Qualcomm is aiming at the small and home business markets with the launch of a low cost small cell chip that supports both LTE and Wi-Fi.
The FSM90xx system on chip (SoC) is based on 28nm technology, which the manufacturer said has helped it to improve power consumption and lower the product’s cost.
It is pitched at OEMs and operators who are looking for ways to help them address the growing consumer demand for data and has also been designed for easy integration with existing equipment such as residential broadband gateways.
The chip makes use of the self-organising network techniques of Qualcomm’s UltraSON software and it maintains compatibility with the FSM99x, the multimode small cell chipset it launched last year. Hardware accelerators have been built into the chipset to speed up data processing for both LTE and Wi-Fi.
Dan Rabinovitsj, senior vice president at Qualcomm Atheros, said: “Qualcomm is bringing its mobile and networking heritage to bear for consumers, innovative OEMs, wired and wireless network operators. We cannot solve the 1000x data challenge with spectrum alone. Small cells are critical to enhancing network capacity and improving mobile broadband connections.”
Qualcomm will start to make small volumes of the chip available to selected customers in the second half of the year, with the first products using the chip likely to become available in the second half of next year.