picoChip announced the PC8808 TD-SCDMA femtocell base station reference design, the first to support this standard.

Femtocells are 3G access points and are low-cost basestations optimized for deployment inside buildings to improve coverage and data rates. The new design was developed in China at picoChip's Beijing design center. TD-SCDMA is the third major 3G standard, and is expected to launch in the Olympic cities this summer.

Yang Hua, the secretary general of TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance, said, "Femtocells are an important part of the TD-SCDMA ecosystem, and an essential part of operator strategy, particularly as we evolve to TD-SCDMA LTE. picoChip's achievement significantly pushes the TD-SCDMA industry forward."

With this introduction picoChip now supports all three 3G standards families: WCDMA (HSPA) through the picoChip PC8208/8209, cdma2000 via GWT partnership, and now TD-SCDMA with the PC8808. picoChip also supports WiMAX Waves 1 and 2 with its PC6530 and PC6532 single chip reference designs, respectively.

The PC8808 TD-SCDMA femtocell reference design supports HSDPA and is the industry's lowest cost complete solution. The picoChip single-chip platform can integrate both Node B and protocol stack, and can easily integrate back into the core network using a number of different architectures including SIP, UMA or Iu.

The single-chip PC202-based design is software defined and delivers baseband complete with upper layer software stacks included. It is based on the same architecture as the PC8208/HSDPA and 8208/HSUPA platforms.