MaxLinear Launches Single Chip for 5G Open RAN Radio Units

MaxLinear, Inc. (Nasdaq: MXL), a leader in wireless infrastructure silicon solutions, today announced it has launched the MXL17xxx family of devices (“Sierra”), a highly integrated SoC optimized for 4G/5G Open Radio Access Network (RAN) radio units (RU). Sierra is an innovative single-chip platform that flexibly supports major RU applications including traditional macro, massive MIMO, picocell, all-in-one small cells, and more.

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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.