Picochip and Wavesat announced they have successfully completed interoperability testing between Picochip's PC960x LTE small cell base station solution and Wavesat's Odyssey 9000 family of UE chipsets.
The event represents the fruit of the two companies' memorandum of understanding announced in March 2010 regarding end-to-end LTE interoperability testing of their products. Picochip and Wavesat aim to offer LTE network operators, systems integrators and OEM/ODM system manufacturers ready-to-ship eNodeB reference designs.
"Open interoperability is key to the success of any cellular technology," noted Peter Jarich, service director with Current Analysis. "To be sure, interoperability usually develops over time. Here, the fact that semiconductor reference designs are of a maturity and quality to support end-to-end system test, verification and IOT is an encouraging sign for the pace of LTE development and likely to accelerate the maturation of the market.
The first Wavesat Odyssey 9000 chipsets feature CAT-3 performance for user equipment such as USB dongles, data cards, mobile handsets and tablets. These were tested with Picochip's PC9608/9 "small cell" base station development platform developed jointly with Continuous Computing (CCPU), connecting to both network test and commercial EPC gateway products.
For more:
- see this release
Related articles:
LTE femtocells may be more about coverage than speed
Broadcom looks for swift entry into femtocell market with Percello buy
picoChip releases LTE femtocell development kit