Lucent promises smaller base stations

Researchers at Lucent claim they have created the first all-silicon chip technology that could pave the way for smaller and cheaper base stations for mobile phones and wireless devices.

The technology reduces the number of chips necessary in base station receivers from 20 to three, and the chips are about 100 times smaller and up to 100 times cheaper than current processors.

However, a spokesperson said the technology would not appear in base stations for another five years.

Today's base station radio receivers contain between 10 and 20 chips made up of gallium arsenide, which is substantially more costly than silicon but can meet the high-performance requirements of wireless networks. Radio receivers are required to handle many weak signals simultaneously, and amplify and filter them before further signal processing can occur.

According to Jenshan Lin, a researcher at Lucent's Bell Labs facility, circuit designers have only recently made silicon chips for radios that rival the performance of gallium arsenide. Lin and his colleagues have created a radio receiver comprised of only three silicon chips, roughly the size of a fifty pence piece.

Bell Labs expects that the all-silicon radio receivers will work with most major wireless standards, including the much-anticipated third-generation mobile networks.