Bath, England: The PC333 system-on-a-chip from picoChip is the first chip designed to extend femtocell technology into the realm of public access infrastructure such as metro femto, rural femto, and strand-mounted systems, according to the company.
Also, the PC333 is the first femtocell chip to support multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), the first to support soft-handover, and the first to conform to the Local Area Basestation (LABS) standard, picoChip says.
Building on the success of the industry-standard PC302 and PC312 products, the PC333 enables small basestations for urban hotspots, city centres, or public access to be built and deployed at a cost far lower than traditional approaches, radically changing the economics of network infrastructure.
The PC333 represents a significant step in bringing a complete 3GPP Release 8 Local Area 42-Mbits/s HSPA+ basestation onto a single chip. LABS is the 3GPP definition for systems with higher performance than home basestations, allowing higher capacity, 120-km/h mobility, and +24-dBm output power for ranges greater than 2 km.
Further, picoChip says the PC333 is the first femtocell chip to support 32 channels (scalable to 64), each with both voice and HSPA+ data and, with picoChip’s smartSignaling technology, in excess of 400 simultaneous smart-phone users. Two of the devices can also be cascaded to support 64 active channels.
Sampling in the fourth quarter of 2010 to lead customers, the PC333 builds upon the feature set of picoChip’s picoXcell PC3xx family of products and offers customers a seamless migration path with pin and code-compatibility.