Santa Clara, Calif. – July 28, 2011 – NetLogic Microsystems, Inc. [NASDAQ: NETL], a worldwide leader in high-performance intelligent semiconductor solutions for next-generation Internet networks, today announced that ZTE Corporation has selected its industry-leading digital front-end (DFE) processors for ZTE’s RRU8882 remote radio unit (RRU) platform for LTE common-platform base stations.

The exponential growth in mobile data traffic in the next decade, coupled with global spectrum scarcity, are forcing service providers and operators worldwide to push the limits on capacity and throughput for their limited spectrum.  This is in turn driving a need for next-generation base stations that can support dramatically wider bandwidth, significantly more signal channels and more protocols (2G/3G/4G) in each band.

NetLogic Microsystems’ best-in-class DFE processors are highly differentiated and ideally suited to address these challenging LTE requirements.  These processors deliver unparalleled performance of up to 5X increase in signal bandwidth and up to 9X increase in instantaneous bandwidth over available competing solutions, which dramatically improves 3G/4G LTE data rates.  In addition, NetLogic Microsystems’ breakthrough products enable the industry’s highest spectrum efficiency through the simultaneous processing of multiple signal channels per frequency band, as well as the multi-mode co-existence of 4G LTE, 3G and 2G protocols.  Moreover, the best-in-class DFE processor family from NetLogic Microsystems delivers up to 80 percent better transmit power efficiency over competing solutions, which enables OEMs to achieve higher data rates at much lower transmit power levels.

“NetLogic Microsystems’ DFE processors deliver significantly higher performance, bandwidth, spectrum efficiency and multi-standard concurrency that are beyond the capabilities of competing solutions,” said Dr. Zhao Xian-Ming, senior vice president at ZTE Corporation. “We have adopted the innovative processors from NetLogic Microsystems across multiple base station platforms, and we are pleased to now include our most advanced LTE common-platform RRU8882.  We believe NetLogic Microsystems’ DFE processors are truly differentiating and enable us to develop highly competitive products in the market.”

ZTE’s high-performance RRU8882 platform that incorporates NetLogic Microsystems’ DFE processors is a frequency-division duplexing (FDD) platform that uniquely supports multi-standard LTE, UMTS and GSM, as well as mixed-mode combinations of each standard.  The RRU8882 is a software-defined radio (SDR) platform that integrates two transmit paths, two main receive paths and two additional diversity receive paths, making it optimal for advanced LTE deployments.  The SDR capability built into the RRU8882 enables programmability and customization of different modulations, standards and spectrum allocation through software or firmware.

“We are excited to have been selected for ZTE’s latest LTE base station, and we are equally pleased to have ZTE as a customer across all our product families – multi-core processors, knowledge-based processors, 10 Gigabit Ethernet PHYs and DFE processors,” said Behrooz Abdi, executive vice president at NetLogic Microsystems. “By continuing to raise the bar on performance, bandwidth and efficiency of our leading-edge DFE processors, we are further separating ourselves from the competition to address the unique requirements of 3G and 4G/LTE base stations.” 

NetLogic Microsystems’ unique Universal DFE™ technology that is central to the DFE processor family enables base stations to support the broadest range of standards, protocols, frequency bands, and power amplifier architectures and technologies.  It is ideally suited for SDR, singleRAN or GERAN transceiver deployments using Doherty, Asymmetric Doherty and Envelope-Tracking power amplifiers in LDMOS, GaN and GaAs technologies. In addition, the Universal DFE technology enables intelligent, real-time calibration and adaptation to real-world environments and variations to ensure the highest performance and scalability for customer systems.

For more information about NetLogic Microsystems’ DFE processors, please contact sales@netlogicmicro.com.