Feature Article

Free eNews Subscription>>
March 03, 2014

Texas Instruments and NSN Push Innovation on Base Stations

Texas Instruments – a major manufacturer of electronics and analog technology components – has teamed up with Nokia Solutions and Networks – a major specialist in mobile broadband – to deliver the world's next-generation indoor small cell base stations for mobile networks. This new base station will use NSN's technology in its Flexi Zone product line, allowing up to 400 people to connect to the internet through their mobile devices. This is in contrast to the 32-user limit imposed by Ethernet-powered networks.

Right now, the mobile world is facing a dilemma. As speeds get faster, base stations have to become more densely situated. LTE uses rather small cells, so for an efficient distribution of bandwidth, there needs to be more of them within a limited area than UMTS/EV-DO cells. This makes investment in LTE technology a slightly more precarious process.

NSN's new FlexiZone small cells will have TI's new KeyStone system-on-a-chip (SoC), making it a more versatile offer than what has previously existed in NSN's product line so far, with higher performance delivered at less power consumption.

Troy Coleman, product line manager at Texas Instruments' small cell base stations department, said, “From our in-depth discussions with service providers, we understand how critical it is for supppliers like TI to facilitate interoperability between outdoor macro cells, outdoor small cells, and indoor small cells. By selecting our KeyStone SoCs across a range of wireless infrastructure products, NSN is effectively addressing the operators' needs with a high-performance, low-power solution enabling scalability and interoperability across platforms.”

Right now, these new base stations offered by NSN are the smallest micro cells available for indoor use. They not only impress us with their size, but also offer enormous performance maintaining the capabilities of macro stations while at the same time reducing the total cost of ownership by 30 percent. 




Edited by Cassandra Tucker


FOLLOW MobilityTechzone

Subscribe to MobilityTechzone eNews

MobilityTechzone eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the Wireless industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter