18 June 2012
Freescale launches basestation SoC for metrocells
Freescale has expanded its basestation chip portfolio with the addition of a part targeted at metrocells. The QorIQ Qonverge B4420 baseband processor is said to offer high throughput, simultaneous multimode operation and support for LTE, LTE Advanced and WCDMA (HSPA+).
According to Frederic Haine, pictured, general manager of Freescale's EMEA networking group, metrocells generally support around 200 users within a cell radius of 5km. "This device will support 256 users," he said, "bringing connectivity, capacity and cost benefits to operators."
The 28nm device, which consumes less than 5W, features twin dual threaded Power Architecture e6500 cores running at 1.6GHz, as well as two StarCore SC3900 flexible vector processor cores running at 1.2GHz. The device is also equipped with the MAPLE-B processor for Layer 1 acceleration. Freescale says this allows the SoC to support up to two 20MHz LTE sectors, 600Mbit/s of throughput and relay support. In turn, this allows basestations to be designed with high user density, low cost and low power.
Haine said previous solutions had offered discrete dsp and mcu elements. "But this brings latency issues when dealing with LTE. The solution is to integrate them on an SoC."
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.freescale.com
Companies
Freescale Semiconductors
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