Tom McQuade, GM of our CellEngine products and services shares his views with David Chambers of ThinkSmallCell in a recent article entitled:Tom McQuade, Radisys, explains tradeoffs between small cell silicon and software, in which he discusses several aspects around developing a solid small cell solution with a small cell vendor.
A key theme in any successful development is starting with trusted silicon partners such as Intel, Broadcom and Octasic. Tom outlines the screening process with our SoC (Silicon on a Chip) partners to ensure 3 fundamental capabilities (scalar processor(s) with adequate processing capacity, baseband processors with adequate signal processing and layer 1 firmware to decode the physical RF signal). Radisys CellEngine small cell protocol software is designed to interoperate with these underlying silicon capabilities to provide the required standards-based Layer 1-3 eNodeB functionality. With CellEngine product software as the foundation, Radisys Professional Services then works closely with the small cell access point vendor to tune and configure the CellEngine software to meet their requirements and business goals, often with a specific mobile operator LTE RAN deployment in mind.
Another key point made is that during the integration of new silicon capabilities, such as adding LTE-Advanced or support for LTE Unlicensed spectrum, Radisys ensures that external signaling interfaces, such as S1 and X2, remaining compliant with the 3GPP standards, so that communication with the core network goes smoothly and interoperability issues don’t surface. He reinforces that it is very important for us to stay active with the Small Cell Forum and ETSI plugfests to validate internetworking across the wider ecosystem.
In closing, Tom pointed out that HetNet support is increasingly important in carrier RAN strategy, based on the co-existence of Carrier WiFi with LTE small cells: “I don’t see a 100% market position for either technology – each carrier (network operator) will want to have as big a toolbox as possible, then determine what works best for them. We can expect more intelligence to be added to improve co-existence as times goes by”.
To read the full article: bit.ly/1gmnFXObit.ly/1gmnFXO
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