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With the interest in femtocells increasing, plans are turning to femtos for the enterprise as well as residential applications. Most residential femtos can only accommodate up to about four users at the same time. Now Percello has introduced a 16-user system-on-a-chip (SoC) for enterprise and residential femtocells. The device can be used for both indoor and outdoor applications and in residential gateways.

The PRC6500 SoC is a fully integrated digital baseband chip for UMTS 3G applications. It will deliver high-speed packet access using HSPA+ with data rates of 21.6 Mbits/s downlink and 5.7 Mbits/s uplink while supporting 16 users. It also complies with 3GPP HNB specifications. The SoC’s architecture enables UMTS NodeB and RNC functionality to run on a single die.

Furthermore, the PRC6500 integrates an HSPA+ modem, a MIPS24Kc processor with peripherals, 3GPP L2 hardware accelerators, IPSec accelerators, embedded secure platform capabilities (DES, 3DES,AES, RSA, SHA-1/SHA-2), a timing and synchronization mechanism (IEEE1588/NTP), and a 2G/3G cognitive radio with peripherals such as an embedded USIM interface.

In addition, the chip can implement both low-cost, low-power simultaneous open and closed femtocells on a single radio. The PRC6500 allocates six dedicated channels for the closed part at 14.4 Mbits/s and 10 channels for the open part at 7.2 Mbits/s. And, designers can cascade the chip if they need a 32-user or 64-user solution.