Learn from 7 aspects how optimized chips will open up the small base station market

Since the opening of the first commercial telegraph line in 1844, the global telecommunications industry has been demonstrating the most advanced technical and economic progress to the world. All aspects of the industry, including technological innovation, emerging businesses, economies of scale, service quality, and interconnection (standardization), are inseparable from the latest technology and precise business calculations and designs. With the large-scale deployment and increasing penetration of 5G in the early stage, the technical and economic evaluation of 5G communication services will enter a new stage. At the same time, operators have begun to bid for the introduction of 5G small base stations, and it is still those small chips that drive major technical and economic changes.

Below we will introduce how optimized and innovative chips will change the deployment and operation of 5G from seven aspects.

1. RAN diversity is more than just more vendor choices…

For a variety of reasons, operators want to see more mobile device suppliers to choose from. This means that most industry discussions about Open RAN focus on one outcome: increasing supplier diversity. Our industry will benefit from a more diverse RAN supplier base, but there is more to diversity than just seeing more names in the supply chain. A distributed RAN architecture supports multiple deployment methods, helping to provide the best user experience.

2. We are seeing an increase in diversity on many levels…

Network and business requirements are becoming increasingly diverse. To use new spectrum resources, equipment must be flexible enough to support an ever-increasing range of frequency bands, from sub-GHz to millimeter wave (mmWave), from licensed to unlicensed bands, from shared to dedicated bands, often in different combinations in different countries. Network equipment must also support different generations of mobile networks, from 2G to 5G. To profit from the deployment of 5G networks, operators aim to provide services with different latency and throughput requirements for different application scenarios.

To meet the needs of these use cases, they face increasingly diverse deployment environments and capacity requirements, with indoor, dense urban, transportation networks, and rural and suburban areas all presenting very different coverage and cost configurations. Finally, the way mobile networks are funded, deployed, owned, and operated is changing. With the emergence and growth of neutral third-party models, managed networks as a service, and private networks in unlicensed shared and dedicated spectrum, equipment vendors must realize the need to be able to support a range of deployment architectures.

3. Small base stations are diverse in nature…

In the diverse architecture of mobile networks, small base stations are often considered a solution to meet some limited requirements and are often seen as part of a homogeneous product. But even in the field of small base stations, there are many differences in features, functions and architecture. Although small base stations are just base stations with a smaller coverage radius, their functions may include supporting different frequency bands, number of users and power consumption levels.

The architectural diversity is related to how small cells implement functional partitioning for RAN processing, and the related fronthaul and backhaul requirements. There is also diversity in how small cells are deployed/operated, such as dedicated private networks, neutral third-party deployments, or operator-deployed networks. 3GPP is not going into sleep mode, there are only more features and requirements on the roadmap. Therefore, small cell developers need to take all these variables into account.

4. Diverse environments require efficient responses

Operators and their suppliers need to be able to meet these different requirements economically and efficiently. Operators need a RAN that matches the environment so that it can adapt to the needs of the surrounding environment. This means that solutions suitable for different network architectures, deployment situations and different application scenarios need to be obtained. This also means relying on a variety of optimized systems to support these solutions. It is impossible for developers to design different, end-to-end solutions for each instance, nor is it possible to use only one solution to adapt to various diverse requirements.

5. Flexible chip solutions can provide answers…

"The feedback we've received at Picocom is that there needs to be commercially available silicon that enables more diverse solutions that vendors can tailor to service and deployment requirements. Our raison d'être is to design something that allows for as many permutations as possible on a single chip and still achieves the best possible cost point and low power that you would expect from an optimized system-on-chip approach."

6. Chip + software design can meet mission requirements...

We can achieve diversified multiplication by applying good semiconductor economics. We support flexible solutions by enabling new suppliers to participate and design products based on architectures with suitable interfaces. Supporting higher or lower PHY splits is an example: we use the same chip to support higher or lower splits, with specific software to achieve differentiation. This provides system developers with a common platform that is flexible enough to meet the different needs of the industry.

7. RAN diversity can be real…here’s how.

Achieving RAN supplier diversity is currently a strategic driver for mobile network operators (MNOs). However, it must be based on silicon solutions that support suppliers to provide optimized solutions at the right cost point and power consumption level. By supporting a distributed and open architecture, flexible silicon solutions can achieve the ultimate goal of supplier diversity.

Picocom has built and will continue to deliver optimized and flexible silicon and software solutions that enable operators to meet their diverse network needs and take advantage of a more diverse supplier market.