Arctic Semiconductor, a provider of low-power, universal RF chipsets, has announced at MWC 2023 that its RF transceiver, IceWings, is powering a new universal 5G small cell infrastructure platform from Compal Electronics, one of the world’s largest ODMs.
The world’s first open ecosystem small cell platform leverages IceWings’ design integrated with NXP Semiconductor’s LayerscapeAccess LA12xxx programmable baseband processor to achieve the highest performance at the lowest power consumption and beats 3GPP standard requirements, all at a competitive cost. The platform is being demonstrated at Mobile World Congress 2023.
The new infrastructure platform can operate at any 5G FR1 frequency bands from 600MHz to 7.2GHz. A 4x4 MIMO solution, it is fully integrated with best-in-class components and supports throughputs beyond Gbps speeds. Customers across the globe can use the universal platform to produce cost-optimized, low-power 5G small cells and O-RAN radio units for a wide range of applications including all-in-one or distributed networks in public or private bands.
Compal selected Arctic’s IceWings, an RF transceiver with four integrated transmitters and receivers that supports a wide range of standards in signal frequencies below 7.2GHz. The new silicon is based on an advanced CMOS process node, providing superior performance with RF enhancements for both 5G sub-7GHz and mmWave infrastructure.
This integrated small cell system is based on NXP’s Layerscape multicore Arm SoC and is coupled with the new LA12xx software defined radio. This solution supports high throughput transmission and reception as well as highly complex digital functions including digital pre-distortion. The IceWings RFIC is highly integrated and delivers four transmit and four receive paths via a glue-less interface directly to NXP’s LA12xx baseband processor.
