February 25, 2014, Seoul, South Korea – The explosive growth of smart connected devices and the increase in rich digital content are driving a flood of mobile data globally, and OEMs and telecommunications companies are facing a situation where they must significantly boost network performance while minimizing additional capital expenditures, improving power efficiency, and supporting 4G/LTE standards. While macrocells remain an essential part of wireless infrastructure systems worldwide, an increasing number of operators are turning their attention to metrocells to provide ubiquitous coverage across dense urban areas and large enterprises.

Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL, Country Manager for Korea Yeon-ho Hwang) proposes the next-generation QorIQ Qonverge portfolio of innovative single-chip base station SoCs to help operators address these challenges. Designed to enable operators to add capacity and provide enhanced coverage in high-demand environments, the new B3421 base station SoC utilizes Digital Front-End (DFE) technology that improves Power Amplifier (PA) efficiency and significantly reduces base station power and costs.

"Tareq Bustami, Vice President of Freescale's Digital Networking Business Unit, said, 'Freescale pioneered the single-chip base station market three years ago by launching the industry's first family of multimode wireless base station processors that scale from small to large cells.' The new QorIQ Qonverge B3421 device targets the rapidly growing metro area and reaffirms Freescale's commitment to wireless networking leadership. "Freescale continuously invests to stay ahead of market demands," he said.

According to market research firm ABI Research, the outdoor small cell market is expected to reach $3.6 billion in 2014, recording an annual unit growth rate of 125%.

This device’s embedded CPU core, DSP core, baseband accelerator, and DFE technology provide a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) that handles all base station processing tasks, from the front end to the backhaul. The integrated DFE capabilities, combined with industry-standard antenna interfaces, enable seamless RFIC interfaces and streamlined RF lineup optimization. Featuring Power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities to meet low-power requirements, support for JESD204B, JESD207, and CPRI interfaces to support various antenna schemes, PCI Express for WiFi chipset connectivity, and SATA and Ethernet SGMII backhaul interfaces for local content caching, the QorIQ Qonverge device is the industry's most integrated Metrocell base station SoC.

The B3421 device is optimized for simultaneous LTE and WiFi operation and supports LTE-TDD, LTE-FDD, and LTE-Advanced wireless standards. Advanced 4x4 MIMO algorithms, 3GPP standards up to Release 11, advanced interference cancellation schemes, eICIC, and carrier integration further improve bandwidth efficiency and enable OEMs and operators to prepare for the future.

"As service providers move to heterogeneous networks, there is an increasing number of cases where they seek metrocells to expand coverage and improve service quality in densely populated areas," said Linley Gwennap, a senior analyst at The Linley Group. “This renewed interest in metrocells is leading to a surge in OEM development activities,” he said, adding, “Freescale’s new B3421 SoC meets the demands of the metrocell market by providing high performance at low power through rich integrated features, such as the newly added DFE function.”

Operating within the PoE power range, the B3421 SoC leverages field-proven, industry-leading acceleration technology along with Power Architecture® e6500 dual-threaded cores and StarCore SC3900 DSP cores. Both of these cores represent the highest performance in their respective categories. As a result, it delivers exceptional performance supporting up to 256 concurrent users and superior bandwidth efficiency for highly dense user bases, such as large enterprises or urban environments.

Freescale provides a rich product and service integration system to support the QorIQ Qonverge B3 family, including commercial-grade VortiQa Layer 1 baseband software and field-proven Layer 1/PHY, thereby shortening time-to-market and delivering optimized performance.