NextG-Com announces first LTE protocol stack to target small cell relay nodes backhaul

STAINES, ENGLAND: NextG-Com, an expert in embedded software products and services for LTE, M2M and satellite communications, announced the availability of ALPS 521, a Release 11 compliant UE protocol stack designed for easy integration of relay node (RN) backhaul functionality with an existing eNodeB (eNB) solution. Relays are a key element of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A).

Traditionally, user equipment (UE) architectures are optimized for a high level of hardware integration, for example using an ASIC, and unlike eNB are based on different design approaches that focus on high volume and power efficiency. ALPS 521 is designed to provide interfaces to eNB network protocols via the NextG-Com IPC framework, and is pre-integrated with eNB RN interfaces to the scheduler and eNB controller entities.

"Our ALPS 521 LTE protocol variant offers a fast and effective way of delivering a small cell solution to infrastructure vendors who wish to extend their existing eNB portfolio to support future relay node features," said Denis Bidinost, NextG-Com CEO. "Our UE knowledge and expertise can help eNB vendors where additional development and integration services are required to bring the small cell relay node to market."

Using an in-house 3GPP test environment, ALPS 521 is pre-tested with RN-specific scenarios and configuration parameters, and can be flawlessly integrated into the relay architecture.

ALPS 521 is fully tested against relevant 3GPP/non 3GPP third party conformance tests specific for relays.

As it is already fully Release 11 compliant, ALPS 521 provides a simple platform for the integration and verification of the interactions of relay functionalities to Release 11 specifications such as impact of R-PDCCH and ePDCCH, CoMP, and relay interactions.

ALPS 521 is future-proof to support RN Layer 1 interfaces through an adaptation layer (L1A), which supports both in-band without isolation and out-band/in-band with isolation RF architecture. It is designed with well-proven L1 adaptation layer APIs that can be easily customized based on the different MAC and Physical Layer architecture. The protocol stack components are also supplied with a host of tools-Trace, ASN.1, SE-RTOSTM-to help deliver faster product development and reduce third party licensing costs.