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Fii’s SMALL RADIOS BRING UBIQUITOUS CONNECTIVITY INDOORS


Most of us take internet connectivity for granted. That is until we venture indoors—in an airport, building, or manufacturing plant lacking consistent site-wide, high speed coverage. While heading to our gate, presenting to a group in a conference room, or walking the factory floor, we may experience dropped calls, slow-loading data and alerts, or even dead zones. Beyond the frustration we feel, there is also a productivity impact and financial cost.

Foxconn Industrial Internet (Fii) aims to improve indoor coverage by deploying RPQN small-cell radios in buildings, homes, offices, and industrial spaces. Fii, a leader in smart manufacturing and industrial internet, sought a collaborative partner with advanced technology, domain expertise, and testing know-how to help bring its solution to market quickly. Fii chose Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) to help design, develop, and debug high level system issues of its new small radios and meet stringent RF performance and power consumption requirements.

AT A GLANCE

COMPANY

With 191,000 employees across 12 countries and regions, Fii develops 5G network communications equipment, cloud and edge computing, industrial internet, smart home solutions, mobile devices, and wearables.

APPLICATIONS

Create a flexible design, high transfer rate, low latency, and programmable small radio that provides seamless communications and facilitates centralized control and monitoring.

CHALLENGES

Deliver easy-to-install, reliable connectivity that meets performance and power efficiency requirements in a small footprint. Reduce time to market and design hurdles. Achieve compliance with O-RAN standards.

GOAL

Deploy cost-effective 5G commercial networks and deliver ubiquitous indoor services that advance the availability of a wide range of applications, including buildings, consumer, healthcare, and industrial IoT, and more.

WHAT IS A SMALL CELL RADIO?

Ceiling-mounted small cell radio device, with adjacent smoke detector and sprinkler, demonstrating indoor communication and safety systems.

Small cell radios are compact, lightweight, easy-to-install devices for optimal coverage and indoor applications. About the size of a pizza box, these low latency, high bandwidth radios use advanced wireless communication technologies to establish reliable connections between devices over short distances indoors.

THE CHALLENGE

Fii’s customers required enhanced indoor wireless coverage with greater capacity, improved signal quality, heightened energy efficiency, and support for high density environments such as factories, offices, and shopping malls. Additionally, they needed faster data speeds, lower latency, and flexibility to support the arrival of advanced wireless services and applications such as IoT devices, smart building technologies, and high definition video streaming.

To quickly meet customer needs and expedite time to market for its wireless, small-cell radios, Fii needed to reduce design complexity, eliminate design hurdles, and decrease the number of product development cycles.

TAMING COMPLEXITY AND TIME TO MARKET

ADI collaborated with Fii to simplify the development of the small radios by offering a flexible, programmable platform for prototyping, testing, and implementing custom radio functionality. “Customers often spend lots of time tracing the wrong issues,” said William-X Chen, Staff Engineer, Field Applications Sales-SAP, ADI. “Since the core solution here is ADI’s (small radio) transceiver, we were able to help Fii troubleshoot, quickly identify and resolve problems.”

Fii has a physical layer (PHY) and a baseband team that perform field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) IP design for the small radio. However, when Fii encountered a complicated system issue, ADI helped clarify if it was an FPGA IP, a digital processing issue, a hardware issue (such as RF/power), or a software (driver settings) issue. This helped to keep Fii on the right track with regard to debugging issues.

ADI FPGA engineers helped Fii leverage FPGA’s configurability, flexibility, and real-time processing capabilities and address minor issues and high level system challenges. “Partnering with ADI allowed us to design a high performance small cell with maximum flexibility and low power consumption,” said Dr. Benjamin Wang, Sr. 5G RD Director, Infrastructure Product Division, Fii. “ADI’s system-level expertise and consistent FAE support eased design optimization and problem-solving during the development process. That helped us meet our tight project design schedules.”

“We integrated ~20 different components into a single signal chain, helping Fii to save on size, power, and weight (SWaP) of their small radio,” said Hung-Ming Chang, Principal Account Manager, Field Sales-SAP, ADI. “ADI contributed core technology to Fii’s radio design, including the software-defined integrated RF transceiver (TRx), filters, and power tree. These components enable compatibility and interoperability across different devices and regions while reducing total system energy.”

Partnering with ADI allowed us to design a high-performance small cell with maximum flexibility and low power consumption. ADI's system-level expertise and consistent FAE support eased design optimization and problem-solving during the development process. That helped us meet our tight project design schedules.

Dr. Benjamin Wang

Sr. 5G RD Director, Infrastructure Product Division, Fii

HIGH PERFORMANCE AND REAL-TIME MONITORING

Fii’s smaller radio technology facilitates low latency, 5G wireless data transmission and reception indoors, providing reliable, high speed short-range communication between devices. The radios offer higher data transfer rates and improved connectivity indoors without the need for cables or hard-wired connections. With Fii’s small radios and a dedicated cellular network, dropped calls become a thing of the past.

“Traditionally, when integrating components, it’s challenging to maintain signal quality,” said William-X Chen, Staff Engineer, Field Applications Sales-SAP, ADI. “Our team worked with Fii’s team to maintain a pure, clear, clean signal, and very high signal performance.” One of the early decisions in the project was designing the radio frequency front end (RFFE) and selecting the right transceiver. After reviewing options, Fii chose Analog Devices’ ADRV9029 software-defined transceiver as the best fit for its RPQN series small cell radios.

Fii’s radios offer easy integration. Their compact, lightweight design allows for easy ceiling attachment, enabling higher device density and seamless communication. The radios facilitate centralized control and monitoring, letting users manage smart devices through a single interface or smartphone app. The technology also enables wireless sensor networks and reliable connectivity, allowing for real-time monitoring and data collection in challenging environments, like factories, where temperature and dust can be extreme.

FII’s INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE: O-RAN

Fii is investing in its open radio access network (O-RAN)-compliant series of small radios. O-RAN breaks down the traditional proprietary and closed nature of radio access networks (RANs) by establishing interoperability standards. This allows operators to mix and match hardware and software from different suppliers, fostering competition and reducing dependency on a single vendor.

“This is an important step for the O-RAN ecosystem because it expands the market diversity of 5G radios,” said Joe Barry, Vice President, Communications Business Unit at ADI. “It’s a strong proof of Fii’s ability to design and manufacture high performing O-RAN compliant RUs. ADI is excited to work with Fii to expand the O-RAN radio unit ecosystem.”

MEETING THE NEEDS OF BUSINESS, PEOPLE, AND THE PLANET

Engineer wearing a hard hat and high-visibility vest, inspecting industrial robotic machinery and taking notes on a tablet in a factory setting.

Fii’s low latency, fast 1 Gbps 5G small radios are essential for modern businesses, manufacturing, and indoor communications. They enable device-to-device interactions that cater to short-range, real-time communication and rapid data exchange with these five key pluses.

  • Increased bandwidth and speed: Facilitate rapid transmission and support advanced applications like real-time analytics, machine learning, and AI.
  • Improved efficiency: Enhance operational efficiency through improved network management and the ability to connect more devices simultaneously without losing performance.
  • Lower latency: Essential for applications requiring real-time feedback and control, like automated robotics and real-time monitoring systems.
  • Lower power: Their smaller size and optimized performance contribute to lower power consumption and, thus, less environmental impact.
  • Scalability: Support scalable solutions to accommodate a growing number of connected devices.

Fii’s RPQN small radios bring the benefits of 5G transformative technology to as many people as possible. Small radios are ideal for a wide range of applications, including enhancing energy efficiency in homes with smart thermostats, improving healthcare with patient monitoring systems, helping to protect humans working close by robots in factories, and making our lives a bit healthier with wearable fitness trackers. The possibilities are limitless and as diverse as our imaginations.

Smiling woman sitting in an airport terminal, using a tablet with her luggage beside her, enjoying her time while waiting for her flight.