Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/19279-zte-selects-tis-keystone-multicore-socs-for-small-cell-base-stations

ZTE selects TI's KeyStone multicore SoCs for small cell base stations

February 26, 2013

ZTE Corp., a global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, has selected the KeyStone multicore System-on-Chips (SoCs) from Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) for its small cell base station products. TI's KeyStone SoCs are programmable multicore processors which enable ZTE to develop wireless base stations capable of concurrently supporting multiple 3G and 4G air interface standards.

"TI's KeyStone multicore SoCs are designed with SDR in mind," said Wangqiang Wen, GU product manager, ZTE. "TI's KeyStone's bitrate co-processor (BCP) AccelerationPac currently process UMTS and LTE packets, allowing us to build a true simultaneous dual-mode small cell product. In addition, TI's software platform provides a great base line enabling us to focus on developing differentiating soft radio features."

To address wireless carriers' ever increasing demands for lowering their capital expenses, ZTE is actively developing software defined radio (SDR) base station solutions. Based on TI's KeyStone architecture, ZTE's small cell products will allow network operators to easily change their wireless service features including supporting different standards or different combinations of standards for concurrent dual-mode by simply changing software in the field. TI's cutting-edge KeyStone SoC architecture has established the ideal balance between hardware acceleration of physical layer processing, firmware flexibility and software programmability for product differentiation.

"We are thrilled to collaborate with ZTE in creating small cell base station solutions characterized by power over Ethernet and true concurrent dual-mode," said Sameer Wasson, general manager, communications infrastructure, TI. "Our KeyStone SoCs deliver superior performance at a substantially lower power. In addition, our multicore software development kit and field-proven UMTS physical layer functional libraries shorten ZTE's time to market and also allows them further flexibility in differentiating their base station designs."