Mindspeed demos small cell development solution for LTE networks

Mobile Asia Congress 2011, NEWPORT BEACH, USA: Mindspeed Technologies Inc., a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure applications, has announced a demonstrable prototyping solution that enables base station designers to efficiently productize future small cell designs based on Mindspeed’s award-winning Transcede family of wireless baseband processors.

“Mindspeed has demonstrated a single Transcede SoC-based LTE small cell reference unit with complete IP to RF functionality and connectivity using commercially-available user equipment,” said Dr. Wang Jianquan, director of the Network Technology Research Center, China Unicom Research Institute. “This solution, with integrated processor hardware and software, will provide convenience for network testing and deployment.”

Mindspeed offers its application-specific Transcede SoC devices with production-ready, carrier-class software that can be adapted directly into an original equipment manufacturer’s (OEMs) own product design. This approach enables base station engineers to efficiently build custom features on Mindspeed’s proven development platform. The newest enhancement to Mindspeed’s Transcede offering, the LTE small cell reference unit includes a fully integrated 20MHz 2x2 LTE radio, coupled with a GPS receiver for network synchronization and location identification.

“The small cell revolution is a fundamental shift in network design and planning that will put coverage and capacity closer to the mobile subscriber by way of heterogeneous networks featuring microcells, picocells, metrocells and femtocells,” said Dr. Huan-yu Su, VP of technical marketing and business development at Mindspeed, who demonstrated Mindspeed’s LTE technology on a tour of mobile network operators recently. “Our new small cell reference unit allows service providers to quickly assess how small cells powered by Mindspeed’s Transcede SoCs can deliver on the promise of LTE mobile broadband.”

Industry analyst Mobile Experts LLC predicts that the number of “alternative” cell shipments will overtake the number of macrocell shipments for the first time during 2011. Mobile Experts also suggests that multi-core processors will enable the growth of carrier-grade small cells, with deployment of more than 19 million enterprise and carrier small cells predicted in 2016.