September 18, 2014, Seoul, Korea – Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.com, Country Manager for Korea Yeon-Ho Hwang) today announced VortiQa L1, a new baseband software for TDD-LTE in the QorIQ Qonverge BSC913x base station SoC (System-on-Chip) solution family, to help OEMs and ODMs rapidly deliver small cell solutions to the emerging TDD-LTE market.

With the explosion of mobile data worldwide, OEMs and telecommunications companies have been required to significantly improve network performance while increasing power efficiency at optimal cost and supporting various 4G/LTE standards, including TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE. TDD-LTE macro networks have already been used in Japan, and operators are introducing TDD-LTE in China, India, and North America as well. Many operators are expected to utilize a combination of TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE to provide customers with more data capacity.

Raja Tabet, Vice President of Software at Freescale Digital Networking Group, stated, "Operators are increasingly seeking small cell solutions to complement broader macro cell deployments with services such as video streaming using MBSFN (Multimedia Broadcast Single Frequency Network), VoLTE (Voice over LTE), and extended service coverage. Freescale VortiQa L1 baseband software supports both TDD and FDD, enabling operators worldwide to adapt to future market and technology requirements and design systems based on existing hardware and software. Thanks to optimized LTE software and reduced component costs, operators can implement cost-effective and power-efficient small cell solutions using a large volume of Freescale QorIQ Qonverge processors at a lower cost."

The new Freescale VortiQa software is the industry's most integrated to extend service coverage across high-user-density environments and large-scale enterprises

It is designed to be seamlessly scalable with the Freescale QorIQ Converge B3421 Metrocell platform, a high-end Metrocell base station SoC. This product has the flexibility to support various bandwidths including 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz, and can support up to 256 users.

"Stephane Teral, a senior analyst at Infonetics Research, said, 'As market trends shift from expanding mobile service coverage to capacity upgrades through network densification, the LTE sector is becoming the catalyst behind the small cell market, which is expected to grow to about $2.5 billion by 2018.' He added, 'As more network operators begin installing TDD networks, Freescale's software solutions, which support hybrid FDD and TDD deployments thanks to LTE flexibility, are gaining a favorable position in the market.'"

The TDD-LTE VortiQa L1 software currently available is 3GPP Release 9 compliant and includes integrated cell discovery software. Along with fully functional LTE L1 software, Freescale has developed a rich partner partnership system that provides BOM-optimized hardware designs and fully integrated and tested L2, L3, and management software to support rapid deployment in commercial networks.