picoChip drives femtocell market with second generation single-chip baseband processor family

picoChip has launched the PC3xx family, a new range of system-on-chip baseband processors specifically targeted at the fast-growing femtocell market. These second-generation devices incorporate picoChip’s field-proven modem software in a highly integrated form, enabling femtocell manufacturers to substantially reduce bill-of-materials while increasing performance. This cost reduction is a critical enabler for high-volume consumer femtocell deployment.
The picoChip PC302, the first member of the family, is a single-chip solution for HSPA femtocells compliant to TR25.820 and the newly standardized Iu-h interface. Supporting up to four users for residential and SME femtocell access points and with data rates of 14.4 / 5.7Mb/s in downlink and uplink respectively the PC302 enables the lowest bill-of-materials and lowest power for a femtocell available today. The PC3xx family also offers an upgrade path to more users (picocells), higher performance (Release 7 with HSPA+ and MIMO) and other air-interfaces such as LTE.

Fabricated in 65nm technology, the picoChip PC302 device is a complete femtocell solution, supporting up to 14.4Mb/s HSDPA together with 5.7Mb/s HSUPA for 4 connected terminals. It integrates a 3GPP NodeB modem, RNC stack, Radio Resource Management, cryptographic engine, high-speed accelerators, synchronization, network listen functionality and peripherals. The picoArray-based multi-core architecture also enables the flexibility for in-field upgrade and delivers spare processing power for customer specific enhancements and additional home networking functions.

Layer 1 functionality is provided for release 6 WCDMA, while RNC stacks optimized for the PC302 support standard network architectures including the newly announced Iu-h interface to femtocell gateways or SIP/IMS. In addition to 3GPP TR25.820, the PC302 includes functionality for 2G and 3G network monitoring functions for cell planning and handoff (sometimes described as “cognitive radio” or Self Organizing Networks (SON)) functions and Dynamic Spectrum Management. Enhanced security features are supported for authentication, location detection, encryption and the prevention of DoS attacks.
In addition to HSPA, picoChip also has solutions for femtocells for WiMAX, cdma2000/EvDO andTD-SCDMA, while support for LTE (“Home eNode B”), cdma2000 and GSM/GPRS/EDGE is in development. These other standards are based on picoChip’s proven multi-core DSP platform.

picoChip Designs Limited