By Iain Davidson

My year began snow-bound, stuck in Munich. Now the year is coming to a close, and I find myself again snow-bound, stuck – although luckily at home – near Glasgow. Between the two periods, I was twice thwarted by volcanic ash. I travel quite a bit, and during my frequent city hopping this year, I found myself constantly searching for a connection. Wi-Fi is excellent when you have it, but it can be a nomadic experience. I was left frustrated in some of the most obvious places. Downtown areas, transportation hubs, trains, ferries, buses, and rural areas (crossed by rail and road or not), to name a few. The mobile coverage that I usually take for granted was never there – and I’m not referring to low data rates. There were no signals to be found. It’s just not everywhere you need it to be!

Without question, I’m convinced of the need for mobile broadband everywhere.

You’ve probably heard the industry is tackling this challenge with cost and energy-efficient approaches. We can look forward to a mix of large and small-cell base stations deployed to expand coverage and increase capacity, which will increase operator and service revenues. (Let’s face it, if the experience is good, the consumers will pay.)

What you may not realize is that Freescale base station technology, already mature and well deployed, is helping solve the mobile broadband everywhere challenge. Recently, Freescale’s P2020 and MSC8156 AMC reference design (P2020-MSC8156AMC) was awarded the 4GWE LTE Visionary Award. This solution was recognized for its unprecedented combination of digital signal processing and communications processor technology in an industry-standard AMC form factor to provide a complete Layer 1, 2 and 3 digital baseband processing platform. The combination of Freescale’s QorIQ P2020, with the MSC8156 digital signal processor (award-winning in its own right) creates a multi-standard capable platform for a new generation of radio standards such as LTE, WiMAX, WCDMA and TD-SDCMA.

Most mobile internet users probably don’t care what’s inside a base station and maybe they don’t even care where they are situated. But they should. The highest bandwidths are available closer to the mast. The high costs associated with base station site acquisition and operation and the high costs of “backhauling” heavy data traffic have constrained base station placement. Technology like the P2020-MSC8156AMC is part of the future. High performance, low power and flexible platforms will allow operators to deploy base stations more freely and according to the needs on the ground.

The award and recognition from 4GWE and TMC last month was of course a very exciting event as it represents industry-wide recognition for the advanced engineering, foresight and innovation behind the platform.

Here are a few more details around the solution.

From packets to modulations – This powerful mix of high performance multicore processors provides a platform on which the entire digital baseband processing chain can be implemented. Everything from the IP Packet Transport side with IP encryption and QoS, the scheduling, control and header compression within the Layer 2 and 3 and then the physical layer mapping of the data/control plane information onto the carriers to provide a digitally modulated output which is then transmitted to the RF subsystem stage of the base station. This is key for a compact design. When we talk about small cells, we mean smaller capacities (users) but we also mean small physical size. From the mobile user’s perspective, the tight integration helps deliver lower network latencies, which provides a more responsive system and ultimately better user experience.

Scalable portfolio – The scalability in Freescale’s DSPs and QorIQ communications processor families mean there is a solution for macro- as well as micro- and pico- base station applications. The mezzanine design method used for the AMC allows it to be adapted for large-scale baseband processing farms by plugging three MSC8156 tiles onto the AMC basecard. The MSC8156AMC (shown below) can be used together with higher-performance QorIQ Communication Processors (eg P4080) – already a popular combination in the industry – to address multi-sector macro-base station systems. Having the same processor core technologies and same software baseline across the equipment portfolio means lower R&D costs, a faster time-to-market and easier to upgrade or adapt once deployed.

Small-cell base stations make sense all round.

•          Lower CAPEX/OPEX for the operator

•          Less congested mobile backhaul networks

•          Better coverage & higher data-rates everywhere

•          Stronger potential for customer acquisition and retention

The trick, as always, is fast time-to-market with economic and green solutions. The P2020-MSC8156AMC and its eco-system is already accelerating progress.

•          World-class DSP and Comms Processor SoC technology delivers the performance/power density

•          Comprehensive software development platform

•          Software re-use across the portfolio means lower NRE costs  and faster development

•          Industry standard form-factor makes deployment an immediate option

So, yes, I work for Freescale and I enjoy the techie stuff. What we all want to enjoy is a mobile broadband experience which allows us to take our social networking, email, TV, video and gaming wherever we go – and whatever the weather. That means high bandwidth, low network latencies and a base station deployment pattern which keeps us in reach.