May 14, 2012, Seoul, Korea — Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL www.freescale.com ) today announced a new reference design for a Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) base station that is partially powered by two Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMICs).

This comprehensive baseband-antenna reference design combines a Freescale RF radio board with the QorIQ Qonverge BSC9131 base station SoC (System–on-Chip) and is a multi-protocol solution that supports various mobile phone bands, enabling developers to easily transition from 3G to 4G LTE. Procuring the base station SoC and RF devices from the same vendor offers the advantages of shortened time-to-market and ensured optimal compatibility and integration.

The Freescale GaAs MMICs mounted on the wireless board are the MMZ25332B and MMZ09312B amplifiers. Both MMICs offer excellent linearity and power efficiency and support multiple bands, including Band 1/WCDMA and Band 13/LTE. These MMICs can support multiple UMTS frequency bands through simple tuning, as well as the wireless reference board.

"Ritu Favre, Vice President and General Manager of Freescale's RF Business Unit, said, 'Building a comprehensive femtocell base station solution by purchasing components individually from various vendors is not only cumbersome but also expensive. Freescale has created a one-stop shop for femtocells by combining Freescale's GaAs MMIC and QorIQ Qonverge technologies on wireless boards, enabling designers to shorten development time and leverage scalability when transitioning from 3G to 4G.'"

The QorIQ Qonverge BSC9131 device features a scalable architecture that supports various wireless interfaces, including LTE, LTE-FDD & TDD, and WCDMA/CDMA. This device supports baseband processing by combining a Power Architecture® core with a high-performance StarCore DSP utilizing MAPLE-B (Multi-accelerator Platform Engine) technology. Furthermore, by adopting an interconnect fabric, next-generation node process technology, and seamless RFIC communication and antenna interfaces, it eliminates the need for additional chips, thereby reducing board space and costs.

Supported devices
The new MMZ25332B and MMZ09312B MMIC devices, developed by Freescale partner Benetel and mounted on the wireless board, belong to the family of RF GaAs MMIC solutions for femtocells. Additionally, Freescale's two low-noise amplifiers, the MML09211H and MML20211H, are included on the wireless board. These devices are specially designed to meet the receiver sensitivity requirements of femtocells. Further details on these devices can be found at www.freescale.com/RFMMIC .

Leader of base station applications
Freescale provides comprehensive semiconductor solutions for base station applications ranging from femtocells to macrocells, including Airfast RF power solutions, QorIQ Qonverge SoCs, and RF GaAs MMICs. Freescale, the world's leading provider of RF power LDMOS power transistors used in wireless base stations, holds numerous GaAs-related patents and was one of the first companies to develop devices based on GaAs technology. Furthermore, it recently announced the Airfast 28V AFT26HW050GS LDMOS transistor, specially designed for wide-bandwidth microcell/metrocell LTE applications.

Price and supply situation
The baseband-antenna reference design consists of two complementary boards: one QorIQ Qonverge femtocell base station development board and one or more RF radio boards. The BSC9131RDB QorIQ Qonverge reference design board is available for purchase at $900 (USD). The RF radio board is $1,700 (USD). The part number is PSC913XRFBD-XXYY, where "XX" and "YY" indicate the supported bands. Further details about the board can be found at www.freescale.com/BSC9131RDB .