Simultaneous Operation of LTE and WCDMA on a Single Base Station Processor demonstrated by Freescale

Demonstrating the multimode capabilities of Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge portfolio, Freescale Semiconductor announced today that integrated VortiQa Layer 1 (L1) software simultaneously supporting WCDMA and LTE is up and running on the QorIQ Qonverge BSC9132 SoC for small cell base station solutions.

According to analyst firm GSMA Intelligence, there are more than 1.5 billion WCDMA connections worldwide and LTE deployments are growing quickly, presenting challenges with frequency bands and getting infrastructure in place. Wireless network operators want multimode small cells that combine 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi into one small cell base station with the goal of increasing capacity in highly trafficked areas. Equipment manufacturers have struggled to provide solutions that meet those requirements.

Freescale is one of the first companies to bring both multimode-capable hardware and software to market. In production today, the QorIQ Qonverge BSC9132 SoC is a highly integrated device that targets evolving microcell/metrocell, outdoor picocell, enterprise picocell and femtocell base station applications. Availability of the BSC9132 multimode LTE and WCDMA L1 software enables small cell manufacturers to more quickly provide multimode solutions to wireless network operators, speeding industry small cell deployment.

The QorIQ Qonverge BSC9132 SoC integrates two e500 cores, built on Power Architecture® technology, and two StarCore SC3850 cores with the MAPLE-B2P baseband acceleration engine. The processor is a highly programmable device supporting a 20 MHz single sector LTE-FDD/TDD with 150 Mbps downlink and 75 Mbps uplink rates, and HSPA+ with 42 Mbps downlink and 11.5 Mbps uplink rates. The processor supports a range of air interfaces, including LTE (FDD/TDD), WCDMA (HSPA+ and UMTS) and WiMAX, and incorporates glueless RFIC communication and antennae interfaces, eliminating the need for additional chips and ultimately reducing board space and cost.

QorIQ Qonverge base station-on-chip products are based on a common architecture and integrate communications processing, digital signal processing and wireless acceleration technologies into a single system-on-chip in various configurations optimized for next-generation femtocell, picocell, metrocell and macrocell base stations. Advanced process technology and exceptional integration allow the convergence on a single device of multiple functions traditionally performed on separate FPGAs, ASICs, DSPs and processors. This integration reduces the part count, power consumption, cost and footprint for base stations. Having a common, scalable architecture spanning from femtocells to macrocells enables optimized R&D investments and software reuse.