Are the big players in small base station components about to have their highlight moment?

Since the release of 5G commercial licenses in June 2019, China's 5G construction has achieved remarkable results. According to the data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, by the end of June 2022, China had deployed 1.854 million 5G base stations and the number of 5G users exceeded 450 million. China has built the world's largest 5G network, with 5G base stations accounting for more than 60% of the total number of 5G base stations in the world, and users logging on to the 5G network accounting for more than 70% of the world's 5G users.

At present, China's 5G network has covered all prefecture-level cities, county towns and more than 90% of townships and towns across the country, and wide coverage has been basically completed. Next, the focus of 5G construction will shift to filling blind spots and deep indoor coverage. Since this year, China Mobile and other operators have carried out centralized procurement of multiple batches of small base stations, thus kicking off the construction of 5G small base stations.

Figure 1: Small base station market size and forecast (US$ billion)

(Source: Prospective Industry Research Institute)

In this article, we will focus on the definition, necessity, deployment value and future development trends of 5G small base stations, and recommend electronic components for sale on the Mouser Electronics website that can be used in the design of 5G small base station solutions.

Small base stations are not exclusive to the 5G era. They have been deployed as early as the 4G era. However, since macro base stations can carry more than 70% of the traffic in the 4G era, small base stations are not used much. In the 5G era, due to changes in technology and network construction policies, small base stations have become a necessary supplement to macro base stations. It is particularly important to emphasize that small base stations have more advantages in indoor network construction. At present, China's 5G network layout is forming a situation of "macro base stations as the main and small base stations as the supplement".

According to the 3GPP (International Mobile Communications Standards Organization) specifications, wireless base stations can be divided into four categories, namely macro base stations, micro base stations, pico base stations and femto base stations. The industry generally refers to micro base stations, pico base stations and femto base stations except macro base stations. For small base stations.

Figure 2: Base station type classification

(Image source: Qorvo)

Compared with traditional macro base stations, small base stations are much smaller in product form, transmission power and coverage. They are miniaturized, low-power base station equipment. The power of small base stations is generally between 50mW and 10W, and the coverage range is 10 to 200 meters.

With the advantages of small size and low power, small base stations are not as difficult to locate as macro base stations and are flexible in deployment. They are especially suitable for deployment in crowded places and have obvious advantages in filling blind spots and deep indoor coverage.

In places where macro base station coverage is poor, small base stations help complete blind spot coverage through their small size and flexible deployment; in densely populated places, small base stations can perform frequency reuse within a small range of hotspot areas due to their low power. Improve system capacity and help macro base stations share traffic burden. These two major advantages have a positive role in promoting the popularization and penetration of 5G networks, especially in indoor application scenarios.

According to the "Indoor 5G Scenario White Paper" released by Huawei and other companies, more than 70% of services in 4G mobile networks occur indoors. As the types of 5G services continue to increase and industry boundaries continue to expand, the industry predicts that more than 80% of data services will occur indoors in the future. Therefore, indoor mobile networks in the 5G era are crucial and will become one of the core competitiveness of operators.

However, unlike 4G signals below 3GHz, the 5G carrier frequency has been increased. Currently, China's 5G spectrum is concentrated in the 3.3 to 3.6GHz and 4.8 to 5GHz frequency bands. The increase in frequency will lead to a decrease in signal penetration and diffraction capabilities. Acer base stations are generally located at high places such as building rooftops and towers, but are often affected by buildings and trees, resulting in uneven coverage. 5G signal penetration capability is weaker, and the signal attenuates more after passing through buildings, resulting in a large number of weak coverage areas and blind spots. There is either no signal in these places, or the signal quality is poor and cannot meet the indoor coverage depth requirements of users for normal applications.

On the other hand, traditional indoor distributed systems have certain problems in supporting high-frequency spectrum above 3GHz, and it is difficult to meet the requirements of 5G large-capacity data transmission through transformation; and the services in the 5G era have higher requirements on edge processing capabilities, and it is necessary to provide users with large bandwidth, low latency and widely connected mobile networks on the edge side. The traditional network structure cannot support 5G services on the edge side.

Of course, coverage can also be improved by increasing the number of macro base stations, but the construction and operation costs and site selection of macro base stations are great challenges. It is unrealistic to achieve full coverage by relying solely on macro base stations. Therefore, using macro base stations plus small base stations to achieve ultra-dense networking has become an inevitable choice. The market prospects of 5G small base stations are widely optimistic. Market research company DellOro predicts that the global 5G small base station market will reach US$25 billion in the next five years.

Compared with 4G small base stations, 5G expanded small base stations have planned diversified products such as 2T2R/4T4R, 5G single mode/4G+5G dual mode to face more scenarios, which makes the application of 5G small base stations more diverse and more comprehensive.

In terms of "blind spot filling" of 5G signals, 5G small base stations will be widely deployed in densely populated places such as residential areas and factories, to help achieve 5G signal coverage and innovative applications such as smart factories and smart agriculture; in terms of "hot spot filling" of 5G signals, for densely populated places such as airports, hospitals, shopping malls, and hotels, 5G small base stations will be flexibly deployed to increase the antenna area and antenna capacity in key areas, expanding small base stations from medium and low capacity scenarios in the 4G era to high capacity scenarios.

In the future, with the deep integration of 5G and more industries, the usage of 5G small base stations will further increase rapidly, opening up 5G terminal connections in scenarios such as power, manufacturing, transportation, chemical industry, and parks, and truly realizing the Internet of Everything based on 5G.

Looking to the future, there will be three obvious trends in the development of 5G small base stations.

As the development of the 5G small base station industry gradually enters a full-scale state, the centralized procurement of small base stations has also attracted the market's attention to the small base station supply chain, and small base station component manufacturers have ushered in their own highlight moments. Although small base stations are small in size, they have many functions and high requirements for performance and reliability, which are inseparable from high-quality electronic components such as chips and connectors. Only by selecting high-quality components can we create a small base station with small size, low power consumption, better RF performance, and more intelligence. Mouser Electronics is an electronic component procurement platform commonly used by engineers. Let us introduce to you the components suitable for small base station applications sold on the Mouser Electronics official website.

The core component of a small base station is its control chip, as shown in Figure 3. The main control chip is the "brain" of the small base station, and is mainly responsible for the realization of the core functions of the small base station. Since the small base station is small in size, has multiple functions, and has a high communication rate, the requirements for the main control chip are particularly high.

• One is FPGA, which excels in programmable flexibility;

• One is SoC, which has the advantage of extremely optimized performance while ensuring cost advantage.

Figure 3: Principle block diagram of 5G small base station

(Image source: NXP)

The device we recommend here is a high-performance small base station main control SoC from the manufacturer NXP Semiconductors . The material number is LX2162RE82029B . You can find this device on the Mouser Electronics platform by searching for this material number.

LX2162RE82029B integrates up to 16 Arm ^® Cortex ^® -A72 cores, uses 16nm FinFET process technology, and operates at a frequency of up to 2.0GHz. Under the premise of low power consumption, it brings excellent data path acceleration to network hardware platforms such as 5G small base stations. functionality, secure offloading and robust traffic management and quality of service.

The LX2162RE82029B is one of the NXP LX2162A processors. In fact, for a variety of application scenarios such as 5G packet processing, customized daughterboards, enterprise access points, Micro CPE, Mini-ITX, smart network cards, COM Express modules, white box switches, industrial control and building security, NXP provides LX2162A, LX2082A and LX2122A processor comprehensive solutions, of which LX2162A contains 16 cores, LX2122A contains 12 cores, and LX2082A contains 8 cores.

Figure 4: NXP LX2162A processor

(Image source: Mouser Electronics)

As shown in Figure 4 , the NXP LX2162A, LX2082A, and LX2122A processors have rich on-chip resources and high-end, high-speed communication capabilities. These processors offer 12 SerDes channels operating at up to 25GHz; up to 12 Ethernet ports supporting Ethernet speeds of 1, 2.5, 10, 25, 40, and 50Gbit/s; integrated up to 12 PCIe Gen3 channels supporting three ports up to x8 wide; and network acceleration features such as a 50Gbit/s security accelerator and an 88Gbit/s data compression/decompression engine.

Figure 5: LX2162A processor system block diagram

(Image source: NXP)

In addition to powerful packet offloading and Ethernet controllers for edge computing, these processors provide excellent computing performance, low-speed peripherals such as sensors, and the computing power to process and process all received information can be used in a single The package is suitable for small circuit boards, bringing flexible design and deployment options to typical applications such as 5G small base stations.

RF performance is one of the key indicators of small base stations. Excellent RF performance is inseparable from high-performance RF connectors, because mobile signals must pass through RF connectors to enter or exit the submodules and circuits in small base stations, such as using RF connectors to connect antennas or board-to-board interconnections. Poor connector performance will affect the receiver sensitivity or reduce the output signal power. The quality of the connector also affects the length of the interconnection cable between devices. Here we introduce two high-performance RF connectors from the manufacturer Johnson / Cinch Connectivity Solutions .

The first is a 1.0mm RF connector model 149-0901-811 , which can be used to meet the related test and measurement needs of semiconductor devices such as 5G small base station SoCs. Cinch 1.0mm Series RF Connectors are available with end-mount and panel end-mount screw-type connectors, spark plug connectors and in-line adapters. These rugged modules offer excellent performance and repeatability, low Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR), Low insertion loss and low return loss.

Figure 6: 149-0901-811

(Image source: Mouser Electronics)

In terms of characteristic parameters, 149-0901-811 supports 50Ω impedance, a frequency range of DC to 110GHz, a VSWR of 1.38 (maximum value at 110GHz), a return loss of 15dB (maximum value at DC to 67GHz) and 10dB (maximum value at 67GHz to 110GHz), an insertion loss of 0.7dB (typical value), and supports a durability of at least 500 plugging and unplugging cycles, which can meet the 5G testing needs of R&D laboratories.

I would like to remind everyone that at the bottom of the 149-0901-811 device details page, you can see the entrance to Bel 5G Solutions , which contains a wealth of connector products that can be used for 5G.

In general, Bel 5G solutions have the characteristics of high speed, low latency and high bandwidth, which are helpful for transmitting large amounts of data. The entire Bel 5G solution includes CINCH 5G solution, BEL POWER 5G solution, STEWART 5G solution, BEL FUSE 5G solution, BEL MAGNETIC 5G solution and TRP CONNECTORS/BEL 5G solution Several sub-series, the launch of these 5G solutions will drive the rapid growth of base stations and the large demand for backhaul connections. In terms of 5G small base stations, based on the above high-performance and rich Bel 5G solutions, factories and offices will be able to build their 5G network architecture.

The second is the SMK RF connector with model number 145-0701-841 . The SMK connector is a performance upgrade of the SMA. It uses air dielectrics and Noryl support beads to obtain a higher cutoff frequency than the SMA connector. At the same time, the thick-wall design of the component increases the contact area of ​​the external conductor at the interface, which can obtain more reliable electrical performance and higher mechanical strength than the SMA connector. The maximum VSWR of the SMK connector is 1.15:1 (DC to 18GHz) and 1.3:1 (18GHz to 40GHz). Threaded mounting, flange mounting and end-mounted mounting flange configurations are available. Field-replaceable and threaded (spark plug) connectors can be used for hermetic seals or accessory pins. Hermetic seals and accessory pins can be modified to various configurations for flexible application.

Figure 7: 145-0701-841

(Image source: Mouser Electronics)

Both connectors are performance choices for small base station applications and are suitable for different scenarios. Johnson/Cinch Connectivity Solutions connectors are RoHS compliant and 100% tested to ensure reliability and high performance. In addition to these two connectors, Johnson/Cinch Connectivity Solutions also has SMP, SMPM, 1.85, 2.4 and 2.92 series designed to meet the needs of 5G applications such as small cells, with each series featuring RF and microwave connectivity solutions. Characteristics, interested readers can go to the Mouser Electronics official website for relevant information.

The centralized procurement of small base stations by operators marks the official start of the construction wave of small base stations. As mobile communication technology further moves towards high carrier frequency bands, the distance between base stations will be further reduced, and diversified wireless access methods and various types of base stations will form macro and micro base stations. Heterogeneous ultra-dense networking architecture. The importance of small base stations will increase day by day, and there will be new demands for the chip integration and flexibility used in small base stations, as well as the performance of radio frequency connections. This requires small base station component manufacturers to continue to improve in line with technological changes.

As an important part of network infrastructure, the stability, reliability and consistency of small base stations after deployment have become core indicators. High-quality components are indispensable to ensure the stable operation and efficient processing of small base stations. Once there is a problem with the quality of components, the manufacturer's losses are often far higher than the value of the components. Mouser Electronics has always been committed to providing engineers with high-quality genuine components, and has a super rich material number and complete technical information in the industry. Small base station developers can prepare all the electronic components used in small base stations in one stop on the Mouser Electronics official website, allowing engineers to develop efficiently and worry-free.