Clustering base station functions allow processing capacity to be concentrated, which offers an innovative alternative to operators looking to lower operating expenses by reducing the amount of equipment in the field. By extending its KeyStone architecture, TI provides a powerful and cost effective path to C-RAN for developers using KeyStone devices for small cell or macro cell base stations while protecting their software investment.

“TI is unveiling a critical enabler for powerful and cost effective cloud RAN solutions,” said Ken Rehbehn, principal analyst, mobile infrastructure, Yankee Group.  “Expanding TI’s flexible KeyStone architecture to meet C-RAN network topology requirements means that radio system innovators gain a unified architecture that scales from small cells to massive C-RAN processing pools. These enhancements offer vital design flexibility and time-to-market advantage without adding significant development cost.”

C-RAN is taking its place beside small cells, distributed antenna systems (DAS), active antenna arrays (AAA) and remote radio heads (RRH) as an emerging topological tool in the wireless arsenal being deployed to address growing challenges ranging from site acquisition to coverage and capacity enhancement to environmental stewardship (green base stations).

KeyStone is the first multicore infrastructure architecture offering a comprehensive and scalable platform to base station developers. TI’s KeyStone enhancements for C-RAN include expanding Multicore Navigator’s Queue Manager to provide over 16K queues and one million descriptors. In addition, TI’s Hyperlink chip-to-chip interface is expanded to 100Gbps with dual-port operation and its integral wire-rate Ethernet switch is upgraded to 10Gbps per port.


Together, these enhancements allow a larger pool of TI’s KeyStone-based System-on-Chips (SoC) to interconnect and function as a single SoC, a critical capability for C-RAN base stations requiring large scale processing from baseband IQ through Ethernet IP.  This will ultimately enable developers to create an entire C-RAN base station from wireless-optimized KeyStone SoCs, eliminating the need for a power hungry x86 server and other network processors from competitors.

More information about TI’s KeyStone multicore architecture at
www.ti.com/c66multicore