Broadcom Introduces Universal Digital Front End Technology with Industry's Widest Bandwidth Support for Wireless Base Stations

BEIJING, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

News Highlights:

• Single-chip solution with digital front end platform functionality for wireless base station radio applications
• Increases per channel instantaneous bandwidth up to 10x compared to current solutions
• Lowers power consumption for power amplifiers by up to 80 percent

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today introduced the BCM51030 devices with VersaLine^TM Digital-Pre-Distortion technology. Delivering the industry's widest bandwidth support for wireless base stations and emerging HetNet radio applications, the new solution offers the full functionality of a digital front end (DFE) platform on a single chip with up to 10x wider bandwidth support to address fragmented spectrum.¹ Visit www.broadcom.com to learn more.

The Broadcom BCM51030 devices leverage Broadcom's innovative VersaLine^TM Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) technology to adapt in real time to any combination of wireless protocols, including 2G, 3G and 4G signal combinations, power amplifiers and frequency bands. This versatility allows radio access network (RAN) OEMs to quickly address a diverging set of spectrum allocations and protocol combinations demanded by operators worldwide while supporting the widest bandwidth and highest power amplifier (PA) efficiency for macro cell wireless base stations in the industry, saving power consumption by up to 80 percent.² The ability to quickly adopt to new protocols and PA technology can shave months to years off of development time compared to custom DFE implementations, which require extensive optimizations to DPD algorithms for each and every system variable change to maintain acceptable bandwidth and power efficiency levels.³

Analysts predict an average of six connected devices per person by 2016, resulting in an exponential growth in wireless traffic that continues to challenge current networks while spectrum—an already finite and regulated resource—will become even more limited.⁴ Broadcom's BCM51030 devices improve the efficiency of existing macro-cell infrastructure and promote the re-use of spectrum in non-adjacent cells through small cells, remote radio heads (RRH) and active antenna systems (AAS) while delivering the wider bandwidth required to support a fragmented spectrum.

Market Drivers

• Move to LTE and multi-mode operation forcing need for 2x2 or higher MIMO 
  • Nine million subscribers are on LTE today out of 3.6 billion cellular users worldwide⁵
  • 15 million macro transceiver TX and RX DFE channels shipping in 2016⁶
• HetNet deployments to solve spectrum issues require scalability (2-16+ antennas, low-high bandwidths)
  • Small cell solution adoptions for increased spectrum reuse
• Wider bandwidth required to support fragmented spectrum with single radio to drive down CAPEX
  • Caused by spectrum scarcity and carrier consolidation with different spectrum holdings

BCM51030 Key Features

• Adapts automatically to any signal combination of MC-GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, LTE, and LTE-A
• Supports any PA technology (AB, Doherty, envelope tracking), transistor architecture (LDMOS, GaS, GaN)
• Tx and Rx processing including digital upconversion (DUC), crest factor reduction (CFR), digital predistortion (DPD), and digital downconversion (DDC)
• CFR and DPD Tx functions maximize higher-power amplifier (PA) output with minimal backoff
• Includes dual channel and quad channel devices that can be chained together for 8-16+ channel systems
• Complete analog, digital monitor system with user-programmable alarm responses maximize PA reliability
• Includes JESD204A/B serial interfaces to digital to analog converters (DAC) and analog to digital converters (ADC) to reduce signal requirements and save power

Availability

The BCM51030 is now sampling with volume production slated for December 2012.

Ron Jankov, Broadcom's Senior Vice President & General Manager, Processors and Wireless Infrastructure

"The need to deliver significantly higher wireless bandwidth within the constraints of a lower power envelope, spectrum fragmentation and scarcity is driving the market for a disruptive digital front end technology for next-generation base stations, RRH, AAS and small cells.  Broadcom's BCM51030 devices with VersaLine^TM DPD linearization offer OEMs and operators compelling differentiations in bandwidth, power savings and versatility."

Joe Madden, Principal Analyst, Mobile Experts

"With the deployment of LTE, mobile infrastructure radios will need to be scalable in new directions.  In particular, new base stations will need multiple radio channels to handle MIMO and AAS signals.  In addition, with Carrier Aggregation and new LTE frequency bands, the instantaneous bandwidth of a mobile link will be increasing by at least a factor of four over the next two years.   The market absolutely needs scalable semiconductor solutions that can handle multi-channel, wideband carriers at a wide variety of power levels.  The demand for SoCs to support metrocell and macrocell radios will grow to hundreds of millions of dollars over the next four years."

Resources: 
1 Supports up to 100MHz of instantaneous bandwidth/channel compared to current 5-65MHz RRH solutions
2 Up to 80 percent lower power amplifier consumption with a single radio head and wider bandwidth support compared to current solutions requiring two or three radio heads 
3 Digital Pre-distortion (DPD) compares the distorted output of the PA to the incoming signal and adapts input signal to drive the errors of the comparison to zero to improve PA efficiency and bandwidth support
4 CISCO Visual Networking Index, 2012 
5 Rick Merritt, EE Times, March 1, 2012
6 Mobile Experts Macro Base Station Transceiver Report, 2012

About Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a FORTUNE 500® company, is a global leader and innovator in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom® products seamlessly deliver voice, video, data and multimedia connectivity in the home, office and mobile environments. With the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and embedded software solutions, Broadcom is changing the world by Connecting everything®. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

Broadcom®, the pulse logo, Connecting everything^®, and the Connecting everything logo are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU.  Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts

SOURCE Broadcom Corporation; BRCM Infrastructure & Networking