picoChip Releases Second Generation Single-chip Baseband Processors for Femtocells

(Top News, 25 Jun 2008)

picoChip has launched the PC3xx family, a new range of system-on-chip (SoC) baseband processors specifically targeted at the fast-growing femtocell market. These second-generation devices incorporate picoChip's modem software in a highly integrated form, enabling femtocell manufacturers to substantially reduce bill-of-materials while increasing performance.

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. The PC302 supports up to four users for residential and SME femtocell access points and has data rates of 14.4Mbps/5.7Mb in downlink and uplink respectively. 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 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.

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