Broadcom launches world’s first microwave outdoor unit on a chip

According to Broadcom, by combining the functionality of up to 10 off the shelf chips, the BCM85810 can dramatically reduce size, complexity, production cost and power consumption of microwave radio frequency units (RFUs). The SoC is based on a flexible architecture, enabling various types of system architectures such as split mount and all outdoor on a common hardware platform. With two variants to cover all standard point to point microwave frequency bands and all channel bandwidths, the chip solution is designed to simplify system manufacturing, deployment and inventory management. According to Broadcom, the device delivers a significant improvement in spectrum utilisation and capacity. Dan Charash, Broadcom's senior director and general manager, Microwave, said: "The introduction of our BCM85810 single chip solution marks the expansion of Broadcom's microwave backhaul portfolio into the rf domain, as we have successfully done in multiple solutions including Wi-Fi, cellular, Bluetooth, and cable modems. The combination of our new rf solutions with our leading baseband solutions delivers a significant reduction in system size, cost and power consumption while dramatically improving system performance." The BCM85810 is available now, along with a complete reference design, system analysis and comprehensive development kit.