ZTE challenges with software defined base station

A CHALLENGE to the established way of building cellular infrastructure was thrown down at the recent MCW in Barcelona. ZTE claims to have shown the world's first SDR (Software Defined Radio) base station.

Although presently at a 'pre-commercial' stage, when ZTE initially ships the ZXGW B8036 it will support both standard 2G (GSM) plus 3G (W-CDMA) for any territory in the world.

Given that the B8036 can be tuned to almost any frequency using software to process digitised signals, it should readily support esoteric versions of GSM operating at 450MHz and 800MHz. It could do 700MHz if you were mad enough to waste that spectrum.

The beauty of SDR is that it makes the base station almost futureproof. So if a network operator installs this bit of kit now, when 4G (in the shape of LTE) eventually becomes a reality, the B8036 will be ready for it.

If ZTE succeeds in implementing SDR efficiently, it will prove a major blow to the established status quo where operators normally need extra hardware to upgrade their stations to the latest specs.

Additionally, ZTE claims that its modular approach will enable operators to scale up their existing kit to cope with greater demand at a lower cost.

ZTE also chose MWC to show off its latest high speed 3G+ kit. Currently you can get speeds of 7.2 Mbit/s out of HSPDA but the up channel means the user will only see a maximum speed of 2 Mbit/s via HSUPA for sending stuff back. ZTE says it's raised that figure to 5.76 Mbit/s. Only ardent video streamers currently need such speeds over 3G. µ