Femtocells: the 3G Home Gateway
Software upgrade to HSUPA, roadmap to HSPA+ and LTE.
Download the product brief
picoChip femtocell overview presentation (opens in a new window)
A growing area of interest for cellular operators is that of 3G home basestations, (also known as femto cells or 3G access points). picoChip is the industry leader in supplying modem reference designs for this application.
White paper: The case for home basestations
The PC2808 software coupled with the PC202 picoArray processor, enables an OEM to develop a femtocell with the lowest bill of materials and fastest time-to-market of any solution available today.
Such a system enables cellular operators to counter competitors offering UMA or voice-over-WiFi (VoWiFi), but — a crucial difference — allows customers to use existing standard cellular handsets
A major priority for mobile operators is improving indoor coverage and capacity of 3G to enable new service opportunities in the home and SOHO markets. The market requires a small plug-and-play device, which relies on a user's broadband connection, to pass both signaling and call traffic between the locally connected mobile phone and the operator’s network.
picoChip’s development of the infrastructure that supports the development of the Femtocell or 3G Home Gateway, confirms its commitment to helping OEMs and cellular operators, achieve the aggressive price points required to access the mass consumer market.
PC8208 HSDPA Femtocell product brief
PC8209 3GPP HSDPA/HSUPA UMTS Femtocell Basestation PHY product brief
Leading Edge Products
The logic behind femtocells is not just for WCDMA. picoChip is working with leading manufacturers to develop residential access points for WiMAX, cdma2000 and GSM. For example, picoChip is working with Korea Telecom to develop a WiMAX home basestation. More...
PC6530 OFDMA (IEEE802.16e-2005) Femtocell/picocell integrated PHY+MAC for home basestation
In a single device, the PC202 integrates high-performance DSP functionality, specialised accelerators and an ARM processor. The powerful multi-core DSP runs picoChip’s PC8208 HSDPA modem reference design, while the ARM runs the sophisticated control code and application stacks currently being developed by a number of ODMs. The software-based architecture also ensures a flexible platform for future enhancements…more
Femtocells in the press
- Home cells signal mobile change
BBC News - 26 July 2007 - Home Is Where the Femtocell Is
Business Week - 30 July 2007 - Home base stations to protect operators from WiFi
Mannerisms (Electronics Weekly), UK - 19 March 2007 - The age of the femtocell?
The Register, UK - 9 February 2007 - O2's winners and losers
Mobile Europe, UK - 17 Nov 2006 - Femtocell companies take aim at new markets
Engineer Live, UK - 17 Nov 2006
As are the WiMAX equivalents:
- WiMax - ready to take on cellular?
Techworld.com, UK - 19 Nov 2006
The business case for femtocells
picoChip’s white paper on femtocells has a discussion of the business case, but more details can be found in our customer’s white papers: ip.access
Ubiquisys
Analysts have also prepared material on this
ABI
Analysys
Conference presentation: The Need for WiMAX picocell & Femtocells WiMax World Vienna 2007.
The 8208 reference design
The PC8209 modem reference design is the industry standard for 3G access points (or "femtocell" basestations). The picoChip Node B software reference design provides a modem that is fully compliant to 3GPP Rel5 2005-06 (FDD) for 4 users with a 200m range. Support for 7Mb/s High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is available today, with a software upgrade to HSUPA (including 2ms TTI) later this year. The reference design includes all baseband processing (sample rate, chip rate and symbol rate operations), as well as MAC-hs scheduler, operations and management (OAM) functionality and protocol termination. It complements picoChip’s other proven reference designs for advanced wireless systems, including the industry-standard solution for WiMAX basestations. …more
Reference design for home base station or femtocell (RF Design, Feb 2006)
