AirWalk to demonstrate LTE picocell at CTIA show
Works with Mindspeed and Aricent to target Verizon's 4G roll-out
Published: 17 March, 2010
READ MORE: AirWalk Communications | Femtocell | LTE
It is increasingly received wisdom that new wireless networks will make heavy use of very small cells, to enhance capacity, target coverage more accurately and reduce cost. So while 3G femtocells are entering the mainstream this year as indoor devices for data offload and improved quality of service, the industry is already looking ahead to outdoor products and LTE.
The leading provider of femtocell silicon, picoChip, already demonstrated an LTE reference design at Mobile World Congress, working with Continuous Computing and Cavium. Now another trio - AirWalk, Mindspeed and Aricent - are to take up the mantle at CTIA, showing a prototype LTE picocell. This will be followed late this year with a femtocell version.
The three firms' proof of concept is targeted at early LTE carriers, for indoor and outdoor capacity enhancement alongside macrocells. Airwalk's picocell design runs on Mindspeed's new silicon and software from Aricent. The pico product is expected to launch commercially in about a year's time, with the femto coming afterwards. The first band targeted by the picocell will be, predictably, Verizon Wireless' and AT&T's 700MHz.
The use of small cells, inside and outside, for LTE may offer an opportunity for smaller vendors and chipmakers to penetrate the large carrier market, where the macro equipment will remain dominated by the usual suspects, and increasingly by the big two, Ericsson and Huawei. Mindspeed is clear that the real opportunity to sneak up behind Freescale and TI, which control basebands for macro base stations, lies in the smaller cells. It uses an ambitious heterogeneous multicore approach built on an ARM multilayer fabric, which connects two processing clusters and two I/O clusters and claims to bring software level programmability to LTE.
The same goes for picoChip in the femto market, where it has a real headstart over larger firms like Qualcomm. Its LTE femto reference design includes the LTE modem, RF and packet processors, protocol software, intelligent router functionality and a complete Evolved Packet Core (EPC) emulator from Continuous.
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