picoChip today announced the industry´s first HSUPA-femtocell
reference design. Femtocells or 3G access points allow carriers to
compete with VoWiFi, improving coverage at home and improving service.
The new PC8209 adds HSUPA to picoChip´s industry standard reference
design, as used by Ubiquisys, ipAccess and Dekolink among others. For
3G data HSUPA adds faster uplink and reduces latency, especially
important for wireless Web 2.0 applications or on-line gaming.
The new PC8209 software will run on the same hardware platform as
the company´s market-leading PC8208 offering, currently shipping to
manufacturers and operators. This common hardware approach allows
customers to add HSUPA capabilities to their basestations - including
those already deployed in the field - with only a software upgrade.
The PC8209 will be generally available later this year.
HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) increases the maximum
theoretical 3G physical-layer link speed to 5.76Mb/s, significantly
increasing efficiency when used in conjunction with its downlink
equivalent, HSDPA. Just as importantly, HSUPA reduces network
latencies and can allocate capacity to users with shorter delays and
greater flexibility: essential features for real-time packet based
applications and response-critical services such as multi-player
gaming. picoChip´s PC8209 product fully supports the critical 2ms TTI
(transmission time interval) specification which enables these
features, as well as more responsive power control.
"HSUPA is a critical technology that will help service providers
deliver low-latency broadband applications over 3G wireless networks,"
said Gabriel Brown, chief analyst at Unstrung.com and author of a
recent research report on femtocells. "Equipment manufacturers are
looking for low-cost, standards-compliant components and reference
designs that reduce time to market and meet the price points necessary
for this market to take-off. As a pioneer of this technology, picoChip
is the standout silicon play in the femtocell market."
"picoChip is the leader in femtocell technology," said Guillaume
d´Eyssautier, president and CEO of picoChip. "No one else has shipped
HSDPA femtocell basestation technology, and we are now in pole
position with our new HSUPA offering. We are pleased to be extending
this lead and enabling our customers to do the same."
picoChip´s established PC8208 femtocell reference design was
itself an industry-first, enabling an OEM to develop a product with
dramatically lower bill of materials costs and faster time-to-market.
The new PC8209 design combines a modem that is fully compliant to 3GPP
Release 6 for four users with a 200m range, supporting 7Mb/s HSDPA and
2Mb/s HSUPA. 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. The PC8209 software upgrade will be released this year,
allowing carriers to trial it by upgrading femtocells already
installed. The picoChip modem software is suited to a variety of
deployment architectures, including Iub over IP, UMA (through a
partnership with Kineto) and all-IP (SIP or IMS based).
Figures from ABI Research predict that there will be 102 million
femtocell users worldwide by 2011. Mobile operators are attracted to
the concept because it allows them to counter the potential threat
from converged WiFi, VoIP and fixed telephony services, whilst
offering users the opportunity to use existing 3G handsets. The
femtocell (or home-basestation) handles cellular calls locally and
traffic is then carried to the operator´s core network via broadband:
typically DSL or cable modem. This not only reduces the need for
multiple handsets (or expensive dual-mode terminals), it also allows
network coverage and capacity to be increased in a cost-effective
manner, exactly where they are most needed by the end user.
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respective owners.