Aricent Speeds Delivery of LTE Enhanced Base Stations

New Development Suite for Semiconductor and Testing Manufacturers Shortens Time to Market for Long Term Evolution Systems

Palo Alto, Calif., Oct 28, 2008 -

Aricent, a global innovation, technology and outsourcing company focused exclusively on the communications industry, today announced the introduction of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) Evolved Node B (eNodeB) development suite. This combination of software and development services accelerates the prototyping and development of new chipsets and testing systems for LTE supporting mixed data, voice, video and messaging traffic.

According to Gartner(1), by year-end 2011, "LTE will win the battle for next-generation wireless broadband operator commitments by a factor of 10 to 1". One of the primary elements of the LTE architecture is the eNodeB, an enhanced base transceiver station providing the air interface and performing radio resource management for the evolved access system.

"While Aricent is engaged in a broad range of 4G activities with our customers today, one of the most critical areas is the development of the fundamental base station technology required for Long Term Evolution to become a reality," said Ajay Gupta, Senior Vice President, Wireless and Convergence, Aricent. "As history has shown, time to market is critical to capitalize on any meaningful market transition and the LTE movement is no different. Semiconductor and testing manufacturers are in a highly competitive race to market, and our development suite was specifically engineered to reduce development time, complexity and cost".

For semiconductor and testing equipment manufacturers, LTE presents a fundamental new set of challenges as new radio components require the re-engineering of the Layer 1 (Physical) and Layer 2 (Media Access Control) software used in an eNodeB. By providing a comprehensive suite of software and development services for the majority of the LTE base components, Aricent eliminates the need to redevelop core Layer 1 and 2 modules, reducing complexity, speeding time to market, and enabling customers to focus on the optimization of their specific platform.

Aricent has a rich history of developing Radio Access Network (RAN) component software for GSM / GPRS / EDGE, UMTS / HSPA, WiMAX, DVB and LTE semiconductor platforms and equipment. Aricent's expertise in Layers 1 and 2 software generally, and OFDMA access technology specifically, provides semiconductor and equipment companies with unparalleled efficiency in the development of RAN software and firmware, and its troubleshooting.

Aricent's development suite is hardware and operating system agnostic, making it suitable for multiple target platforms such as Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), General Purpose Processors and Network Processors. The software leverages portable programming languages which, when combined with Aricent's professional services, enables the rapid development of LTE baseband prototype and commercial solutions. Within the suite the plug-and-play functional Layer 1 library allows for easy customization and portability to any processor platform, and is readily convertible to FPGA and System-on-Chip (SoC) approaches. The Layer 2 library supports both single and multiple core CPUs architectures. Designed with a modular architecture and easy-to-use APIs, Aricent's solution enables seamless integration with third party radio and software components, reducing development risk and shortening time-to-market.

For more information on Aricent's LTE offering visit http://www.aricent.com/lte

Notes

1) Gartner, Inc. "Important Mobile and Wireless Market Directions, 2008 to 2012", by Nick Jones, June 6, 2008.

About Aricent
Aricent is a global innovation, technology and outsourcing company focused exclusively on communications. Aricent combines the leading innovation capabilities of frog design with unparalleled domain expertise in communications gained as a strategic supplier to the world's foremost infrastructure, application and service providers. The company is owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Sequoia Capital, The Family Office and Flextronics International Ltd. and has more than 550 clients worldwide. For more information, visit www.aricent.com.

Keywords & tags: long term evolution, lte, radio access network, ran, evolved node b, enodeb