China's first 5G small base station baseband SoC is launched

Latest update time：2021-09-05

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In the past two years, the deployment of China's 5G communication system, especially macro base stations, has slowed down. One very important reason is the cost and power consumption. For example, the cost of purchasing a 5G macro base station by a Chinese telecom operator is 160,000 yuan, and the number of base stations in the entire 5G network may be about three times that of the 4G system. At present, the number of base stations in China's 4G and 3G networks is about 5.5 million. If 5G is to achieve the same coverage scale as 4G, conservatively calculated (twice the number), at least 10 million macro base stations are needed, and the direct investment is 1.6 trillion yuan. From 2012 to the end of 2019, the investment in all 4G macro base stations in China was only about 700 billion yuan. It can be seen that such cost pressure is unbearable. In addition, power consumption is also a big problem. The specific data is very shocking. If all the three major telecom operators deploy 5G macro base stations, their annual profits will not be enough to pay the electricity bill.

Therefore, it is impossible to use macro base stations in the entire 5G base station system. Low-cost and low-power solutions are needed to supplement and coordinate development. Small base stations are the ideal solution.

At present, small base stations have ushered in a good development opportunity for the following reasons: as the operating frequency of 5G increases, the coverage radius of macro base stations is greatly reduced, and indoor coverage is impossible, so small base stations are needed to fill in the blind spots; traffic demand increases exponentially, and 80% of the traffic occurs indoors, requiring small base stations to process the traffic; operators are under enormous cost pressure: the procurement and deployment cost (Capex) of macro base stations is at the trillion level, and if all macro base stations are used, the operation and maintenance costs (Opex) will also be unsustainable, so small base stations are needed to reduce operating costs; small base stations can replace macro base stations in some situations.

In the 5G communication system, the positioning and functions of small base stations in the network are the same as those of traditional macro base stations. Small base stations and macro base stations can be networked and work independently at the same time. Small base stations do not need to transmit data through macro base stations. Small base stations can even be networked and operated independently.

There are commercial small base stations on the market now, but their number is very small. The main reason is still the cost and power consumption. Generally, one base station costs 50,000 to 80,000 yuan. Compared with macro base stations, the cost is still on the same order of magnitude. It does not have a clear cost advantage and is difficult to promote.

It can be said that 5G provides an excellent development opportunity for small base stations that have been around for many years but have not yet developed. Whoever can first develop a baseband SoC with strong practicality and achieve large-scale mass production will be able to gain a competitive advantage in this blue ocean.

PC802

According to Dr. Jiang Yingbo, founder and CEO of Picocom, the PC802 small base station baseband SoC chip developed by the company will soon be launched to help customers solve the cost and power consumption pain points in applications. The minimum cost of a small base station using this chip is only about 2,000 yuan, but its downlink rate is not much different from that of a macro base station (macro base stations are about 6Gbps, and small base stations are about 4 Gbps). Therefore, the cost per bit of a small base station is very low.

The threshold for making small base station baseband systems is very high, and it requires a broad and deep understanding of chip design and communication systems. Picochi was founded in 2018. Most of the founding team came from the early Picochip company, with nearly 20 years of experience in 3G, 4G, and 5G small base station chips and baseband (physical layer) software development. The company is headquartered in Hangzhou and is a Chinese local IC design company. At present, there are very few manufacturers in the world that can make this kind of SoC, and there is only one in China.

The first chip, PC802, which is about to be released, is the world leader in performance, interface, cost and other aspects in the Sub-6Ghz frequency band. It adopts TSMC's 12nm process technology, supports URLLC, supports 4G/5G dual-mode, supports multi-carrier/carrier aggregation, and supports 5GNR (Sub-6GHz and millimeter wave frequency bands). The chip can be used as both an integrated solution and a distributed solution (with good scalability).

Regarding the computing power of the chip, Dr. Jiang Yingbo said that compared with the 4G system, the computing power of its 5G small base station solution can be increased by 20 times. Specifically, 4G has a bandwidth of 20M, and 5G has a bandwidth of 100M. Picotech's latest chip can support two 100M bandwidth capacities, which means a 10-fold increase in computing power. The chip can support four antennas, while traditional 4G small base stations mostly have two antennas. In this way, the computing power is increased by 20 times.

Currently, Picotech is connecting interfaces with multiple operators and equipment manufacturers so that the chips can be deployed on a large scale as soon as possible.

Chip design concept

One of the biggest challenges in developing small base station SoCs is to effectively control power consumption while increasing computing power.

When talking about the design concept of PC802, Dr. Jiang Yingbo said that the design of this small base station baseband chip has a very high technical content. From the initial design architecture construction stage, its specialization was taken into consideration, and the corresponding functions were "hardened" as much as possible, while ensuring sufficient flexibility to cope with various application scenarios and standards. This requires high software and hardware segmentation capabilities, which requires a lot of accumulation to achieve, and this is also the difficulty of designing this type of chip.

Dr. Jiang Yingbo believes that as the effect of Moore's Law becomes weaker and weaker, in order to further improve computing power, a heterogeneous approach must be adopted to design SoCs. This is also the basic idea and method of Picotech's small base station baseband SoC design. Many commonly used data processing function modules are "hardened" inside the chip, thereby further improving computing power while better controlling power consumption.

In my opinion, this chip design concept is exactly the same as DPU, that is, the internal architecture of the chip is specially processed according to the data, so that the corresponding functional design has strong specificity. Dr. Jiang Yingbo said that according to the characteristics of the baseband, the programmability of the CPU should be maintained, and other functions that do not require high flexibility should be "hardened" to form an "accelerator". In this way, while improving performance and efficiency, power consumption will not be significantly increased. In addition, it is not just a computing engine like DPU. It requires high communication technology and experience accumulation of the development team, as well as the depth of understanding of standards.

ORANIC

In addition to chips, PicoVio also provides physical layer software and development boards to provide customers with turn-key solutions.

For example, the ORANIC board integrates four PC802 chips and provides four 25G Ethernet SFP connectors, which can support multiple radio units (RUs) through eCPRI/Open Fronthaul fronthaul and support up to 32 antennas. While supporting the 5G NR physical layer (PHY), the ORANIC board can also run LTE PHY. LTE is a required function for indoor base stations to ensure support for user terminals that only have LTE functions.

After an independent evaluation, one of PicoVehicle’s customers believes that ORANIC boards can reduce the power consumption of Layer 1 and Layer 2 by more than 75%, that is, the power consumption of O-DU processing corresponding to a 2T2R O-RU is reduced from 74 watts to 17 watts. In addition, ORANIC boards can greatly reduce the number of servers required at the edge, and another PicoVehicle customer estimates that it can be reduced by three times, because dedicated and optimized chips are used to meet the processing requirements of PHY (Layer 1), which has demanding processing power. This will also enable distributed RAN equipment to be deployed in places that are currently unlikely to be deployed, such as roadside cabinets.

ORANIC boards support flexible RAN network deployment and can be used in rural suburbs, open outdoor areas, densely populated urban areas, Industry 4.0, stadiums, enterprises, cities, and super-densely populated urban areas. The more densely populated the area, the more useful it is.

The development of 5G is limited by the expansion of application scenarios, and the SoC performance of Picotech can help small base stations develop and expand many application scenarios that were previously unexpected. Currently, such a thing is happening at one of the company's major customers.

*Disclaimer: This article is originally written by the author. The content of the article is the author's personal opinion. Semiconductor Industry Observer reprints it only to convey a different point of view. It does not mean that Semiconductor Industry Observer agrees or supports this point of view. If you have any objections, please contact Semiconductor Industry Observer.

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