Illuminating the build-out of heterogeneous networks (HetNets) with small cell S

The global popularity and rapid proliferation of smartphones and other types of mobile devices has greatly expanded the amount of mobile data traffic throughout the wireless cellular network. Research studies from Mobile Experts, Cisco VNI and Ericsson have shown that global mobile traffic reached 1,000 petabytes per month and is projected to grow multi-fold in the coming years. This is a significant inflection point in the industry because operators have been working to increase their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) on a similar pace with that of the exploding consumer demand for data communications over their networks. The availability of Long Term Evolution (LTE)-based equipment is motivating upgrades to the mobile network because LTE enables higher spectrum efficiency, which in turn drives down operating costs. In parallel with this transition to 4G (LTE), mobile operators are also actively upgrading their infrastructure to heterogeneous networks (HetNet) composed of both small cell base stations and the existing macro base stations. Small cells can boost network capacity, throughput and efficiency. For example, AT&T is planning to deploy at least 40,000 small cells by the end of 2014. Texas Instruments’ (TI’s) TCI6630K2L System-on-Chip (SoC) has been designed as a highly integrated small cell base stations supporting LTE’s radio communication layers 1, 2, 3 and transport, as well as the Digital Radio Front End (DRFE) on a single chip to reduce circuit board real estate, cost and power consumption. To ease software development, TI provides the Base Station SoftwarePac, which jump starts small cell development and enables carrier-grade small cell deployments.