronics companies and ODMs: with the proven quality and robustness of our code, the PC302 will be supporting them in ramping to volume very fast, shipping to support the femtocell market as it accelerates in 2009,” said Guillaume d'Eyssautier president and CEO, picoChip.

“picoChip has established itself as the de facto standard baseband silicon solution for the emerging femtocell industry, thanks to the ability of its platform to support – and adapt to – multiple market demands and technologies,” notes Peter Jarich, Research Director with Current Analysis. “Of course, flexibility comes at a cost. The optimized products being announced address those concerns, signalling picoChip’s commitment to operator demands and product innovation.”

Fabricated in 65nm technology, the picoChip PC302 device is a complete femtocell solution, supporting up to 14.4Mb/s HSDPA together with 5.7Mb/s HSUPA for 4 connected terminals. It integrates a 3GPP NodeB modem, RNC stack, Radio Resource Management, cryptographic engine, high-speed accelerators, synchronization, network listen functionality and peripherals. The picoArray-based multi-core architecture also enables the flexibility for in-field upgrade and delivers spare processing power for customer specific enhancements and additional home networking functions.

Layer 1 functionality is provided for release 6 WCDMA, while RNC stacks optimized for the PC302 support standard network architectures including the newly announced Iu-h interface to femtocell gateways or SIP/IMS. In addition to 3GPP TR25.820, the PC302 includes functionality for 2G and 3G network monitoring functions for cell planning and handoff (sometimes described as “cognitive radio” or Self Organizing Networks (SON)) functions and Dynamic Spectrum Management. Enhanced security features are supported for authentication, location detection, encryption and the prevention of DoS attacks.
In addition to HSPA, picoChip also has solutions for femtocells for WiMAX, cdma2000/EvDO andTD-SCDMA, while support for LTE (“Home eNode B”), cdma2000 and GSM/GPRS/EDGE is in development. These other standards are based on picoChip’s proven multi-core DSP platform.

picoChip is the only semiconductor company focused solely on wireless infrastructure, and provides baseband solutions to address the key challenges of cost, development time and flexibility for the next generation of wireless systems. The company’s multicore processors deliver a world-beating price/performance combination. picoChip is the industry standard architecture for WiMAX basestations, and is the leading supplier for the new wave of femtocells, with support for for HSPA, WiMAX, LTE, TD-SCDMA, cdma2000/EvDO and GSM/GPRS/EDGE.