5G densification is going to drive the demand for small cells, says Picocom CEO and founder Jiang Yingbo. In particular, he believes it will be the crippling energy cost of the macro 5G basestations that will force MNOs to densify through small cells.

Picocom is a five-year-old small cell chip player, headquartered in Hangzhou and with other major R&D centers in Bristol and Beijing. It has signed up some 40 customers with its dual-mode chip that debuted in December 2021 – mostly small Asian vendors that are supplying verticals such as shopping malls and office blocks.

It hasn't won any telco customers, but Jiang believes MNOs will inevitably turn to small calls because the power consumption of 5G macro basestations was "not sustainable."

He says 5G cells are drawing roughly twice as much power as 4G units, noting that in China the electricity bill for a 5G basestation is as much as 15,000 Chinese yuan (US$2,070) per month.

A related factor is that degradation of the wireless signal is not linear, meaning cells consume more energy connecting users close to the cell edge. "The small cell is much more efficient just by the principle of proximity," Jiang said.

Balancing act

He notes that while there are a number of small cell vendors, not many are silicon players. Small cell chips are built mostly by heavyweights like Intel or big vendors like Ericsson and Nokia, who manufacture for their own use only.

But the company is pitching the cost and efficiency of its silicon against the general purpose Intel x86 chip. "You need a combination of hardware and software so you know what to harden or what not to harden," Jiang explains.

It's a difficult balancing act because a chip design must have a life cycle of as long as ten years, over which time it must absorb multiple 3GPP software enhancements. As Jiang put it: "The main thing for us is to provide the computational capability for the baseband processing at a lower price and lower power consumption."

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Still, it looks like the action in the small cell market is going to be in enterprise over the coming years. A Small Cell Forum survey last year predicted 15% CAGR growth in shipments of small cell gear up to 2027, with biggest demand coming from private network players in verticals such as manufacturing and retail.

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— Robert Clark, contributing editor, special to Light Reading