RF&WirelessBlog

Dual IF VGA for base station transceivers offer ‘best noise figure’

IDT has announced its FlatNoise dual intermediate frequency (IF) variable gain amplifier (VGA) for multi-mode 2G/3G/4G wireless base station transceivers. IDT says its devices offer the industry’s best noise figure (4 dB) for maximum gain and virtually no degradation when gain is reduced, improving quality-of-service (QoS) and easing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) requirements of the downstream data converter to reduce system cost.

Ubidyne to show active antenna system for 700MHz LTE at Mobile Word Congress

Ubidyne has announced that it will be featuring a new active antenna solution for the US LTE 700MHz digital dividend band at next month's Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona. The uB700 Antenna Embedded Radio with flexible beam forming and tilting capabilities has just completed independent network trials with a leading US mobile operator, reportedly delivering double throughput at the cell edge and an increase of over 40% cell capacity with the same output power. Ubidyne says these results show that operators can use active antenna technology to address the exploding demand for wireless data by maximising coverage and capacity from their existing macrocells before they need to invest in small cells.

In addition to the new uB700, Ubidyne's uB900 Antenna Embedded Radio supports GSM, UMTS and LTE in the 900MHz frequency band to address mobile networks in Europe, Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Middle East. Future products are also in development for the European digital dividend bands of 800MHz and highband up to 2.6GHz as well as multi-band solutions.

By removing the need for bulky coaxial feeder cables, remote electrical tilt assemblies and additional amplifiers on antenna towers and masts, Ubidyne says that its active antenna technology significantly reduces installation costs and energy consumption while improving radio performance, deployment flexibility, coverage and network capacity. OPEX costs and outages are further reduced by a self-healing mechanism that secures antenna coverage in the event of a system failure.

"The US trials show that active antennas can significantly increase cell capacity using vertical sectorisation and double the uplink throughput at the cell edge as well as increase the coverage area with independent uplink and downlink tilting," said Michael Fränkle, CEO of Ubidyne. "Active antenna technology offers end users a continuous service, while operators will save both CAPEX and OPEX costs; we have the potential to dramatically change the radio architecture and operations of mobile communications without migrating to small cells at tremendous cost. Active antennas have arrived and we are seeing increasing interest and demand from operators around the world."

Low-distortion mixers improve system IM3 performance while reducing power consumption

IDT has released two low-power, low-distortion RF to IF mixers for cellular base stations. The company says that the new devices improve system third-order intermodulation (IM3) performance and reduce power consumption, resulting in improved quality of service (QoS) and enabling smaller enclosures with increased reliability in 4G wireless infrastructure applications.

Joint solution enables high-performance LTE femtos

At 4G World, Aricent and Picochip announced the launch of a joint LTE eNodeB reference framework. The carrier-class product is a complete solution design, from RF interface through to S1 and X2 interfaces and includes Aricent base station software stacks integrated with Picochip baseband and silicon. Rigorously tested for functionality and performance, the base station solution is designed to help telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) deliver high-performance base stations in multiple form factors, including femto, pico, metro and micro-cell configurations and is available for both LTE FDD and TD-LTE variants.

First public demo of Cavium’s base station-on-a-chip

Cavium is set to demonstrate its Octeon Fusion small cell base station on a chip technology in public for the first time later this week at the 4G World 2011 conference (October 25-27 in Chicago).

Cavium unveils base station on a chip family

Cavium has unveiled the Octeon Fusion family, a small cell base station-on-a-chip series designed for LTE and 3G small cell base stations, including picocell and micro base stations. Octeon Fusion processors combine the company’s MIPS64 based multi-core architecture with purpose-built Baseband DSP cores, extensive LTE/3G hardware accelerators and digital front end (DFE) functionality into a single chip.

VGA modules deliver linearity for base stations

Avago’s latest high-linearity variable gain amplifier (VGA) module for base transceiver station (BTS) applications replaces existing discrete solutions, providing significant board space savings and shortening design cycle time. The ALM-81224 VGA module operates in a broad frequency band (1450 to 2750 MHz) and addresses cellular BTS automatic gain control (AGC) and temperature compensation circuitry applications.

FPGA-based Serial RapidIO Gen2 Solution aimed at base stations

Altera is claiming an industry first with its Serial RapidIO Gen2 FPGA-based solution, aimed at 3G and 4G wireless base station deployments.

Picochip CTO: “London needs 70,000 small cells for world-class mobile broadband”

According to Picochip CTO Doug Pulley, for London to offer genuinely world-class, LTE everywhere mobile broadband, it will require the installation of 70,000 small cells across the capital, including 2,000 nodes covering the Underground network by 2015.

Qulacomm 16 and 32 user chipsets for enterprise femtocells now available

Qualcomm has extended the availability of its Femtocell Station Modem FSM9216, FSM9816 and FSM9832 chipsets for enterprise femtocells. The 16-user version of the enterprise FSM chipsets for UMTS and CDMA are available now, while the Femto-Wi-Fi integration hardware platform and the CDMA version of the FSM chipset with the expanded 32-user support are scheduled for availability in the second half of 2011, Qualcomm says.