Picocom, a leading semiconductor company, has licensed and deployed the CEVA-XC12 DSP solution in its forthcoming distributed unit (DU) baseband offload System-on-Chip (SoC) for 5G small cells. The CEVA-XC12 DSP is developed by CEVA Inc, a leading licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies.
Picocom is a semiconductor company that designs and markets products for 5G New Radio infrastructure. Along with Airspan, Intel, IP Access and Qualcomm, Picocom is a key contributor to the Small Cell Forum (SCF) 5G Functional API (FAPI) suite of specifications, designed to enable the 5G RAN/small cell vendor ecosystem and accelerate deployments of open, multivendor small cell equipment in 5G networks.
The Picocom 5G DU SoC is designed to be deployed in buildings to increase 5G coverage and reduce the processing load on 5G macrocells under the open RAN initiative. The CEVA-XC12 software-defined radio (SDR) DSP provides the flexibility and high performance required for 5G baseband processing in sub-6 GHz and mmWave networks, while its low power consumption requirements ensure the Picocom SoC is suited for small cell power constrained use cases.
Small cells are set to play a crucial role in the success of 5G networks, by diversifying the supply chain of network equipment, densifying network coverage and improving reliability. Picocom’s forthcoming SoC powered by the CEVA-XC12 DSP provides network operators with a highly-powerful, scalable solution to bring 5G coverage anywhere and enable new use cases ranging from industrial automation to neutral host networks.
Aviv Malinovitch, Vice President and General Manager of the Mobile Broadband Business Unit at CEVA, believes Picocom’s approach to the 5G small cell opportunity with a complete PHY solution is a compelling one, and CEVA is thus pleased to partner with them for their 5G processor architecture. The CEVA-XC12 delivers the performance to handle complex 5G workloads in software, ensuring complete flexibility to meet any 5G small cell use case.
