TI expands femtocell portfolio with devices based on new multicore SoC architecture

LONDON, UK: Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) is developing new femtocell devices based on its recently announced multicore System-on-a-Chip (SoC) architecture, which integrates both fixed and floating point capabilities in the industry's highest performing central processing unit (CPU).

Strengthening its commitment to the growing femtocell market, TI is developing these new scalable devices, which can support from eight to 64 users, to simplify product designs on a single chip. TI's new devices will incorporate an ARM processor and digital radio front end, coupled with a complete software solution based on TI's field-proven Layer 1 libraries, and a third party reference design.

"Working closely with TI over the past few years, we have built the industry's first commercially available CDMA femtocell capable of simultaneously supporting CDMA2000 1x and EV-DO," said Sanjeev Verma, vice president of femtocell business and co-founder, Airvana. "TI's market leading platform has helped us stay ahead of the cost and performance curve while also providing the supply chain stability to support high-volume deployments at multiple Tier 1 service providers."

TI's family of multicore femtocell solutions includes a full portfolio of complementary analog solutions such as data converters, RF products, power management, clocks and amplifiers, as well as support for Linux and software solutions from TI third parties.

The product family is compatible with all major 2G, 3G and 4G systems including GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX, FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE. It is also code compatible with other TI digital signal processors (DSPs) for the wireless infrastructure market, ensuring any previous software investments made by TI customers in macrocell, picocell or femtocell base stations can be reused.

Since the radio formats are software defined, a single femtocell product will be capable of performing any radio standard. In addition, these solutions will enable the simultaneous execution of two standards supporting deployments such as WCDMA and LTE together in a single platform.

"We are continuing to invest in embedded processing and analog solutions for the femtocell market by leveraging expertise in multiple technologies across TI to offer a complete SoC requiring no external processors and seamless integration to single chip analog front ends," said Kathy Brown, general manager of TI's wireless base station business.

"Our newest femtocell devices will deliver superior levels of performance coupled with extremely low power consumption and multi-user support, providing customers with the right tools, software and support to help accelerate their designs."

Femtocell devices based on TI's new multicore SoC platform will begin sampling in the first half of 2011.