Lime, PicoChip building femtocell reference design

LONDON, UK: Lime Microsystems Limited, based in Guildford, England, and PicoChip Designs Limited, headquartered in Bath, England, are collaborating in order to develop a reference design for femtocells for third-generation and fourth-generation communications.

The reference planned platform, according to a joint statement from the two companies, is capable of operating in all frequency bands of interest – including the existing and upcoming bands.

The platform is to be based on the LMS6002, the multi-band, multi-standard RF transceiver IC of Lime Microsystems, and the PicoXcell baseband processor of PicoChip Designs.

The LMS6002 operates at user-selectable frequencies between 375-MHz and 4-GHz. It is also suitable for LTE, CDMA2000, WCDMA/HSPA, and WiMAX standards.

The transceiver, the two companies said, can be digitally configured so as to operate in the full range of frequency bands, with 16 user-selectable signal bandwidths of up to 28-MHz. And, this not only eliminates the need for individual transceiver chips for each of the different bands but also allows a small cell-base station to be reconfigured simply and quickly.

Philippe Roux, vice-president (business development) of Lime Microsystems, said in the statement that the configurable nature of the reference design enables deployment of femtocell using less common cellular frequencies like 700-MHz or 1.5-GHz.

The planned reference platform, Philippe Roux added, will enable the mutual of the customers of Lime Microsystems and PicoChip Designs to speed up development cycles for femtocell products. Also, the reference platform will support easier migration from 3G to 4G technology.