MaxLinear today announced it has partnered with EdgeQ on an all-in-one small cell reference design, converging 4G, 5G and compute onto a single software-defined platform. Combining EdgeQ’s 5G “Base Station-on-a-chip” with MaxLinear’s MXL1600 RF transceiver and MaxLIN™ wideband digital predistortion (DPD) solution creates a new software-programmable paradigm that allows developers to scale rapidly and dynamically across the wide range of small cell applications and use cases with a high level of system integration, performance, and flexibility.

The EdgeQ and MaxLinear platform improves how feature-rich all-in-one small cell base stations can be developed faster and more efficiently. Future-proofed to address evolving 5G requirements of enterprise, cloud, and telco, both EdgeQ’s and MaxLinear’s products deliver high integration value with leading edge low power. The combined small cell platform is up to 50% more efficient than competitive solutions with scalable headroom to transition effortlessly from 4G to 5G.

“We are excited to partner with EdgeQ and look forward to enabling our customers together with this transformative new small cell development platform,” said Gerry Leavey, Senior Director of Wireless Infrastructure of MaxLinear. “There is a clear synergy between our two companies that allow us to deliver innovative Radio Access Network SoCs with higher integration and leading levels of customization and flexibility. Combining our complementary components will enable our shared customers to leapfrog their competition and accelerate the deployment of small cells publicly and privately.”

“The MaxLinear and EdgeQ solution represents a tectonic shift in how we have compacted and abstracted the friction out of 4G and 5G small cell base stations designs in a purely seamless and consumable manner,” said Edward Wu, Head of Marketing of EdgeQ. “Coupling MaxLinear’s high-performance, low-power RF chipset and class-leading DPD algorithms with EdgeQ’s enterprise-class, fully-programable platform is expected to drive the industry towards a singular, software-defined solution that can be dynamically adaptive [adapted?] to the rich, evolving needs of 5G applications.”

Bolstered by rising investments from industrialized nations in leading-edge 5G infrastructure and rapid global digitization, we believe small cell deployments are poised to skyrocket as network providers look to increase service reliability and robustness. According to Dell’Oro: “Small cell RAN revenue growth has been outpacing macros for some time now … with small cell RAN revenues growing more than 20 percent by 2027.”

More about the Small Cell Platform: The small cell reference platform consists of the following technical components from EdgeQ and MaxLinear:

EdgeQ’s unique “Base Station-on-a-Chip” is a single-chip solution that integrates multi-node 4G and 5G baseband processing, Central Processing Unit (CPU), protocol accelerators, Network Processing Unit (NPU), and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Through software, the device is customizable at all radio PHY and networking layers, providing flexibility across fixed wireless, residential, private 5G, and outdoor gNB applications. The software defined 4G/5G base station architecture supports all O-RAN split options.

MaxLinear’s MxL1600 Quad-RF transceiver delivers the high system integration, wide bandwidth, highest performance, and broadest system flexibility on the market. While integrating four transmitters, four receivers and up to two feedback receivers in a single device and supporting wide signal bandwidths up to 400MHz, the MXL1600 has the lowest power consumption on the market – up to 50% lower than competitive offerings.

MaxLinear's MaxLIN is the industry's leading open DPD linearization solution. Its advanced machine learning algorithms exceed the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unwanted emissions requirements with margin while delivering high PA efficiencies of >50%. 

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