The LTE Base Station Market

RAN Evolution, Distributed Baseband, RRH, Small Cells, and Semiconductor SoCs

Research Report

The uptake of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless standard is a global phenomenon driven by service providers’ need for more network capacity, latency reduction, and enhanced user experience. LTE is a natural evolution from GSM/HSPA, CDMA, or TD-SCDMA networks and is standardized by 3GPP as either FDD or TDD. The future roadmap for LTE now includes LTE Advanced or LTE-A (backward compatible with both FD-LTE and TD-LTE), which was approved by the ITU in January 2012 and some service providers have started positioning themselves to deploy LTE-A already. This report examines the ecosystem and outlook for LTE base stations with an emphasis on RAN equipment focusing on macro, micro, and pico outdoor base stations and small cells. The report looks at base station topology and the uptake of small cells and remote radio heads (RRHs) as elements of the distributed base station. This report also surveys the merchant processor LTE base station baseband ASSP/SoC suppliers.

Table of Contents

  • Top Line Forecast
  • Drivers
  • Inhibitors
  • Market Share
  • Summary and Strategic Recommendations
  • 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
    • 1.1. LTE Market Overview
  • 2. STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS
    • 2.1. Recommendations for Service Providers
    • 2.2. Recommendations for OEMs
    • 2.3. Recommendations for Semiconductor Manufacturers
  • 3. NETWORK DEPLOYMENT UPDATE
    • 3.1. LTE Service Provider Activity
    • 3.2. North America
      • 3.2.1. Verizon
      • 3.2.2. AT&T; Mobility
      • 3.2.3. Sprint
    • 3.3. Europe
      • 3.3.1. Vodafone
      • 3.3.2. Telefonica
    • 3.4. Asia
      • 3.4.1. NTT DoCoMo
      • 3.4.2. KDDI
      • 3.4.3. Softbank
      • 3.4.4. SK Telecom
      • 3.4.5. LG U+
      • 3.4.6. KT
      • 3.4.7. CSL (HK)
      • 3.4.8. China
      • 3.4.9. India
    • 3.5. RoW
  • 4. MARKET ISSUES
    • 4.1. Drivers
      • 4.1.1. Explosion in Mobile Data
      • 4.1.2. Global Mobile Data Traffic, 2011 to 2016
    • 4.2. Mobile Operator CAPEX
    • 4.3. Barriers
      • 4.3.1. RAN Trends
    • 4.4. Outdoor Small Cell Impact on Macrocell Market
    • 4.5. RRH Impact on LTE RAN Market
  • 5. TECHNOLOGY ISSUES
    • 5.1. LTE Network Elements
    • 5.2. LTE Base Station
    • 5.3. LTE Outdoor Small Cell
    • 5.4. LTE Remote Radio Head
    • 5.5. LTE Base Station Architecture Decentralization
    • 5.6. LTE Baseband Architecture
      • 5.6.1. Functional Partitioning and the Open Systems Interconnection Model
    • 5.7. Processors for LTE Baseband
      • 5.7.1. DSP/FPGA/Network Processor Approach
    • 5.8. Multicore SoC
    • 5.9. ASIC
  • 6. KEY INDUSTRY PLAYERS
    • 6.1. LTE Base Station OEMs
      • 6.1.1. Implementation
      • 6.1.2. Innovation
      • 6.1.3. Ericsson
      • 6.1.4. Huawei
      • 6.1.5. Alcatel-Lucent
      • 6.1.6. Nokia Siemens Networks
      • 6.1.7. ZTE
      • 6.1.8. Samsung
      • 6.1.9. NEC
      • 6.1.10. BelAir Networks
      • 6.1.11. Powerwave
      • 6.1.12. ip.access
      • 6.1.13. Juni Global
      • 6.1.14. Airspan
      • 6.1.15. Airvana
      • 6.1.16. Ubiquisys
    • 6.2. LTE Baseband Semiconductor Suppliers
      • 6.2.1. Freescale Semiconductor
      • 6.2.2. Texas Instruments
      • 6.2.3. Intel
      • 6.2.4. Cavium
      • 6.2.5. Broadcom
      • 6.2.6. Percello
      • 6.2.7. NetLogic
      • 6.2.8. LSI
      • 6.2.9. Qualcomm
      • 6.2.10. DesignArt Networks
      • 6.2.11. Mindspeed
      • 6.2.12. Octasic, Inc.
      • 6.2.13. Xilinx, Inc.
      • 6.2.14. Altera
  • 7. VENDOR MARKET SHARE
    • 7.1. Major OEM Market Share
    • 7.2. Semiconductor Baseband Manufacturer Market Share
  • 8. MARKET FORECASTS
    • 8.1. Forecast Methodology
    • 8.2. LTE Macrocell Forecasts
    • 8.3. Outdoor LTE Small Cell Forecasts
      • 8.3.1. Global Forecasts
    • 8.4. LTE RRH Forecasts
      • 8.4.1. Global Forecasts
  • 9. COMPANY DIRECTORY
  • 10. ACRONYMS
  • 11. LINKS TO RELATED RESEARCH
  • 12. TABLE OF CONTENTS
    • 12.1. Sources and Methodology
    • 12.2. Notes

Tables

Log in to view the structure of the tables below.

  1. LTE Macro Base Stations by Technology, World Market, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  2. LTE Small Cells by Technology, World Markets, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  3. LTE RRH Shipments, World Markets, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  4. LTE Macro, Small Cell, and RRH Units, World Markets, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  5. LTE Macro Base Stations by Technology, North America, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  6. LTE Macro Base Stations by Technology, Asia-Pacific, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  7. LTE Macro Base Stations by Technology, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  8. LTE Macro Base Stations by Technology, Latin America, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  9. LTE Macro Base Stations Expenditure by Technology, World Market, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  10. LTE Small Cells Expenditure by Technology, World Markets, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  11. LTE RRH Expenditure, World Markets, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  12. LTE Macro, Small Cell, and RRH Expenditure, World Markets, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  13. LTE Macro Base Stations Expenditure by Technology, North America, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  14. LTE Macro Base Stations Expenditure by Technology, Asia-Pacific, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  15. LTE Macro Base Stations Expenditure by Technology, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  16. LTE Macro Base Stations Expenditure by Technology, Latin America, Forecast: 2012 to 2016
  17. Base Station Classes, Site Characteristics for Indoor and Outdoor Femto-, Pico-, Micro-, and Macrocells
  18. LTE Baseband SoCs, LTE Base Station Baseband Multicore SoC Summary

Charts

  1. OEM LTE/RAN Contract Share Estimates, World Market 2011
  2. LTE Macro Base Stations by Technology
  3. LTE Small Cells by Technology
  4. LTE Macro Base Stations Expenditure by Technology
  5. LTE Small Cells Expenditure by Technology
  6. OEM RAN Market Share
  7. OEM LTE Contract Share Estimates
  8. OEM LTE/RAN Contract Share Estimates
  9. LTE Base Station Vendor Matrix
  10. Capital Expenditure: by Network Component 
  11. Mobile Network Data Traffic, by Traffic Type

Figures

  1. Wireless Evolution 1990 - 2011 and Beyond
  2. The OSI Model and SoC Processing Layers