Mobile technologies penetrate wireless broadband market - Global News

Telecommunications, Feb, 2002 by Sean Buckley

RICHARDSON, Texas/SAN BRUNO, Calif.--Anyone who has followed the fixed broadband wireless arena in the past year knows that the industry was mired in a holy war over single carrier QAM vs. multicarrier OFDM and its various flavors. In the latest installment of the broadband wireless access saga, the new hopefuls--IP Wireless, Navini Networks and SOMA Networks--are using technologies leading the 3G mobile revolution, i.e., WCDMA and S-CDMA (synchronous CDMA). Regional and national providers, including T-Speed Communications, Sprint, WorldCom, Nucentrix and Canadian players such as Craig Wireless and Inukshuk Internet, are taking notice of these solutions.

With a pocket-sized, portable broadband modem for anywhere Internet access IP Wireless' solution conforms to the UMTS TD-CDMA and TDD standards to give mobile UMTS providers an add-on, IP-based, broadband data business that uses a carrier's existing cell sites, antennas and core network. Designed for both fixed and portable Internet access in both the 2.5-2.7-GHz or IMT-2000 bands, the company's solution has been gaining traction in Canada with a win from Craig Wireless, which will deploy IP Wireless' equipment as part of its 3G broadband wireless rollout this year, and in a continuing trial with Inukshuk Internet. IP Wireless has also been gaining overseas with a recently signed deal with Walker Wireless, which will deploy the IP Wireless system throughout its New Zealand network, beginning in Auckland.

Consisting of base station node B's controlled by the RNC (radio network controller), where a regular macrocell configuration uses three node-B radios in a three-or six-sector configuration, one system can communicate with thousands of 3G broadband modems in a supercell or microcell deployment. The controller and core networks contain the RNC, SGSN (serving GPRS support node) and layer tunneling protocol access concentrator.

Similarly, Navini Networks, a spinout of Ciwill, is utilizing multi-carrier S-CDMA to provide subscribers with anytime, anywhere IP data and voice access. Founded by Chairman Wu-Fu Chen, Navini's technical team includes Dr. Guanghan Xu, co-founder, CTO and president, who wrote the initial 3G TD-SCDMA draft standard. Fresh with $51 million in funding, Navini is in trials with wireless ISP T-Speed, which operates an unlicensed 802.11-based network serving predominantly MTU markets and Tier 2 and 3 markets in Texas and Arkansas. This year T-Speed will roll out broadband data service in a number of additional markets across the Midwest and South. T-Speed builds a POP that provides a backbone, broadcasts wirelessly to respective hub sites and wirelessly links each MTU building in a 28-mile area.

What got Mark Varel, CEO of T-Speed, excited about Navini was time to delivery. "We operate from checkbook economics," Varel said. "Near-line-of-sight equipment vendors have missed the market from an economic standpoint, but Navini's technology strategically fits into our strategy to command these cost points on a wide scale."

Navini's Ripwave 2400 (2.4 ISM) and 2600 (2.6-GHz MMDS) consist of three elements: Ripwave CPE, Ripwave base station and an EMS (element management system). Ripwave CPE is a zero-install, plug-and-play system that provides up to 9.6 Mbps peak data rates coupled with multiservice queuing for tiered QoS. With support for up to three sectors, each at 24 Mbps, Navini's base station uses an omni or three-sectored adaptive phased-array antenna with beamforming to null interference. Additionally, it uses adaptive modulation at either 4, 16, 64 QAM or 8 BPSK (binary phase shifted keying). Being able to manage up to 1000 base stations with element, subscriber, bandwidth and service management, the Ripwave EMS is an IP-based element manager that plugs directly into an intranet or the Internet. Providers can configure CPE dynamically and BTS with both CORBA and SNMP interfaces for flow-through provisioning.

Building on the foundations of WCDMA, SOMA Networks extends WCDMA's PHY layer by replacing it with IP to deliver peak data rates of up to 12 Mbps per user, IP-based, carrier-grade voice and managed multimedia services. "WCDMA's mathematics is capable of carrying a lot more data than what the ITU came up with because they were thinking of a very connection-oriented circuit that requires huge cost to send one bit," said Martin Snelgrove, SOMA Networks' senior vice president for product strategy. "Because 3GPP's WCDMA implementation is poor at handling bursty data traffic, we extend the PHY layer with IP. Even though IP does not have QoS, we control the air interface to know where each application is."

Recently, SOMA was granted a license under Qualcomm's patent portfolio to develop, manufacture and sell CDMA subscriber and network equipment implementing SOMA's proprietary air interface that leverages key elements of Qualcomm's CDMA technology. Snelgrove points out that SOMA signed the licensing agreement with Qualcomm to bring a solution to market without having to develop a proprietary flavor of OFDM or another technology.