Linux base station platform debuts for next-gen radio access networks

Enea in Stockholm has launched a Linux Base Station Platform targeting multi-standard Radio Access Networks based on Freescale's next generation mulit-core processors.

More than half of the world's installed base of macro cell base stations and more than half of the world's LTE population coverage is powered by Enea software. Building on that momentum, the Enea Linux Base Station Platform is designed to fit Freescale's System-on-Chip (SoC) architectures adapting to the expanding standards of LTE and HSPA with support for different standards simultaneously.
For mobile broadband equipment manufacturers, the Enea Linux Base Station Platform provides an integrated software foundation bringing an effective use of resources to the system, including core utilization and performance, thereby reducing the bill-of-material (BOM) cost.

"The Enea Linux Base Station Platform provides a high performance implementation for both Macro/Micro cells and Small cells that are based on Freescale QorIQ, StarCore, and QorIQ Qonverge SoC series platforms," says Barry Stern, Baseband Product Line Marketing Manager, Freescale Semiconductor. "We work closely together with Enea to create the perfect match for SoCs such as the QorIQ Qonverge B4860 and our latest addition QorIQ Qonverge B4420, targeting Metro/Micro base stations deployment."

The Enea Linux Base Station Platform encompasses the Enea Linux distribution with real-time capabilities and IP transport, IPC communication, plus tools and middleware needed by the 3G and 4G LTE stack and use-case specific application parts to implement a high performance base station/small cell product.

The Yocto-based Linux distribution with customized services and support provides a complete, hardened embedded Linux with networking and telecom focus, while the Light-weight Run-time (LWRT) LWRT extends the real-time capabilities of Linux and allows timing critical applications to execute in Linux user-space. Reduced interrupt latency and deterministic and low-overhead thread scheduling enables applications such as LTE L2 scheduling to run on top of Linux with maximum performance.
Enea's Packet Acceleration Foundation (PAX) provides IP Transport Ready-to-use building blocks for base station communication with controller and core network. A user space implementation that uses Freescale QorIQ and Qonverge hardware functions and accelerators provides scalability and performance and there is a low-overhead user-extensible foundation with support for tracing and profiling.

The LINX High performance and scalable messaging-based IPC is used for intra- and inter- core control and data plane messaging within the base station main unit and with the radio unit, while the Hypervisor provides specialized systems virtualization for high-performance, deterministic embedded code.

It also includes a multicore DSP Layer 1 (PHY) run-time, communication, and Linux DSP management foundation for multi-standard macro and small cell implementations and middleware for simplifying the development of telecom-grade distributed systems by providing frameworks for messaging, debug and trace, management, and high availability, including in-service software upgrade.
The Enea Linux Base Station Platform comes with a customizable range of services and support, maintenance and continued development of the integrated product. Upgrades and updates providing new versions of Enea products and open source software in the integrated product are made according to customer needs.

www.enea.com/software/solutions/base-station/

This article originally appeared in EE Times Europe.