CALGARY, CANADA & BATH, UK – 26 October 2011 – Picochip and TEKTELIC, developers of high quality and high efficiency cellular radio solutions and micro base stations for CDMA, UMTS, LTE and WiMAX networks, today announced that they are collaborating on a phased development of a new small cell LTE micro eNodeB platform. The collaboration will incorporate Picochip’s fully featured LTE development system for small cells, the PC9608, into a real world, carrier-class device ready for deployment that will deliver the highest output power in the smallest form factor available on the market today.
“As one of the pioneers of small cells, Picochip’s technology has always been at the forefront of the industry, particularly in LTE,” commented Barney Barnowski, Director, Business Development of Tektelic. “Working with Picochip gives us access to proven LTE technology that our customers can rely on and the ability to deliver a fully featured micro eNodeB platform supporting numerous LTE frequency bands, Tx power levels and number of users.”
The development will take place in two phases. The first phase will see Picochip’s PC9608 system incorporated into a complete, single board, small cell LTE solution ready for immediate deployment. The second phase will see the two companies collaborate to deliver a next generation multi-standard small cell device, encompassing support for 20MHz, dual-mode LTE and HSPA+, as well as ‘metro Wi-Fi’.
“This collaboration is testament to the power of our PC9608/09 system that has been helping many of our customers accelerate the development of their own LTE solutions cost effectively. The fact that it will also form the core of a carrier class device in real world deployments shows the power of our technology,” said Rupert Baines, VP Marketing of Picochip. “The relationship with Tektelic has been very productive, as demonstrated by the industry-leading integrated solution, with a direct roadmap to the multi-mode small cell system.”
Picochip’s PC9608/09 system was the first full hardware and software development platform for LTE small cells, delivering quick and simple development and prototyping to customers and bringing together full evaluation and prototyping capabilities. The core of the product is a carrier class software-defined LTE modem (FDD or TD-LTE) that is compliant with 3GPP standards and can be rapidly optimized and customized via an application programming interface (API). It also integrates baseband, software stack and RF functions and has passed interoperability testing (IOT) with both terminals and core ntworks.
