Top Trends and Overcoming Design Challenges in Small Cells (Part 2)

This is the second blog post in a 2-part series looking at small cell base stations.

In thefirst part of our series, we covered the basics ofsmall cellsand how they fit into theevolution of 4G and 5G. In this final post in the series, we sat down with Tuan Nguyen, Qorvo's product line director for our wireless infrastructure products, to get his insights on the latest design challenges and trends in the small cell market.

What are some of the latest trends related to small cells?

• LTE for usage in unlicensed bands:Also known as LTE-U and Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), unlicensed spectrum is starting to be implemented in small cell base stations. This unlicensed band access overlays LTE over the Wi-Fi band and provides carriers with another pipeline where they can control and guarantee quality of service (QoS).
• Increased number of bands per system:A couple of years ago, a lot of small cell base stations were just for single band. Many are now dual band, and moving forward in the next year or two, customers are developing and implementing triple-band systems. This will increase the system-level requirements for small cell solutions, both in terms of the number of components required and the complexity of the overall system design.

客户在设计小型电池应用时常见或新的挑战是什么？

• Increasing number of bands per system:Customers historically are designing these small cell systems for MIMO applications (multiple input/multiple output), which typically have 2 transmitters and 2 receivers per frequency band. As base stations incorporate multiple channels, it means more components — for instance, a three-band system would need six separatePAs(2 transmitters x 3 bands = 6 PAs) — which adds complexity, size and power consumption. Customers need the systems to be easy to design, easy to use (i.e., internally matched components), and efficient.
• Ensuring good isolation and band separation for the transmit/receive channels,specifically for Band 3 (1.8 GHz). The band separation is only 20 MHz, which requires very high isolation out of the duplexer.

How does Qorvo help our customers solve these design challenges?

Qorvo.has acomplete small cell portfolioand is the only supplier to provide the entire RF front end, including低噪声放大器（LNA）,PAs,1188betasia andswitches. All of our small cell products provide:

• 高线性
• High isolation
• Low power consumption
• Low link budget

Visit our小细胞application page for all our latest products supporting this market, as well as block diagrams for our small cell FDD and TDD solutions.