Freescale targets small cells with base station-on-a-chip architecture

Freescale has begun sampling the first chips in its next-generation system-on-a-chip baseband platform first unveiled at Mobile World Congress in February (CP: Freescale shrinks the base station down to a chip). Called QorIQ Converge, the baseband architecture will become a key component of Alcatel-Lucent’s new lightRadio technology (CP: Alcatel-Lucent’s new building block architecture), but the first chips to come out of the portfolio are targeted at the femtocell and picocell markets.

Like those bound for lightRadio, the first QorIQ chips are multimode, supporting any combination of LTE, WiMAX, HSPA and CDMA. Though they share the same basic design, the two chips are configured separately for femtocells supporting 8-16 users and a picocells supporting up to 100 simultaneous users.

The femtocell market hasn’t exactly taken off the way femtocell vendors had hoped. Interference problems have left a sour taste in many carriers’ mouths, and one of the femtocells original intended uses—a means to offload mobile data traffic—has largely been usurped by Wi-Fi.

Freescale, however, isn’t targeting QorIQ at the current generation of femtocells and picocells, said Scott Aylor, director and general manager of Freescale’s Wireless Access Division. Rather, Freescale is counting on the femtocell to evolve from a mere spot coverage solution to an integrated component of heterogeneous networks. In future 4G builds, operators will be given the first opportunity to design networks from scratch with both big and small cells in mind, Aylor said.

While some of those small cells will take the form of residential femtocells, many will be become built directly into the public wide-area network providing critical data capacity, Aylor predicts. Given QorIQ’s ability to scale from the smallest femto to the largest macro, Freescale believes it will be a perfect fit for such future network topologies.

Alcatel-Lucent seems to think so. Rather than produce discreet femtocells, microcells and macrocells, lightRadio uses the same components to build any size cell, using a ‘Cube’ integrated radio and antenna as well as QorIQ as the basic building blocks.