Cavium Revs Up DPI, Outfits Korean SPs with Small Cells, and More

Cavium is at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week talking about its DPI hardware acceleration solution called the TurboDPI II.

As networks get more sophisticated, the people who run those networks want to know what’s happening on them, says Raj Singh, general manager of the wireless broadband group and digital home and office division at Cavium. This new solution, which he says is 10 times faster than the next fastest offering on the market, enables network operators to understand what kind of traffic is inside a packet so they can prioritize those packets as desired.

Cavium is also at the show this week talking about its small cell solution, which is in use by three Korean service providers. KT Telecom and LG U+ (announced this week) are using Cavium-embedded small cell solutions provided by CS, and SK Telecom is using a Cavium-enabled small cell solution supplied by Inno Wireless. Singh says that tens of thousands of these solutions have been shipped to these service providers, which began trials of the technology last August and started to use this gear in volume starting in December 2012.

Large populations in Korea use mobile services, creating significant service challenges for these providers. Some carriers have tried to address service availability by deploying femtocells, but Singh says there’s been “a bloodbath” in femtocells because those devices have not been successful in improving the customer experience. At least part of the reason for that, he indicates, is because such solutions lack density and capacity. Cavium’s small cell solutions, however, apply macro technology and are based on category 4 transmissions (which supports 150mbps downstream and 75mbps upstream) vs. category 3 transports (which is limited to 30mbps upstream), he says.

The definition of what an LTE small cell does is expanding, says Singh, explaining that some service providers are asking for small cell solutions that can support between 16 and 400 users. AT&T and Verizon both have issued requests for information on small cells, he adds.

On a separate front, Cavium this week announced that Huawei’s new AirSharing AM02 wireless media adapter uses Cavium’s CNW6611L media SoC for wireless display and home media streaming capabilities.