MaxLinear Announces Single-Chip Solution For 5G Open RAN Radio Units

By AIT News Desk On Feb 25, 2022

New software-defined silicon platform accelerates the development of Open RAN radios with industry-leading size, weight, power, cost, and cooling

MaxLinear, Inc. announced Sierra, a fully integrated System on Chip (SoC) for 4G/5G Open RAN (Radio Access Network) radio units (RU). This complete silicon and software solution provides RU designers with a flexible system building block to deliver Macro, Massive MIMO, and Small Cell radios for Open RAN applications with high performance, low power consumption, and short time-to-market. MaxLinear began work last year in a collaboration with Meta Connectivity to design the single-chip solution.

Latest Aithority Insights: Securitybridge Broadens U.S. Reach With New 1st Basis Group Partnership

“We are excited that MaxLinear is delivering this new radio silicon platform to the Open RAN ecosystem”

Sierra integrates the following sub-systems into a single chip to provide a compact and complete software-programmable radio signal processing engine for Open RAN RUs:

RF Transceiver supporting up to 8 transmitters, 8 receivers, and 2 feedback receivers
Digital Front End (DFE), powered by MaxLIN the industry’s leading digital pre-distortion (DPD) and crest factor reduction (CFR) solution, and supporting digital up-conversion (DUC) and digital down-conversion (DDC) of component carriers
Low PHY Baseband Processor supporting 5G, 4G, and NB-IoT air interfaces
Fronthaul Interface compliant with O-RAN Alliance Split 7.2x

“Sierra is an ultimate integration of MaxLinear’s highest performance RF and system technologies. It empowers radio vendors to rapidly and cost effectively develop new platforms with best-in-class size, weight, and power consumption for Open RAN applications,” said Brendan Walsh, Vice President of MaxLinear’s Wireless Infrastructure Group. “In this way Sierra represents a game-changing innovation that will level the playing field for wireless infrastructure vendors and can dramatically accelerate the global rollout of Open RAN without compromise on network performance or cost.”

Browse The Complete News About Aithority: Fluree Chosen To Provide Patient-owned Verifiable, Cryptographically Protected Digital Health Records

“We are excited that MaxLinear is delivering this new radio silicon platform to the Open RAN ecosystem,” said Jaydeep Ranade, Director of Wireless Engineering for Meta Connectivity. “Through Evenstar and our contributions to the TIP OpenRAN Project Group, we are an industry champion of Open RAN reference designs for 4G and 5G networks. Sierra is fully aligned with these goals to make high performance, innovative Open RAN solutions globally available.”

“The availability of high-performance RF silicon platforms is a critical catalyst for the development of a truly competitive Open RAN radio ecosystem,” said Andy Dunkin, Open RAN RF and Digital Platform Development Manager at Vodafone Group. “Vodafone welcomes devices such as Sierra which promote and accelerate the Open RAN community’s goals of open interfaces and software-defined functions”.

“The Open RAN movement has come a long way and remains on track to drive 15% of the RAN market by 2026,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President at Dell’Oro. “New technologies that reduce barriers-to-entry without compromising performance, such as optimized RU silicon solutions, play an essential role to realize the broader Open RAN vision of not just open interfaces but also improved supplier diversity.”

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]