Intel & Ubiquisys to morph LTE base stations into cloud computing platforms

Stuart Corner
Monday, 30 May 2011 10:07

Business IT - Technology

Ubiquisys - a developer of femtocells and small cellular base stations - has teamed up with Intel to develop small LTE base stations that will incorporate Intel chips to provide processing power for user applications and services.

 

As demand for mobile data increases, network operators are increasingly using small base stations to provide the depth of coverage and capacity needed in high traffic locations. According to Ubiquisys, equipping these base stations with significant processing power and storage beyond what is needed for the network functions will create a distributed pool of computing resources that mobile operators can use to serve content and applications from points much closer to end users.

Ubiquisys CEO, Chris Gilbert, said: "This is the future of small cells - not just miniature base stations but powerful computing platforms bringing the IP cloud as close as possible to mobile users and machines."
In a blog posting on the announcement, Ubiquisys' Keith Day gave examples of applications that could be hosted on the devices, supported by Intel's developer ecosystem.

- Local content caching: locally storing local content like Google Maps or StreetView pics, and locally popular video content, such as replay videos at a sporting event.
- Uplink spooling and app proxy: fast-upload a photo or video to Facebook/Twitter. The content uploads very quickly to the small cell leaving the user free and causing minimum handset battery drain. The small cell then negotiates further upload over the backhaul, or even runs the video format conversion before uploading.
- Wi-Fi/Cellular harmonisation: the small cell decides the best air interface to use depending on real-time loading and traffic type.
- Deep packet inspection: enabling sophisticated real-time actions such as content management, ad-insertion and URL-shortening.
- Peak-time protocol management: a network buffer to protect network resources against lunchtime and cafeteria effects caused by "noisy" and uncoordinated smartphone app signalling.

The jointly developed devices will be based on Ubiquisys application software and Intel processors. The two companies plan to showcase the technology in late 2011 and to have reference designs available to equipment manufacturers in 2012.

According to Ubiquisys, "With scalability from the Intel Atom processor to the Intel Xeon Processor, and flexible software programming model and tool chains, the Intel platform is ideally suited to provide the significant amount of processing power required, with substantial headroom for value added services."

Ubiquisys also teaming with Texas Instruments

Earlier this month Ubiquisys announced a collaboration with Texas Instruments to develop a new range of dual-mode WCDMA/LTE small cells for public space and metro environments, such as base stations designed for mounting on walls or street furniture, with performance up to 150Mbps LTE plus 64 calls/84Mbps WCDMA. The first products are due to be available in 1H 2012.

According to Day "[This announcement] is part of the same movement towards a small-cell hotspot with the power and intelligence to deliver massive new data capacity in an ultra-dense deployment pattern. TI is providing the 'macro-class' baseband system on a chip for dual-mode LTE/WCDMA small cells. Intel is providing the computing platform for application-related activities. In most cases, we expect both elements would be present in the resulting small-cell products."