Picochip has commenced volume production of the PC333 basestation-on-a-chip solution. According to the company the PC333 is the only SoC currently available for the new breed of ‘small cell’ and ‘metro cell’ basestations, which are re-defining the fundamental architecture of mobile networks.
Picochip has commenced volume production of the PC333 basestation-on-a-chip solution. According to the company the PC333 is the only SoC currently available for the new breed of ‘small cell’ and ‘metro cell’ basestations, which are re-defining the fundamental architecture of mobile networks. It can operate as a femtocell, with integrated RNC and Iuh interface, or as a classical picocell with Iub interface; in both cases it uses Picochip’s field-proven, robust PHY. The product runs on a 700MHz ARM chip with TrustZone(R) and variety of specialized hardware features for security. It sampled to lead customers in 3Q2010 and is now generally available.
Integrating an optimised silicon implementation and proven, robust software into a complete system, the PC333 will enable small cells to be taken beyond the home and into the mainstream network. It is being deployed now by carriers in Europe, America and Asia. This new approach will enable operators to target capacity and coverage exactly where its needed; in areas where deploying a macrocell would be impractical or too expensive, and in busy city centres, train stations and business districts.
In particular, small cells allow carriers to serve the rapidly growing demand for data services at a time when operators face explosive growth in data traffic (doubling every year according to Cisco, with a 1000X increase by 2020).
“Carriers urgently need more capacity,” commented Caroline Gabriel, Research Director of Rethink Research. “Operator-deployed small-cells enabled with femto technology benefit from the economies of scale gained from the residential femtocell market, field-proven modems and plug-and-play provisioning to reduce both CapEx and OpEx. With its market position Picochip can leverage both residential femtocell volume and its field-proven PHY to make that happen.”
The launch last year of the PC333 led to a major shake-up in the telecom semiconductor industry, with rivals scrambling to announce competing basestation-on-a-chip devices.
According to Rupert Baines, VP Marketing at Picochip, “Femto technology and Picochip silicon has brought the $40bn wireless infrastructure market to the brink of a disruptive change. I’m expecting the same kind of fallout in the basestation industry as there was in the computer industry thirty years ago, as people move from in-house solutions to optimized SoCs and open-market software. And, as happened in the computer market, companies that fail to embrace the changes get left behind.”
The PC333 supports up to 32 simultaneous channels in a single device, and two devices can be cascaded to make a 64-channel system. Picochip’s smartSignaling technology allows the PC333 basestation-on-a-chip to support a larger number of connected smartphones. The PC333 is the only femtocell chip to support Release 8 HSPA+ (42Mbps downlink, 11 Mbps uplink), Local Area Basestation (LABS) performance, together with features including soft handover, receive diversity and MIMO.
