British chip manufacturers push the world's smallest 3G base station only U disk size

British chip maker Picochip announced on March 14th in Beijing that it will introduce the first PC3008 of its next-generation picoXcell femtocell system-on-chip family. Andy Gothard, marketing director of Picochip, told reporters that device manufacturers can use this device to design U-disk-sized devices. 3G base station in ultra-small size. The reporter saw relevant samples of the latest base stations in the world.

Andy Gothard said that the introduction of ultra-small home base stations will enable operators to easily add HSPA+ home base station functions to devices such as home gateways, cable modems, and set-top boxes. The high level of integration of the PC3008 significantly reduces the total component cost of 3G home base stations to less than $50.

The PC3008 is the first product in the PC30xx device family. It can simultaneously support eight users conforming to the 3GPP Release 7 HSPA+ (21Mbps downlink, 5Mbps uplink) specifications. This is the third generation of devices introduced by Picochip following the definition of the PC202 chip for the residential base station market and the establishment of the industry-standard PC3xx series in 2006. Like the previous two generations of products, the PC3008 uses Picochip's field-proven, robust baseband (PHY), which has been deployed successfully on more than 1 million base stations worldwide.

ABI's latest research report shows that in 2010, the shipment of home base stations was 1.3 million. This figure is expected to increase to 70.2 million in 2015, with a compound annual growth rate of 154%. Aditya Kaul, director of mobile network services at ABI Research, said residential residential base stations constitute the largest portion of home base station deployments to date and are expected to continue to dominate the market in the future. With smaller form factors and ever-decreasing costs, the integration of home base stations and home gateways has become extremely likely. In 2010, 17 operators provided commercial home base station services, which are expected to grow rapidly in 2011.

Picochip's technology is extensively present in most of the currently deployed home base station products, which is driving and facilitating this change. Andy Gothard said that Picochip has invested heavily in system testing to ensure the most robust and reliable PHYs and the most complete reference designs. Picochip hopes that PC3008 will be of great interest to Chinese OEMs and ODMs.