The 5G base station and wireless ASIC markets are experiencing rapid growth driven by the digital transformation that continuously demands higher cellular bandwidth at low latency. Recently, network fragmentation driven by the Open RAN initiative and mMIMO drive forms has attracted the attention of global silicon suppliers in the cellular infrastructure market opportunity.

CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), a leading licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies, today announced PentaG-RAN, the industry's first 5G baseband platform IP for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) targeting cellular infrastructure in both base station and radio configurations, including distributed units (DUs) and remote radio units (RRUs), from small cells to massive multiple-input, multiple-output (mMIMO).



According to ABI Research, a global technology intelligence company, shipments of 5G mobile infrastructure equipment, including mMIMO radios, O-RAN radios, small cells, and virtual basebands, are expected to grow at an average annual rate of 17% from 2022 to 2027, exceeding 23 million units per year by 2027. Current platforms are not attractive to the market because they cannot effectively scale mMIMO and support new O-RAN, creating an opportunity for new players to enter the market by exploiting this gap.

Accordingly, PentaG-RAN explained that it provides an L1 PHY (physical layer 1) solution platform with hardware/software role division by integrating a powerful vector DSP (Digital Signal Processor), a PHY control DSP, a flexible 5G hardware accelerator, and other special components required for the modem processing chain.

CEVA claims that this can deliver up to 10x power and area savings compared to available FPGA and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) CPU-based alternatives. To further reduce silicon design risk and accelerate ASIC design, CEVA also offers co-production services to support PentaG-RAN customers in developing their entire PHY system, from concept to complete chip design.

Guy Keshet, general manager and head of the Mobile Broadband business unit at CEVA, said: “CEVA has been at the cutting edge of DSP technology in cellular infrastructure for the past decade and is working with leading OEMs to deliver the most advanced DSP architectures deployed in 5G RAN today. The PentaG-RAN platform leverages this extensive experience to deliver a 5G chipset for next-generation mMIMO systems and a next-generation platform solution to support emerging 8-RAN use cases.”