picoChip has announced a new femtocell chip specifically designed to extend the femtocell into the realm of public access infrastructure such as metro femto, rural femto and strand-mounted systems. According to picoChip , the PC333 chip enables small basestations for urban hot-spots, city-centers or public access to be made and deployed at a cost far lower than traditional approaches.

The PC333 System-on-Chip (SoC) device  supports 32 channels (scalable to 64) for simultaneous voice and HSPA+ data. It also supports MIMO, soft-handover and  conforms to the Local Area Basestation (LABS) standard. LABS is the 3GPP definition for systems with higher performance than home-basestations, allowing higher capacity, 120km/h mobility and +24dBm output power for greater than 2km range.

“As data traffic rises inexorably, it is evident that conventional macrocell architectures cannot cope both from a cost and capability point of view. Service providers are going to be deploying different, innovative basestation architectures to address this challenge effectively,” stated Simon Saunders, Chairman of The Femto Forum. 

"Femtocells are the natural solution for data offload, and an essential part of the network of the future. This is true not just in the home or office, but as part of the wider area network, delivering capacity and coverage exactly where required. As such, public access femtocells represent an important evolution of the application of femtocell technology," he added.

"With the PC333 we have extended the parameters of femtocell performance to levels that would traditionally have been considered as ‘picocell’ or even ‘microcell’. This high performance coupled with zero-touch provisioning means carriers can routinely deploy femtocells as part of their wide-area network rollouts. We are already seeing the emergence of femtocells into rural and metropolitan-area basestations; the PC333 redefines the way femtocells are used and networks themselves are architected, leading to the dramatic growth of the basestation market," said Doug Pulley, CTO of picoChip.