The PC3xx family is a new range of highly integrated baseband systems-on-chip (SoCs) aimed at the fast-growing femtocell market. Incorporating picoChip’s field-proven software-based modem implementations, the devices will substantially reduce manufacturers’ bill-of-materials costs, allowing the production of femtocells at consumer price points.

At the same time as reducing costs, the PC3xx series also increases performance. It therefore enables the same seamless upgrade approach already enjoyed by customers employing picoChip’s reference designs; as well as providing the processing headroom needed to implement highly differentiated feature sets.

The PC3xx’s combination of processing power and programmability allows OEMs, consumer electronics companies and ODMs to base multiple products on a common hardware platform. For example, they can create basestations to serve varying numbers of users (picocells and femtocells). These same features improve design re-use and therefore substantially ease the task of implementing standards with common technical features, such as LTE and WiMAX.

The first member of the family is the PC302, a single-chip solution for HSPA femtocells, compliant to TR25.820 and the newly standardized Iu-h interface. The device supports up to four users for residential and SME femtocell access points and offers data rates of 14.4Mbit/s and 5.7Mbit/s in downlink and uplink respectively.

Based on the same robust, field-proven software as picoChip’s best-selling PC8208/PC8209 femtocell reference design, the PC302 integrates a 3GPP NodeB modem, RNC stack, Radio Resource Management, cryptographic engine, high-speed accelerators, synchronization, network listen functionality and peripherals. It is built using an advanced 65nm manufacturing process,to deliver the lowest bill-of-materials and lowest power for a femtocell available today.

The picoChip PC3xx family provides the flexibility and processing power demanded by users requiring an upgrade path to 3GPP Release 7 with HSPA+ and MIMO, and to other air-interfaces such as LTE. 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.