picoChip pushes reference designs in readiness for mass femto market
Published: 19 November, 2009
READ MORE: PicoChip Designs | Semiconductor | Femtocell | UMTS
Continued ...
Most of the femtocell devices involved in trials or deployments in the W-CDMA/HSPA field are running on silicon from the UK's picoChip, and the company is also in the forefront of the shift towards reference designs, another sign of a maturing market. The supply chain for femtos - which combine the complexity of a base station with the economics and distribution channels of consumer electronics - is bound to be different from that for macro stations or for client devices. And because of the imperative to get a sophisticated piece of infrastructure down to the price point of a simple device, the economic efficiencies of the Taiwanese ODMs will be key, as will reference platforms, in which many features are pre-integrated, to give vendors a 'femto in a box' option that can reduce their cost and time to market.
In particular, these are for suppliers that do not wish to develop their own complex software for managing the femtos and handling functions such as security, interference prevention, timing and provisioning. Early stage vendors have tended to develop their own software, and differentiate themselves in that way, but this is one of the most expensive and complicated aspects of the process of getting a femtocell to market.
This week, picoChip was building on its existing partnership with protocol stack company Continuous Computing, to set out a roadmap for end-to-end femto reference designs, which integrate picoChip's systems-on-chip, optimized Continuous Trillium stacks, and femto system software. The roadmap ranges from HSPA to LTE, with 3GPP Release 8 to be supported next year by the new generation picoXcell silicon. The designs will support automated interference management and network self organization, as well as TR-069 and TR-196 compliant operations and maintenance (O&M) modules.
picoChip also highlights another sign that femtocells are gaining real support in the industry - venture capital interest, even in the still awful investment climate. The UK company has completed a $20m funding round from current investors. The company says it will ship about 300,000 units this year and aims to increase that tenfold in 2010, to around 3m units. That should put it in a position to break even next year and also to make picoXcell and femtocells its dominant revenue sources (currently these are about 30%, with the picoArray range, mainly for WiMAX base stations, the major revenue generator).
picoChip's investors include Atlas Venture, Highland Capital Partners, Pond Venture Partners, Scottish Equity Partners and Rothschild plus strategic investors AT&T, Intel Capital and Samsung.
Pages: 1 | 2
More PICOCHIP DESIGNS News
More SEMICONDUCTOR News
More HANDSET News
- Sprint HTC Evo 4G LTE gets delayed - May 21
- Samsung Focus 2 arrives at AT&T - May 21
COMMENTS
Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East
Carriers are using mobile broadband as their weapon of choice in the fight against the commoditization of voice and falling ARPU. This...
Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts
VoLTE offer unique advantages in lowering a carrier's voice infrastructure economics and promises to improve voice quality, device...
Satellite Phones: Will Dual Mode Help the Phoenix Rise from the Ashes?
Satellite phones have followed an arduous path since their much-hyped launch more than a decade ago. The hype was followed by an e...
