EdgeQ has developed an integrated, all-in-one, base-station-on-a-chip and a highly programmable O-RAN PCIe acceleration card, where the same chip can be used in nodes in multiple spaces, including Industry 4.0, fixed wireless access, outdoor macro cells and Open RAN base stations. In addition to the RAN functions, it also offers AI for mobile edge compute. Known as the S Series, the EdgeQ platform is now being sampled and trialed by OEMs and operators worldwide.
“We are out to cater to the entire wireless infrastructure,” Adil Kidwai, Head of Product Management at EdgeQ, told Inside Towers. “So all of a sudden, you got a silicon chip, which can be morphed from small cell functionality to a big macro cell for multicarrier, massive MIMO, fully compliant in a virtualized network running 4G plus 5G.”
The EdgeQ silicon chip will work as an integrated Radio Unit, a Distributed Unit, and a Central Unit. It also features L1, L2, and L3 stacks; and fully inclusive Open-RAN splits. Additionally, the Integrated Software Defined Radio allows OEMs to produce radios that serve both 4G and 5G handsets. The same EdgeQ platform can also be refactored into a multi-carrier, multi-user, massive MIMO DU base station with L1 inline acceleration.
“We can address the many pluralities of 5G,” Kidwai said. “For small cells, the 5G network can be reconstituted as an all-in-one 5G gNB, complete with our field deployable 4G/5G PHY and integrated L2+L3 in a single silicon. We can leverage that exact silicon to also run a fully compliant O-RAN Distributed Unit PCIe card interoperating with standard O-RAN based splits.”
While current solutions in the market use different chips for different processing functions in a node, EdgeQ takes all those functions and combines them into a single chip. Combining these functions is more efficient from a power standpoint, according to Kidwai, as well as making the node lighter.
“As you can imagine, when the signal travels from one board to the other, it burns a lot of power, and the small cell box becomes big and heavy,” Kidwai said.
Another important power feature of the EdgeQ platform is that it allows the manufacturer to meet power-over-Ethernet limits; therefore eliminating the need for a power cord. “If there are five different silicon chips doing their jobs, it will never be compatible with Power-over-Ethernet limits, which means you must route two wires: one for the signal and one for power,” Kidwai said.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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