SC6 is a high capacity, low power LTE base station
Whilst the SC5 platform allows the implementation of base stations for a variety of RATs, the intrinsic constraints imposed by the processing power available in the Zynq 7045 means that capacity, in terms of number of simultaneously active handsets and total throughput for example, is limited. To create a high capacity, low power LTE base station, cellXica developed the SC6 platform.
The SC6 platform can be thought of as an SC5 platform, with updated RFIC and a Marvell Octeon Fusion-M CNF7345 used as a coprocessor to implement the LTE specific functionality. The platform is capable of aggregating up to four 20MHz (80MHz total bandwidth) carriers and operate as a 4-sector 2×2 MIMO eNodeB or 4 different operator frequencies and bandwidths for Neutral Host MORAN.
The SC6000 is the first LTE base station based on the SC6 platform. It has been designed for small scale, indoor deployments. It can also be used for early stage development by equipment manufacturers who wish to make use of their own RF front end IP, which cellXica further facilitate through a reference design.
The SC6000 comprises a baseband card, an interposer card and from one to four banded RF modules.
- The SC6488 baseband card incorporates a Marvell Octeon Fusion-M CNF7345 LTE modem co-processor and a Xilinx ZYNQ-7045 management processor.
- The IP6042 interposer card allows the baseband card to be connected to up to four RF modules.
- Each RF module comprises a RF61XX integrated transceiver & RFFE card, incorporating an Analog Devices AD9375 (Mykonos) with DPD, supporting two TRX ports with up to 24dBm (250mW) per Tx antenna port. These are designed to support particular bands.