Mindspeed and Contela collaborate on next-gen LTE femtocells and small cell base station solutions

Mobile World Congress 2012, NEWPORT BEACH, USA: Mindspeed Technologies Inc., the industry leader in technology for small cells, and Contela Inc. announced that the companies will jointly develop advanced long-term evolution (LTE) femtocells and other small cell dual mode 3G/LTE solutions.

The collaboration combines Mindspeed’s carrier-grade Transcede System-on-Chip (SoC) baseband processor solutions with Contela’s development expertise. Contela has already developed 3G femtocells that are widely deployed in carrier networks and is now enhancing its wireless products with LTE and dual-mode small cell products.

Mindspeed's Transcede family of processors include complete NodeB and eNodeB SoC solutions that perform concurrent 3G and LTE processing in a single device, including time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA), wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA)/high-speed packet access (HSPA+) and both frequency division duplexing LTE (FDD-LTE) and TD-LTE.

The recently announced Transcede T22xx series targets residential and small enterprise applications, while the T33xx series is focused on enterprise, metro and pico base stations. These products combine Mindspeed’s strength in LTE with Picochip’s leadership in carrier grade 3G.

“As a developer of home femtocell solutions for 3G mobile networks, Contela believes that next-generation networks and applications will require LTE femtocells and other small cell base stations,” said Jang An Kwon, CMO with Contela. “The development of a broad portfolio of small cell products for the different market demands is important to serve our operator customers. Mindspeed’s dual mode T22xx /T33xx SoC baseband processor products deliver multi-standard operation with carrier-grade performance, and are the ideal solution for building our family of products.”

“Mindspeed is delighted that our Transcede SoCs have been chosen by Contela for the company’s next-generation femtocells and other small cell products,” said Dr. Naser Adas, VP and GM, wireless and customer premises equipment (CPE) at Mindspeed. “We have been impressed by Contela’s commitment and expertise in developing small cells. Both companies believe in the huge opportunity of this market and we look forward to a successful collaboration with them.”

Mindspeed has the most complete portfolio of SoCs in the industry, ranging from cost-effective residential 3G only, through the new T22xx and T33xx up to the micro/macro class. All Transcede family devices are supported by a complete, carrier-class software reference design to accelerate time-to-market schedules. Mindspeed’s Transcede reference design includes RF module integration, a real-time Linux board support package, and standard-compliant physical-layer (PHY) implementation for LTE and W-CDMA and TD-SCDMA, with associated utilities and test scripts.