MaxLinear Launches Single Chip for 5G Open RAN Radio Units
- MaxLinear launches the MXL17xxx family of devices, Sierra, a single-chip SoC platform optimized for 4G/5G Open RAN radio units.
- Sierra integrates various sub-systems into a single chip, providing a complete software-programmable radio signal processing engine for Open RUs.
- The platform supports major RU applications, including traditional macro, massive MIMO, picocell, and all-in-one small cells.
- Sierra's system integration reduces the need for multiple FPGAs/ASICs, simplifies O-RU development, and accelerates new O-RU designs.
- The platform features MaxLIN™, a DPD solution exceeding 3GPP and FCC requirements, optimizing PA efficiency, energy consumption, and cost-effectiveness.
- Sierra's flexibility and modularity make it a key player in the Open RAN ecosystem, supporting radio supplier diversity and driving industry growth.
- None.
Insights
The introduction of MaxLinear's MXL17xxx family of devices, known as Sierra, signifies a substantial advancement in the telecommunications sector, specifically within the rapidly evolving Open RAN (O-RAN) ecosystem. Sierra's system-on-chip (SoC) design addresses the critical industry need for more efficient and cost-effective radio units (RUs) by providing a comprehensive, software-programmable radio signal processing engine.
By integrating multiple subsystems into a single chip, including RF transceiver, Digital Front End (DFE) and Low-PHY baseband processor, Sierra not only simplifies the design and reduces the development time of new O-RUs, but also offers scalability from macro to picocell applications. This scalability is crucial as it allows infrastructure vendors to address a range of network deployments with a unified platform, potentially leading to reduced inventory complexities and enhanced supply chain management.
The inclusion of digital pre-distortion (DPD) for power amplifiers (PAs) is particularly noteworthy. DPD is a technique used to correct the nonlinearities in PAs, which if left uncorrected, can lead to signal distortion and inefficiency. MaxLIN, the DPD solution within Sierra, supports up to 400MHz of occupied bandwidth and exceeds regulatory requirements for emissions, indicating a strong commitment to both performance and environmental standards.
MaxLinear's launch of the Sierra platform is poised to have a significant financial impact on the company and the broader market for radio access network components. As stated by Stefan Pongratz of the Dell’Oro Group, the Open RAN market is expected to constitute a substantial portion of global RAN revenues by 2028. MaxLinear's strategic entry with a product that targets this growth segment can bolster its market position and potentially increase its revenue streams.
From an investment perspective, the ability of Sierra to reduce the size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) of radio units aligns with the industry's drive towards more sustainable and cost-efficient network infrastructure. This alignment with market trends is likely to be well-received by investors, as it demonstrates MaxLinear's responsiveness to market demands and its potential for capturing a larger share of the O-RAN market.
Furthermore, the announcement of Sierra's capabilities being demonstrated at MWC 2024 serves as an anticipatory catalyst for MaxLinear's stock. Such demonstrations can often lead to partnerships, contracts and increased visibility among potential customers, which can positively influence investor sentiment and possibly the stock price.
The Sierra platform's focus on reducing the environmental footprint of wireless infrastructure through improved power amplifier efficiency and lower overall energy consumption is a critical aspect of its market appeal. MaxLIN's advanced DPD algorithms, which enhance PA efficiency, directly contribute to minimizing the energy consumption of radio units. This is not only beneficial from a cost perspective but also aligns with global initiatives to reduce carbon emissions in the telecommunications industry.
As companies and investors increasingly prioritize sustainability, MaxLinear's emphasis on energy-efficient solutions could enhance its brand reputation and appeal to environmentally conscious stakeholders. The ability to exceed 3GPP and FCC emissions requirements further solidifies the company's commitment to sustainability, which could lead to competitive advantages in an industry where regulatory compliance and environmental impact are becoming increasingly important decision factors.
- New System-on-Chip (SoC) silicon platform accelerates the development of Open RAN radios with lower size, weight, power, cost, and cooling.
- Solution includes digital pre-distortion (DPD) for PAs, PIM cancellation, split 7.2X support, and Ethernet or JESD interface support.
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MaxLinear Sierra feature capabilities will be demonstrated at MWC 2024 in
Barcelona .
MaxLinear Launches Single Chip for 5G Open RAN Radio Units (Graphic: Business Wire)
Sierra integrates the following sub-systems into a single chip, providing a complete software-programmable radio signal processing engine for Open RUs (O-RU):
- RF transceiver supporting up to 8 transmitters, 8 receivers, and 2 feedback receivers
- Digital Front End (DFE) including DPD, crest factor reduction (CFR), and Passive Intermodulation (PIM) cancellation
- Low-PHY baseband processor supporting 5G, 4G, and NB-IoT air interfaces
- O-RAN Alliance Split 7.2x fronthaul interface
“Infrastructure vendors have been waiting for an open-market silicon solution that can enable them to develop O-RUs without compromise on performance or cost,” said Sean Martin, Senior Director of Wireless Infrastructure. “By integrating our highest performance RF and system technologies in Sierra, MaxLinear is empowering these radio vendors to rapidly and cost effectively develop new O-RUs with reduced size, weight, and power consumption.”
Sierra’s complete system integration yields a feature-rich, high-performance RU building block with low power consumption, board footprint, and implementation cost that reduces the need for multiple FPGAs/ASICs and massively simplifies new O-RU development. Designers can rapidly build new macro and picocell O-RUs using just a single Sierra device by adding an appropriate RF front end. Massive MIMO O-RU are created by tiling an array of Sierra devices and connecting them to a central beamforming solution. This system modularity and flexibility makes Sierra an ideal radio platform building block to maximize design reuse and dramatically speed up the development of new O-RUs.
“Open RAN momentum continues to build and is set to account for 20 percent to 30 percent of worldwide RAN revenues by 2028,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President and Analyst at the Dell’Oro Group. “New optimized off-the-shelf O-RU silicon solutions like Sierra play an essential role to enable improved radio supplier diversity.”
At the heart of Sierra is MaxLIN™, MaxLinear’s leading field-proven DPD solution for wideband power amplifier linearization, supporting up to 400MHz of occupied bandwidth. MaxLIN’s linearization performance exceeds the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and
More about Sierra
Sierra’s RF transceiver uses a low power wide band Zero-IF (ZIF) architecture and supports 8 transmitters (TX) and 8 receivers (RX) with 2 feedback receivers (FBRX). Each RX supports wide signal bandwidths up to 400MHz and each TX and FBRX supports signal bandwidths up to 900MHz. It can operate in 8T8R single-band or 2 x 4T4R multi-band configurations.
The digital front-end (DFE) integrates digital pre-distortion (DPD), crest factor reduction (CFR), passive intermodulation cancellation (PIMC), digital up conversion (DUC), and digital down conversion (DDC) blocks. MaxLinear's advanced DPD/CFR technology, MaxLIN™, linearizes power amplifiers (PA) up to 400MHz of occupied bandwidth and dramatically improves PA energy efficiency while meeting spectral emission masks with margin. The PIMC block cancels passive intermodulation products in the uplink paths to improve receiver sensitivity and relax the specification of expensive RF filters. The DUC/DDC supports up to eight component carriers per transmit and receive path.
The Low-PHY baseband processor supports 4G, 5G, and NB-IoT air interfaces, including uplink PRACH processing. It can process up to eight component carriers (CC) per transmit and receive path with subcarrier spacing (SCS) of 15kHz, 30kHz, and 60kHz and it is software configurable for different modes and parameters including dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), bandwidth parts, mixed numerology, and windowing.
Sierra supports an O-RAN fronthaul Split Option 7.2x Category A interface with up to four 10 or 25 Gbit/s Ethernet interfaces.
Sierra integrates an embedded CPU for system control. The CPU is an integrated quad-core Arm® A53 processor with Neon™ extensions. Each Arm® core has 1MB of internal SRAM and has access to an additional 8GB of external DRAM through a DDR controller.
Sierra Availability:
Sierra is available in a 31mm x 31mm Flip-Chip Ball Grid Array (FCBGA) package. Sierra is sampling to first customers in March 2024. Sierra samples are supported by an evaluation platform, software, and tools to facilitate early system development.
MaxLinear will be conducting briefings on MaxLinear’s radio solutions at Mobile World Congress – Hall 2, meeting rooms 2A54MR and 2A63MR – from February 26 through February 29, 2024.
About MaxLinear, Inc.
MaxLinear, Inc. (Nasdaq: MXL) is a leading provider of radio frequency (RF), analog, digital, and mixed-signal integrated circuits for access and connectivity, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multimarket applications. MaxLinear is headquartered in
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This press release contains “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements include, among others, statements concerning or implying future financial performance, anticipated product performance and functionality of our products or products incorporating our products, and industry trends and growth opportunities affecting MaxLinear, in particular statements relating Sierra, including but not limited to, with respect to its benefits of use, features, demand and anticipated growth in the RAN market. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. We cannot predict whether or to what extent these new and existing products will affect our future revenues or financial performance. Forward-looking statements are based on management’s current, preliminary expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may contain words such as “will be,” “will,” “expected,” “anticipate,” “continue,” or similar expressions and include the assumptions that underlie such statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements: risks relating to the development, testing, and commercial introduction of new products and product functionalities; risks relating to our terminated merger with Silicon Motion and related arbitration and class action complaint and the risks related to potential payment of damages; the effect of intense and increasing competition; impacts of global economic conditions; the cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry; a significant variance in our operating results and impact on volatility in our stock price, and our ability to sustain our current level of revenue, which has declined, and/or manage future growth effectively, and the impact of excess inventory in the channel on our customers’ expected demand for certain of our products; the geopolitical and economic tensions among the countries in which we conduct business; increased tariffs, export controls or imposition of other trade barriers; our ability to obtain or retain government authorization to export certain of our products or technology; risks related to the loss of, or a significant reduction in orders from major customers; costs of legal proceedings; information technology failures; a decrease in the average selling prices of our products; failure to penetrate new applications and markets; development delays and consolidation trends in our industry; inability to make substantial research and development investments; delays or expenses caused by undetected defects or bugs in our products; failure to timely develop and introduce new or enhanced products; order and shipment uncertainties; failure to accurately predict our future revenue and appropriately budget expenses; lengthy and expensive customer qualification processes; customer product plan cancellations; failure to maintain compliance with government regulations; failure to attract and retain qualified personnel; any adverse impact of rising interest rates on us, our customers, and our distributors and related demand; risks related to compliance with privacy, data protection and cybersecurity laws and regulations; risks related to conforming our products to industry standards; risks related to business acquisitions and investments; claims of intellectual property infringement; our ability to protect our intellectual property; risks related to security vulnerabilities of our products; use of open source software in our products; and failure to manage our relationships with, or negative impacts from, third parties. In addition to these risks and uncertainties, investors should review the risks and uncertainties contained in MaxLinear’s filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including risks and uncertainties arising from other factors affecting the business, operating results, and financial condition of MaxLinear, including those set forth in MaxLinear’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and Current Reports on Form 8-K, as applicable. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. MaxLinear is providing this information as of the date of this release and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
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MaxLinear, Inc. Press Contact:
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Head of Public Relations
Tel: +1 760.415.2529
mlea@maxlinear.com
Source: MaxLinear, Inc.
FAQ
What is the name of the single-chip SoC platform launched by MaxLinear for 4G/5G Open RAN radio units?
What sub-systems are integrated into Sierra, the single-chip platform for Open RUs?
What is the key feature of Sierra that reduces the need for multiple FPGAs/ASICs in O-RU development?
What is the DPD solution featured in Sierra, exceeding 3GPP and FCC requirements?
What role does Sierra play in the Open RAN ecosystem according to the PR?
