Integration of third parties’ software with TI DSPs offers femtocell OEMs reduced costs and faster time to market
Femtocells World Summit, LONDON (June 23, 2009) – Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE:TXN) announced today the selection of Continuous Computing®, a leader in wireless protocol software, and mimoOn GmbH, a leader in software defined radio solutions, as third parties to offer integrated solutions for HSPA and LTE enterprise and residential femtocells.
Continuous Computing’s Trillium® software, and mimoOn’s mi!FemtoTM advanced femtocell software, will be integrated onto TI’s TMS320TCI6485 residential femtocell processor and TMS320TCI6489 enterprise femtocell processor in order to offer both single and multimode solutions for LTE, HSPA+, and HSPA.
Trillium wireless software from Continuous Computing leverages over 20 years of innovation and consists of a complete protocol solution for the dynamic femtocell access point and femtocell gateway markets. Trillium femtocell software meets the unique requirements of network equipment providers and features comprehensive protocol stack support covering LTE & WCDMA, optimized data and control plane performance, and minimized memory footprint. This powerful and comprehensive offering enables customers to reduce project risk, cost, and complexity while accelerating time-to-market.
“Continuous Computing has been aggressive in tailoring access point software and femtocell gateway solutions for traditional as well as non-traditional vendors,” said Manish Singh, vice president of product line management. “Trillium femtocell software plus TI DSP femtocell processors equals a compelling combination for equipment manufacturers to participate in the exciting femtocell market. With Continuous Computing and TI, customers can have high confidence in performance, interoperability, portability, and support.”
The mi!FemtoLTETM and mi!FemtoHSPATM software families encompass both H(e)NB PHY and Protocol Stack layers, that are full-featured and certified based on the latest versions of the 3GPP standards. Both software packages are written in high level language and in modular form so they are easy to modify or customize even after being deployed; an important feature as the standards and operator requirements for femtocells continue to be revised.
According to mimoOn’s CEO, Thomas Kaiser, “This collaboration is significant in that TI brings its longstanding presence in the wireless base station market along with robust DSP processors, while mimoOn brings its legacy of MIMO algorithms, cognitive radio sniffers, and advanced schedulers, to offer innovative solutions for the key challenges in femtocells. This joint technology solution for single and multimode femtocells will be a strategic advantage for operators and OEMs that are looking to deploy femtocells in 2010 and beyond.”
The integrated implementation on the femtocell-optimized TCI6485 and TCI6489 will provide high performance, extremely low power consumption, and headroom for the advanced processing required for LTE and HSPA, as well as offer multi-user support. High channel bandwidths, multiple MIMO configurations, FDD/TDD, and high data rates will all be supported. This software-based femtocell design delivers a turnkey solution to OEMs that allows fast time-to-market, a reduced bill-of-materials, and the ability to evolve with future market requirements. To learn more about TI’s family of residential and enterprise femtocell solutions, please visit: www.ti.com/femto-3ppr-landing
“Time-to-market and robust performance are key considerations for service providers and equipment manufacturers in successfully deploying femtocell products and services,” said Kathy Brown, business manager for TI’s wireless baseband infrastructure group. “The integration and testing of the standards-compliant HSPA and LTE software from Continuous Computing and mimoOn with TI’s DSP programmable femtocell platform, achieves performance with the ability to differentiate, while offering a rapid vehicle to market.
Femtocell equipment manufacturers can quickly develop residential and enterprise products with TI’s new femtocell DSP family
TI offers complete solutions for HSPA residential and enterprise femtocell applications
Femtocells World Summit, LONDON (June 23, 2009) – Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE:TXN) today announced a new family of DSPs (digital signal processors) enabling residential and enterprise femtocell manufacturers and service providers to reduce development time and deliver new products to market quickly. TI’s family of multicore femtocell solutions includes a full portfolio of complementary analog solutions, support for Linux, and software solutions from TI third parties, Continuous Computing and mimoOn. These DSPs provide a complete digital solution for HSPA applications, enabling low cost, fully programmable solutions and thus allowing OEMs (original equipment manufacturer) to offer reliable and adaptable femtocell products to market. Using the software reference design available from Continuous Computing and mimoOn, which provides customers with software for Layer 1, 2 and 3 wireless protocol processing, OEMs can quickly develop femtocell products to provide increased wireless connectivity for streaming video files, interactive gaming, music sharing and other bandwidth-intense multimedia tasks.
TI’s femtocell product family includes the TMS320TCI6485 with two high-performance 850MHz C64x+ DSP cores delivering 1.7 GHz of overall performance for residential femtocell applications, and the TMS320TCI6489 which includes three 850MHz C64x DSPs delivering 2.55 GHz of performance for enterprise or “super femto” applications. Scaling to meet the varied global requirements of the residential and enterprise market segments, TI’s TCI6485 supports up to eight users while the TCI6489 supports up to 32 users. The entire product family is compatible with all major 2G/3G and 4G systems including GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX and LTE, and furthermore, is code compatible with other TI DSPs for the wireless infrastructure market, where any previous investments in macro or pico base stations can be reused. TI’s longstanding incumbency in the wireless infrastructure space combined with its robust DSP solutions developed specifically for the femtocell market allow OEMs to develop products for this emerging market with confidence. For more information on TI’s complete portfolio of femtocell solutions, please visit: www.ti.com/femtocell-pr.
Key features and benefits of the TCI6489 and TCI6485 femtocell DSPs:
- The new TCI6489 three-core DSP and TCI6485 dual-core DSP allows femtocell OEMs to use a single device for Layer 1, 2 & 3 processing, reducing the overall BOM (bill of materials) by eliminating the requirement for a separate microprocessor.
- Optimized for enterprise femtocell applications, the TCI6489 includes three 850 MHz cores, four lanes of Antenna Interface (CPRI/OBSAI) to connect to the analog front end, 3MB of L2 memory and dedicated accelerators for chip rate and forward error correction processing.
- Targeted for the residential femtocell market, the TCI6485 has two 850MHz C64x+ DSP cores that support both higher layer processing and lower layer processing. It also contains two lanes of Antenna Interface (CPRI/OBSAI) for analog RF connectivity, 2MB of L2 memory and dedicated accelerators.
- TI’s single chip solutions allow manufacturers to take advantage of a customized set of memory, peripheral, accelerator, core and performance features that make it the ideal processor for femtocell applications.
- With TI’s complete WCDMA software solution for femtocell base stations supported by third parties, OEMs receive a fully operational and tested femtocell software solution, running on TI evaluation hardware, which speeds time-to-market and allows for increased development flexibility. Early versions of the software femtocell reference design will be available in 4Q09.
- TI also provides the complete analog signal chain for femtocell applications, including data converters, RF products, power management, clocks and amplifiers, which allow manufactures to develop a complete hardware femtocell solution from a single silicon supplier.
Availability
Both the TCI6485 and TCI6489 will sample in 3Q09 and start production in 4Q09.
Find out more about TI’s femtocell portfolio:
- Femtocell microsite: www.ti.com/femtocell-pr
- Whitepaper: www.ti.com/femtocell-wp-pr
- Product bulletin: www.ti.com/femtocell-pb-pr
- System diagram: www.ti.com/femtocell-diagram-pr
- Learn more about TI’s collaboration with Continuous Computing and mimoOn: www.ti.com/femto-3ppr-pr
- Learn more about TI’s multicore solutions: www.ti.com/multicore-more-pr
- Follow TI on twitter: http://bit.ly/Ubpbt
