Developing Next Generation Wireless Basestations

By Alan Taylor, Mindspeed, and Mark DeVinney, Interphase

New silicon developments can reduce a wireless basestation to a single card with baseband processors replacing DSPs, FPGAs, and NPUs. Such processors can have an entire basestation application layer on a single System on a Chip (SoC), thus greatly reducing system latency.  The integrated system can also include the latest, industry-standard common public radio interface (CPRI) functionality, plus high-speed serial RapidIO (sRIO) and PCI Express I/O. On-chip hardware acceleration for forward error correction (FEC) and encryption further reduce overall system cost.

Such new basestation solutions address many factors important to both equipment manufacturers and their customers as well.

For the equipment manufacturer, they have the following advantages:

• Simplify the design both electrically and mechanically, thus reducing basestation costs
• Enable focused investment of resources in applications software and value-add features vs. re-inventing the underlying wheel
• Accelerate the development cycle for shorter time to market and a competitive edge
• Enable solutions that were not previously feasible for extending market reach

For the equipment customer, they:

• Reduce plant space required due to smaller basestation footprint
• Substantially reduce basestation power and cooling requirements
• Allow basestations to be combined with other functions rather than requiring separate racks
• Enable new money-making services

The development and cost benefits are self-explanatory, so let’s consider the applications and services these new basestations can enable across single and multiple sectors using Long Term Evolution (LTE FDD and TDD), WiMAX air-interface standards, wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA), and time-division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA, in China).

Private Applications

• Rapidly deployable networks for public safety and the military
• Closed enterprise usage on cruise ships, oil platforms, and aircraft, and in prisons
• Machine to machine usage beyond meter reading to asset management and media downloads

Remote Radio Heads

• Basestation/radio heads integrated device

Public Carriers

• Microcell
• Picocell
• Enterprise femtocell

For example, Interphase offers an application-ready, small form-factor, customizable basestation module based on the innovative Mindspeed Transcede 4020 System on a Chip (SoC) processor with an industry-leading level of integration. It includes the basestation control, baseband PHY, radio interface, and pre-integrated fully compliant LTE (PHY/L2/L3) protocol layers, making it ready to integrate with a radio head and applications software for quick time-to-market eNodeB microcell, picocell, or enterprise femtocell basestations. The iSPAN 36701 basestation module is initially available as an AdvancedMC but can easily be built in other form factors.

In summary, the new highly-integrated basestation technology rolls formerly separate elements into a single package, enabling a highly scalable, cost-effective, small-footprint basestation solution. Evolution is to the point that reference units are available that reduce the size and cost by at least half compared to currently deployed basestation solutions. This game-changing technology will help redefine wireless infrastructure economics during what is expected to be a major basestation upgrade cycle.

Alan Taylor is Marketing Director at Mindspeed, and Marc DeVinney is Vice President of Engineering at Interphase. You can reach them at alan.taylor@mindspeed.com and mdevinney@iphase.com respectively.