Operators are starting to look for multimode 3G/4G small cells and Freescale is rising to the demand, supporting simultaneous LTE and W-CDMA on its SoC (system-on-chip) for mini-base stations.
The company has integrated the VortiQa Layer 1 software into its QorIQ Qonverge BSC9132 SoC, which is built round a quad-core processor and targets small public or private cells, typically used to boost capacity or fill coverage notspots, indoors or outdoors.
Although Freescale has introduced the ARM architecture to some of its small cell offerings, the BSC9132 integrates two e500 PowerPC cores, alongside two StarCore SC3850 DSP cores with the Maple-B2P baseband acceleration engine. The programmable processor supports a 20MHz single sector LTE in FDD or TDD, with 150Mbps downlink and 75Mbps uplink rates, and HSPA+ with 42Mbps downlink and 11.5Mbps uplink. The SoC also incorporates glueless RFIC communication and antenna interfaces, eliminating the need for additional chips to reduce board space and cost.
‘The addition of W-CDMA multimode capability to our portfolio of LTE L1 software underscores Freescale’s strong commitment to the small cell market,’ said Stephen Turnbull, wireless marketing manager at the company’s Digital Networking unit.
The VortiQa software is optimized for QorIQ and is designed to reduce time to market by reducing the need for testing and integration.