Mindspeed’s Transcede SoC drives LTE small-cell base station revolution

Mobile World Congress 2011, NEWPORT BEACH, USA: Mindspeed Technologies Inc., a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure applications, announced that it will showcase the latest developments in small-cell base station innovation powered by its Transcede™ processor family, at the upcoming Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, from February 14-17, 2011.

Unveiled for the first time at the 2010 Mobile World Congress trade show, the Transcede system-on-chip (SoC) will be featured in compelling new small-cell designs that will enable mobile network operators to increase network capacity and reduce the cost-per-bit of delivering next-generation data services. The Transcede family is the industry’s only solution with a compatible software architecture that enables original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to quickly scale their designs up or down in cell size, depending on customer requirements and rapidly evolving market dynamics.

Long-Term Evolution (LTE) picocells, microcells and a continually-evolving class of enterprise femtocells are expected to play a critical role alongside traditional macrocells as future 4G networks are architected. Once viewed primarily as an in-building wireless (IBW) solution used by mobile network operators to overcome poor indoor cellular coverage and signal degradation in commercial buildings, the picocell is now seen as a remedy for the high-density data clusters that will stress 3G and 4G networks as video-centric data consumption increases.

“Our Transcede family of wireless baseband processors was designed to simplify and accelerate LTE base station development, while enabling OEMs to leverage their software investment across multiple platforms, from the smallest enterprise femtocells to the largest macrocells,” said Raouf Y. Halim, Mindspeed’s chief executive officer. “Today’s Transcede-powered designs are among the first examples of products that will contribute to a heterogeneous network of femtocells, picocells, microcells and macrocells, which will improve network coverage, service and performance by putting more processing power closer to the subscriber.”

According to the recent Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI): Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update report, mobile video traffic is expected to double every year between 2010 and 2015. Cisco forecasts that video content on mobile networks will exceed 50 percent of all traffic for the first time in 2011, and that two-thirds of the world’s mobile traffic will be video by 2015.

According to market research firm In-Stat, carrier-installed metropolitan picocell shipments will see a CAGR of 378 percent from 2009 to 2014 as several million units are shipped to operators worldwide, and annual femtocell shipments will reach 31.8 million by 2014.

Mindspeed’s flagship Transcede 4000 features an unprecedented 26 programmable processors in a single device, including two ARM Cortex A9 multi-core symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processors, 10 CEVA digital signal processors (DSPs) and 10 DSP accelerators. Transcede processors enable equipment manufacturers to fully support the complete processing needs of single- and multi-sector base stations using the wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA), LTE-FDD, LTE time-division duplex (TD-LTE, in China), time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA, in China) and/or WiMAX air-interface standards. Transcede-based designs feature substantial processing headroom for value-added software features that developers can also readily port to other Transcede-based platforms.

The Transcede 4000 was named “Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough” at the 2010 Mobile Excellence Awards (MEA) and it continues to resonate with customers and Mindspeed technology partners as the small cells approach to advanced mobile networks matures.

Since introducing the first Transcede SoC at the 2010 Mobile World Congress, Mindspeed has developed a complete eNodeB solution on the platform and sampled the Transcede T3000 device that addresses the increasingly significant enterprise femtocell market.

“As network architects strive to solve the capacity crunch by migrating to a more flexible cellular landscape featuring compact new base stations, Mindspeed’s OEM customers are at the forefront with evolutionary picocell and enterprise femtocell designs,” said Alan Taylor, director of marketing for the communications convergence processing business unit at Mindspeed. “We are extremely proud to see what these innovators have designed over the last year using our Transcede family of processors, and look forward to supporting customers who share our vision for heterogeneous small cell and macrocell networks.”