Airvine Scientific, a millimeter-wave wireless communication solution provider introduced its patented 60 GHz radio technology that can penetrate through walls to deliver a wireless, ultra-high capacity enterprise network backbone. Soo far there has not been much innovation around 60 GHz wireless technologies. This Silicon Valley-based startup is trying to reinvented the category. Airvine’s superfast 60 GHz backbone technology is looking to replace indoor network cabling altogether. As we go up in frequency, signal propagation becomes more of a challenge. This challenge will also be seen with 5G which will use mm-wave frequency bands. A solution to high-frequency indoor propagation will be a game changer for the industry. The value of its addressable market could exceed USD $10 Billion in over 5 years.
Airvine’s ‘WaveTunnel’ technology creates a high capacity wireless network that can penetrate through walls to connect to Wi-Fi access points. Since this technology gets rid of traditional wiring required to set up a network, it can be configured or reconfigured very easily in a matter of minutes or a few hours depending on where it is being deployed. According to Vivek Ragavan, CEO of Airvine, this technology not only replaces or adds to existing enterprise cabling infrastructure but has other big benefits such as faster speeds, fast reconfigurations, and all of this at a cost much lower than for example deploying fiber infrastructure.
The aggregate throughput for the first generation product will be 6.3 Gbps. The link speed is 3.15 Gbps for each of the two radios in a dual ring configuration. When the system is set up, it operates like a wireless dual-ring network with Wi-Fi APs, 5G APs, and other devices accessing the backbone at selected points along the ring. 5G traffic can be prioritized on the ring if required. The initial Airvine product set includes high-capacity nodes along with a network management platform (software) that can be deployed on premise or within the cloud.
The system is deployed as a ‘wireless freeway’ (ring and spine) of self-organizing 60 GHz WaveTunnel nodes delivering multi-gigabit capacity at an inter-node distance of up to 100 meters including walls as obstacles to line-of-sight. In NLOS applications, the range can still reach 100 meters depending on the nature of the obstruction. Any link can be equipped with additional WaveTunnel nodes (mid-span repeaters) that can help punch through obstructions. For the second generation product, Airvine expects the aggregate throughput to approach 40 Gbps.
To make this work Airvine had to design the RF subsystem, modem, and a sophisticated antenna array that would penetrate interior walls using highly directed and steerable beams. By applying a revolutionary RF antenna design coupled with technological advances such as beamforming, beam steering, high bitrate modulation (256 QAM) and forward error correction (FEC) they were able to develop this unique system. They have already been awarded three patents for various aspects of this system.
First phase use cases for this technology include warehouses, educational institutions (campus networks) and houses. As the technology develops further use cases will widen to include convention centers, malls, offices, and healthcare facilities.
Click here to read an FAQ published by Airvine about this technology.
