Picocom has partnered with Texas Instruments (TI) to develop a complete 5G Open RAN (O-RAN) small cell radio unit reference design. The 5G O-RAN radio unit meets the O-RAN Alliance specification for a 5-W 4T4R 200-MHz 5G outdoor radio unit (O-RU).
(Source: Texas Instruments)
The 5G-RAN radio unit features TI’s AFE7769D quad-channel RF transceiver integrating DPD/CFR with Picocom’s PC802 5GNR/LTE PHY system-on-chip (SoC). The PCM-3P-PC802 reference design hardware is also LTE compatible.
Key features of the AFE7769 RF transceiver include four direct up-conversion transmitter chains, four direct down-conversion receiver chains and two wideband RF sampling digitizing auxiliary chains (feedback paths). These features enable wireless base stations to generate and receive 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G signals.
The PC802 PHY SoC is designed for 5G NR/LTE small cell disaggregated and integrated RAN architectures. It interfaces with a layer 2/3 stack via the SCF FAPI interface over PCIe and supports seamless interfacing to O-RUs via the O-RAN Open Fronthaul eCPRI interface, or directly to RFICs with a standard JESD204B high-speed serial interface.
The LTE/5G O-RAN small cell development board for evaluation of TI’s AFE7769D RF transceiver with Picocom’s PC802 SoC provides baseline software architecture for 7.2x split, PTP stack & servo, PA biasing and protection and VSWR. It includes specifications for PCBs, cables, an enclosure, complete mechanical design schematics as well as evaluation and manufacturing support to provide a fast assessment and prototyping tool for small cell radio units.
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