Date: 08/05/2012

TD-SCDMA small cell reference design from Mindspeed

Mindspeed Technologies has announced the product for enterprise and public access Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) small cells. Combining Mindspeed's Comcerto C1000 CPE processor and PC205 baseband with the PC8818 software, the new 16-user reference design provides small cell coverage to the mobile market.

"Everyone is in agreement over the need for small cells, particularly to deliver capacity in enterprise and urban environments, and this is no different for TD-SCDMA," said Yingbo Jiang, vice president and general manager of China's wireless business unit, at Mindspeed. "We are the first and only company to support this massive market with an SoC solution, and have seven customers using our TD-SCDMA solution. Beyond 3G, we are the only company to have demonstrated both Frequency-Division Duplexing (LTE FDD) and Time-Division Duplex Long-Term Evolution (TD-LTE) for small cells, and we are working on dual-mode combining TD-LTE and TD-SCDMA."

Mindspeed's acquisition of Picochip combines the best of each company's silicon expertise, with the PC205 baseband processor and the C1000 CPE processor working together on the PC8818 software stack for 16-user systems.

"Picochip has a strong history in the Chinese market and it's great to see this continue after the acquisition by Mindspeed," said Yang Hua, secretary-general, TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance (TDIA). "China Mobile is the biggest operator in the world with almost one billion subscribers. Small cells are the only way to provide coverage and capacity to this many people, particularly in dense urban areas and this makes the new reference design from Mindspeed very important to the Chinese market."

Building on Mindspeed's existing solution - the PC8808 four-user TD-SCDMA system for residential applications, using Mindspeed's PC202 single chip - the new reference design has been tailored to allow customers to easily migrate across.

The new PC8818 software stack is fully compatible with China Mobile's TD-SCDMA enterprise femtocell specification. The higher performing PC205 is also pin-to-pin compatible with the PC202, enabling customers to reuse their residential femtocell hardware design.