Alcatel-Lucent introduces componentized, software-defined network hardware
The shrinking cell site is definitely a theme this week, as mobile infrastructure companies make their big announcements before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. International telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent on Monday, for example, debuted LightRadio, a software-defined mobile radio and distributed base station architecture with virtualized wireless controllers and gateways.
At an event in London yesterday, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled the lightRadio Cube, a tiny base station which includes a baseband radio paired with a Freescale system-on-a-chip, with signal amplifiers and passive cooling mechanisms in a single enclosure a little bigger than a Rubik's cube. This item is the cornerstone of the lightRadio network.
A lightRadio network includes a Wideband Active Array Antenna, Multiband Remote Radio Head, Baseband Unit, Controller, and common management solution. None of the products have yet gone to trial, but Alcatel-Lucent expects the Wideband Active Array Antenna will be ready to test later this year, with broad product availability in 2012. More products will be added to the lightRadio family over the course of 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Alcatel-Lucent yesterday said lightRadio could represent the first major shift in the cellular infrastructure that remained largely the same for decades.
"Traditionally, hard real-time requirements in radio communication specifications are fulfilled by Application Specific Integrated circuits (i.e. hardware)," said Ari Virtanen, CTO Finnish wireless design and development firm Elektrobit. "New, powerful general PC processors, Digital Signaling Processors and programmable gate arrays have made software implementations realistic in all kind of radio units, from high-capacity base stations to smallest handsets."
"The term 'Software defined radio' (SDR) has been used for a long time already, but real products have only been released mostly within the last 10 years," Virtanen told Betanews on Tuesday. "By using software, radio development is more flexible, fixes and updates can be made more easily and cost effectively, new functionalities and features can be implemented and mobilized faster, and software code can be re-used."
SEC Disclosure: Tim Conneally is an Alcatel-Lucent shareholder