Qualcomm has received a new patent for a small cell edge computing platform.

Small cells are radio access nodes that operate beneath the level of the macrocell infrastructure in a wireless network and integrate wireless wide area network (WWAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN) functions to wireless devices. These small cells are coupled with a base station that provides edge computing resources to the small cells.

This setup helps extend mobile device battery life and improves overall device performance, as mobile devices have limited battery life and processing power. The setup distributes the processing responsibilities based on the mobile device capabilities and metrics.