MWC 2022: Partnerships drive innovation

Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 highlights the industry’s need for continued partnerships to advance wireless technologies, and show the value of working with component manufacturers to develop designs for next-generation products. Key themes played out across these partnerships, including new devices and technologies with improved performance to help drive the adoption of newer technologies like 5G mmWave and Open radio access network (RAN). These new technologies and products are at various stages of development and availability but indicate the type of collaborations occurring in the industry that deliver next-level performance.

Here is a sampling of partnerships and new product designs announced at MWC 2022 in Barcelona. While many announcements made at the conference are typically from mobile network operators and mobile device manufacturers, these new products and technologies enable those end-device manufacturers and network providers to deliver their high-performance offerings.

CEA and Spectronite have optimized CEA-Leti’s spectrally efficient waveform with enhanced spectral efficiency for Spectronite’s X-Series modem for 5G systems. This enables the X-Series to deliver capacity up to 10 Gbits/s and multi-gigabit transfers over distances up to 50 kilometers (km). Spectronite claimed that its software-defined technology for wireless backhaul allows for the longest and highest-capacity microwave links.

The jointly developed software radio technology for backhaul links solves limitations exhibited by other technologies in 5G rollouts.  A couple of examples cited include E-band radios in the 80-GHz frequency band, which can provide the required capacity for 5G backhaul but over short distances in wireless applications, typically up to 5 km. For longer distances, traditional radio architectures in the frequency range from 6 GHz to 42 GHz are limited by design in scaling. The new Spectronite software radio architecture overcomes these limitation by enabling intra-band, non-contiguous carrier aggregation up to 10 Gbits/s in these bands, said the company.

Initial results show a data rate increase of 20 percent compared to the conventional backhaul radio waveform, said CEA. “The increase in spectral efficiency provides throughput equivalent to a transmission with 8192QAM modulation, while the radio operates at 2048QAM modulation.” An X-Series product is expected in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Marvell is working with its partners to develop 5G Accelerator cards powered by its Arm-based OCTEON Fusion baseband processors to accelerate the 5G Open RAN architecture ecosystem. The company announced new 5G Open RAN DU and RU solutions with customers and partners that incorporate the company’s flagship OCTEON Fusion that features a suite of 5G Layer 1 (L1) inline hardware accelerators and O-RAN standards support.

These include Dell Technologies’s Open RAN accelerator card, developed in collaboration with Marvell. It is a cloud-optimized vRAN DU solution with Marvell’s OCTEON Fusion CNF95xx chipset. The Marvell chipset includes a mix of digital signal processors (DSPs) and advanced RISC machine (ARM) cores. Arm also showcased the Marvell OCTEON Fusion-powered Open RAN accelerator platform at MWC 2022.

In addition, Marvell announced a collaboration with Analog Devices (ADI) on a massive MIMO for 5G Open RAN. ADI demoed a 32T32R Massive MIMO C-band RU powered by Marvell’s OCTEON Fusion baseband processor and beamforming technology. The radio platform includes an O-RAN compliant, 7.2x low PHY baseband ASIC, ADI’s next-generation software-defined transceiver, an RF front end as well as timing and power solutions.

MaxLinear, Inc. has unveiled its single-chip solution for 5G Open RAN radio units. The new software-defined platform is designed to speed up the development of Open RAN radios with improved size, power, cost, and cooling. The newly announced Sierra, an integrated system on chip (SoC) for 4G/5G Open RAN RUs, is a silicon and software platform using a building block system to develop macro, massive MIMO, and small cell radios for Open RAN applications. MaxLinear worked with Meta Connectivity to design the single-chip solution.

MaxLinear Sierra SoC for 5G Open RAN radio units (Source: MaxLinear)

The Sierra SoC integrates several sub-systems to provide a software-programmable radio signal processing engine for Open RAN RUs. These include an RF transceiver that supports up to eight transmitters, eight receivers, and two feedback receivers; a digital front-end powered by the MaxLIN digital pre-distortion (DPD) and crest factor reduction (CFR) solution that supports digital up-conversion (DUC) and digital down-conversion (DDC) of component carriers; low PHY baseband processor that supports 5G, 4G, and NB-IoT, and a front-haul interface compliant with O-RAN Alliance Split 7.2x. Sierra samples will be supported with evaluation platforms, software, and tools for early system development.

MaxLinear also announced other partnerships, including with Sivers Wireless, a subsidiary of Sivers Semiconductor AB, and ZHT. MaxLinear and Sivers Wireless jointly developed a V-Band RF/modem solution for unlicensed point-to-point microwave radios in the 57 to 71-GHz band that enables long reach. The Sivers V-Band RF and MaxLinear MxL85110 mmWave baseband modem-based radio solution are said to transmit at 10 Gbits/s and beyond at the lowest cost solution compared to what’s available in the market today. The companies along with an OEM customer have initial plans for a reference design followed by a joint product and customer deployments, expected in the market in late 2022 or early 2023.

ZHT, a provider of wireless network solutions to mobile operators or enterprises, has selected MaxLinear’s MxL1600 family of RF transceivers for its new 5G radio remote unit (RRU) small cells. The 5G RRU series offers 4-port and 2-port small cells with bandwidths up to 200 MHz at RF frequencies from 2.6 to 6.0 GHz for public and private network deployments. The MxL1600 transceiver family is said to enable radio bandwidths up to 400 MHz and deliver ultra-low-power consumption that is up to 50 percent lower than competitive offerings. It also supports all RAN air interface standards from 2G to 5G including MC-GSM. MxL1600 device samples and evaluation boards are available.

Movandi announced several partnerships, including with FRTek, Qualcomm, and Wistron NeWeb Corp. (WNC). These partnerships center around Movandi’s BeamXR chipsets.

FRTek has entered into an OEM partnership with Movandi to provide semiconductors and antenna modules for FRTek PrimAer’s smart repeaters in the 24/26 GHz (n258), 28 GHz (n257/n261), and 39 GHz (n260) spectrum bands. FRTek PrimAer smart repeaters feature patented fiber cascading capabilities that allow up to four smart repeaters to be daisy chained up to 600 meters apart. They are being deployed today with global tier one 5G service providers including Verizon.

The FRTek PrimAer repeaters use phased array modules including Movandi beamformers, up/down converters, PLL synthesizers, phased array antennas, algorithms, and software for 5G high bandwidth and low latency. The Movandi BeamXR software defined beam networking (SDBN) enables remotely programmed beam forming and steering, which enables continuous coverage optimization, said the company.

Movandi and Qualcomm will work together to expand the adoption of 5G mmWave for both indoor and outdoor deployments. The collaboration will leverage mmWave small cells powered by Qualcomm’s open architecture FSM 5G RAN Platforms and Movandi-powered 5G BeamXR smart repeaters.

Movandi partnered with WNC to incorporate the company’s dual-band 28-GHz and 39-GHz BeamXR chipsets into its new single-box dual-band smart repeaters with integrated phased array antennas. The smart repeaters with daisy-chaining capabilities enable mmWave signals to be brought indoors from a gNB or a small cell, which spread the small cell signals to enhance coverage indoors, said the company. The repeaters also support dense indoor mesh networks, enabling traffic to be dynamically routed based on signal quality, bandwidth, latency and network congestion.

Movandi’s BeamXR smart repeater solution includes patented chipset technologies, custom antenna design, algorithms and software. Movandi also provides reference designs that include a complete chipset with a beamformer, up/down converters supporting IQ BB or IF, PLL synthesizer, dual-beam and dual-polarization, remote beam programing, AGC and TDD synchronization to reduce interference and maximize gain, and BeamX mesh software-defined beam networking. Movandi claims that smart repeaters powered by BeamXR reduce the CAPEX and OPEX of mmWave deployment by up to 50 percent.

ANDS NB-IoT module. Click for a larger image. (Source: Nowi)

Murata, Deutsche Telekom, and energy harvesting specialist Nowi are touting the industry’s smallest energy harvesting NB-IoT module. Called the Autonomous NB-IoT Development Solution (ANDS), it combines three main components to enable integration in space-constrained applications. The ANDS design leverages the Murata 1YS NB-IoT module for low-power wireless transmission with Deutsche Telekom’s integrated nuSIM technology to provide network connectivity, and an advanced Nowi NH2 energy harvesting power management IC (PMIC), measuring 3 × 3 mm, to power the solution with ambient light energy. A whitepaper about the new design is available for download.

Oppo has claimed two new breakthroughs in flash charging technology with the introduction of the 150-W SUPERVOOC that incorporates the company’s Battery Health Engine (BHE) and 240-W SUPERVOOC flash charge technology.

The 150-W SUPERVOOC flash charge battery maintains 80 percent of its original capacity up to 1,600 charge cycles, double the current industry standard, thanks to the BHE, powered by Oppo’s custom battery management chip. The chip includes Oppo’s smart battery health algorithm and battery healing technology. The OPP150W flash charge uses direct charging technology with two charge pumps that can support up to 20 V/7.5-A charging. Oppo said it can charge a 4500 mAh battery from 1% to 50% in 5 minutes and up to 100% in 15 minutes.

Oppo SUPERVOOC adapter. Click for a larger image. (Source: Oppo)

The adapter for the 150-W SUPERVOOC with BHE leverages gallium nitride (GaN) to reduce the size of the adapter to nearly the same size as the previous generation, measuring 58 × 57 × 30 mm, and weighing around 172 g. Power density is pegged at 1.51W/cm³, which is said to be higher than the industry average. The 150-W SUPERVOOC flash charge with BHE will debut in the OnePlus smartphone in the second quarter of 2022. BHE will be adopted by most mid-to-high-end Oppo and OnePlus phones in the future.

The 240-W SUPERVOOC flash charge technology for mobile phones can charge a 4,500 mAh battery from 1% to 100% in about 9 minutes. The 240-W SUPERVOOC is designed with 24 V/10 A on the Type-C interface. It integrates three charge pumps and the power supplied to the handsets can be converted to 10 V/24 A.

In addition, the 240-W SUPERVOOC uses five safety protection measures as well as a specially customized intelligent control chip that controls the voltage, current, and temperature to deliver a safe charging solution. A customized battery safety monitoring chip monitors whether the battery of the mobile phone is damaged by external forces when in use and temperature protection is enhanced via 13 temperature sensors installed in the phone to reduce the chance of overheating.

Claiming the first Wi-Fi 7 product, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. introduced its FastConnect 7800, an advanced Wi-Fi + Bluetooth connectivity system that delivers high-speed, ultra-low latency Wi-Fi with the latest Wi-Fi 7 specification. The FastConnect 7800 subsystem is said to set new performance benchmarks with peak speeds of 5.8 Gbits/s and sub-2 millisecond latency.

FastConnect 7800 features. Click for a larger image. (Source: Qualcomm)

It also implements several Bluetooth audio advancements that are expected to raise the bar on consumer expectations for sound quality, and extends Qualcomm’s 4-stream dual-band simultaneous (DBS) with 5 and/or 6-GHz Wi-Fi links for low latency performance between access point and client or independently for multi-client scenarios.

FastConnect 7800 also introduces the High Band Simultaneous (HBS) Multi-Link technology for multiple 5 GHz and 6 GHz connections, touting the highest throughput and lowest sustained latency. It reserves the high-traffic 2.4-GHz spectrum for Bluetooth and lower bandwidth Wi-Fi. The HBS Multi-Link simultaneously leverages two Wi-Fi radios for four streams of high band connectivity in 5-GHz and/or 6-GHz bands.

FastConnect 7800 also incorporates Intelligent Dual Bluetooth for next generation Bluetooth audio, enabling Bluetooth accessories to operate over twice the range, pair in half the time, at half the power. Snapdragon Sound technology, combined with Dual Bluetooth, is extended into two streams with audio sharing enhancements. This enables Bluetooth devices to stream high-bandwidth, immersive music using Snapdragon Sound while providing responsive connections to game controllers and/or other input devices, said Qualcomm. FastConnect is sampling now with commercial availability in the second half of 2022.

Qualcomm also unveiled its 5th generation modem-to-antenna 5G solution. The new Snapdragon X70 is said to offer the first 5G artificial intelligence (AI) processor in a modem-RF system, delivering 10 Gigabit 5G downloads, 3.5 Gbits/s peak uploads, low latency, wide coverage, and high power efficiency.

STL, an integrator of digital networks, announced it is collaborating with ADI to develop 5G Open RAN RUs. As part of the partnership, STL and ADI will work with other ecosystem providers, including power amplifier vendors, to expand the range of STL’s Garuda O-RU indoor small cell offerings. STL will integrate ADI’s RadioVerse transceivers into Garuda to develop power-efficient, high-performance radios for 5G small cells.