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Are you paying too much for electricity? Insist on lowest power-consumption Radio Head to save OPEX & CAPEX
WCDMA/ cdma2000 Base Station Cost Distribution
The RF subsystem which consists of Transmit and Receive chains, Power Amplifier and the associated power supply, constitutes 40-60% of the cost of a Base station, as shown below:
The Power Amplifier (PA) is the most expensive element in the RF subsystem. Next generation data protocols like HSDPA and EVDO will require higher transmit power compared to voice-only protocols, and hence the cost of PA will even go higher.
As a base station radio designer, how do you lower the cost?
Achieve Cost Reduction by Higher PA Efficiency
Higher PA efficiency will help you in cost reduction in several ways:
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Use a lower power and hence cheaper PA:
For example, if your specification is to transmit 60W, choosing a scheme with 30% PA efficiency vs. 15% will enable you to use a 200 Watt PA vs. 400 Watt PA. A 200W PA is less than half the cost of a 400W PA.
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Smaller Chassis
In the above example, your chassis needs to dissipate 200 Watt (400W - 200W) less power and hence you can use a smaller chassis.
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Less Cooling Requirements
Depending on your design, you may get away with eliminating a Fan as you have to dissipate much less heat; a 20 year MTBF Fan is expensive and you can save substantially.
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Lower Power Supply Requirements
Since your total power consumption is less, you choose a Power Supply of lower rating and save cost.
Operators can save significant opex from all the power consumption savings achieved as the electricity bill will go down.
TelASIC Offers High PA Efficiency
There are various analog and digital techniques for improving PA efficiency. Among the digital techniques, static CFR (crest factor reduction) and static DPD (digital predistortion) are suitable for WCDMA and cdma2000 air-interfaces, whereas dynamic CFR and dynamic DPD are best suited for power-varying HSDPA and EVDO applications.
Analog techniques typically achieve ~13% PA efficiency. TelASIC achieves much higher PA chain efficiency for HSDPA/ WCDMA, EVDO/ cdma2000 and OFDM-based air-interfaces like WiMAX/ WiBro and next generation 3.9 and 4G by using dynamic CFR and dynamic DPD technology.
For further information, please contact info@telasic.com.
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