PicoChip technology selected by Korea Telecom

PicoChip technology selected by Korea Telecom for first WiBro/wimax Femtocell development

picoChip has announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with Korea Telecom (KT) to develop WiBro/Wimax access points, sometimes called Femtocells or Home-Basestations. KT is a leader in wireless technology and has launched commercial WiBro service. picoChip's multi-core DSP is the industry standard architecture for Wimax infrastructure, and is also being widely used for WCDMA Femtocells.

Femtocells are small, low-cost basestations, intended to be used in residential or corporate environments where high-speed coverage would otherwise be limited.

By enabling cost-effective deployment they allow carriers to complete with UMA or voice-over-WiFi.

The idea is increasingly recognised in the 3G community, but as the carrier most advanced in deploying WiBro, KT is the first to develop such a program for Wimax.

WiBro, the South Korean wireless telecommunications standard, is compatible with Wimax 802.16e-2005 (mobile Wimax), and aims to be the technology that delivers personal broadband to consumers around the globe.

Mr Yoon, Jong Lok, Senior Executive Vice President of KT, said, 'We are pleased to be co-developing Wimax access points with the leader in Femtocell technology'.

Critically, picoChip delivers a complete solution, based on their cost-effective single chip processor'.

'This is essential for this high volume market area where low bill-of-materials is necessary for success'.

'KT is always looking out for growth markets and the introduction of Wimax home basestations will improve coverage and accelerate market acceptance of the standard'.

The picoChip/KT partnership developments will focus around the recently introduced PC20x family of processors from picoChip.

The devices deliver the best MIPS per Dollar of any signal processor, and enable a single chip Wimax BS PHY with integrated ARM for upper layer protocols.

The picoChip platform is flexible and upgradeable.

Guillaume d'Eyssautier, President and CEO of picoChip, commented, 'We are honoured to be partnering with KT.

picoChip's strategy is to provide Wimax solutions at all levels of the value chain and there is key strategic value of working with world-class carriers like KT to refine our reference designs and core technology'.

'These relationships are incredibly valuable and help us better support our growing number of OEM customers'.

picoChip provides software defined radio solutions to the key challenges of cost, development time and flexibility for the next generation of wireless systems.

The company's multi-core processors deliver a world-beating price/performance combination.

Uniquely, the company also delivers complete, standard-compliant reference designs for UMTS (HSDPA, upgradeable to HSUPA) and Wimax/WiBro (both 802.16d and 802.16e, with support for AAS and MIMO).

Wimax systems using picoChip are available from Airspan, Intel, Ericsson, Nortel, Marconi and a number of other manufacturers.

picoChip technology is also being used to develop other advanced wireless protocols such as UMTS-LTE, 802.20 and TD-SCDMA, and in 4G research.