Femtocells are perhaps the most exciting products emerging in the communications market today. According to Dr Alastair Brydon of Analysys, “Femtocells have the potential to transform the telecoms industry.”

Although they were originally conceived as low-cost consumer products, today it is becoming clear that femtocells will be deployed in a diverse range of communications infrastructure applications. Providing metropolitan “hot-zone” coverage, servicing the in-building needs of enterprises, and even allowing network operators to reach small rural communities; all of these possibilities – and more – will be enabled by femtocells.

Indeed, many observers believe that femtocells will be a fundamental technology enabler in the deployment of next-generation network infrastructure technologies such as UMTS LTE.

picoChip pioneered the femtocell concept from its inception. Through in-house and partner developments we offer software-defined solutions for all three major 3G wireless technologies – WCDMA, TD-SCDMA and cdma2000. We have the only single-chip reference design to fully support WiMAX Wave 2 and full IO-MIMO, a market where our products are de facto industry standards.

Our commitment to developing the femtocell concept continues. picoChip’s programmable multi-core solutions are upgradeable to accommodate emerging technologies such as HSPA+, and provide a roadmap to future systems such as LTE – where we have already demonstrated a working femtocell design.

We recently announced the PC3xx series, a new range of SoC femtocell solutions: and our hardware, software IP and experience are proving key in the development of innovative femtocell products for other wireless standards, such as GSM.

Finally, we are a founder member and active participant in the Femto Forum, an independent membership body whose mission is to encourage innovation, collaboration and product interoperability across the industry.