MANHASSET, N.Y. — Riding the WiMax wave, picoChip Designs Ltd. and Airspan Networks Inc. have partnered to develop upgradeable reference designs for WiMax basestations.
Called SoftMax, the design will be fully IEEE 802.16-2004 compliant and combine picoChip's picoArray physical-layer (PHY) processor and OFDM expertise with Airspan's media access control (MAC) and higher-layer software. It will also provide future support for mobility, as yet to be defined under 802.16e and will interface with any up-front radio. SoftMax is already being used in Airspan's commercial basestations.
"This will be a very quick way to get off the ground with interoperable equipment," said Rupert Baines, vice president of marketing for picoChip (Bath, England). "It will cut 12 months of a company's development time and save them $5 million."
picoChip acquired its 802.16 PHY-layer expertise by combining ex-members of the broadband wireless group of Lucent Technologies with a team from Conexant's OFDM Center of Excellence. "That team was focused on DVB-T [Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestrial] which is almost the same PHY [as 802.16]," said Baines.
While Alvarion is the uncontested leader in broadband wireless deployments worldwide, Airspan Networks (Boca Raton, FL) follows close behind, with more than 200 customers in more than 70 countries. Aperto Networks fights with Airspan for the number two spot. All three companies are WiMax converts, having initially started out with proprietary schemes.
Airspan last December bought Nortel Networks broadband wireless division for $12.9 million. This followed a deal it made with Intel in November 2003 to build WiMax-certified equipment based on Intel silicon, silicon which has yet to appear. Intel itself yesterday announced that it had partnered with Clearwire on WiMax deployments using equipment from NextNet, a Clearwire subsidiary. Intel has also partnered with Alvarion.
All told, the momentum behind WiMax continues to grow rapidly. "There is an insane amount of hype over WiMax," Baines said. "But there is some backlash beginning as some of the initial claims were silly." However, Baines does see enormous potential for WiMax when it comes to reaching where DSL cannot reach. While this may include regions of North America, it is particularly the case in places such as Mexico and as far flung as Algeria. "I see easily $3 billion potential worldwide," he said.
Baines also believes in the Wi-Fi hotspot backhaul and metro Ethernet models, but is not so sure about the mobililty/universal access plans under 802.16e.
But for the market to take off in any respect, the interoperability specifications must be finalized by the WiMax Forum and interoperability tests must begin, assuming silicon ships on schedule. Intel and Fujitsu have promised silicon this quarter. Baines predicts that interoperability tests will then take place "behind the scenes" in Q1 2005, followed by more open tests in Q2 2005. The focus will be on the 5.8-GHz band at first, he said, followed by the 3.5-GHz band. There is also a 2.5-GHz band allowed for in the specification.
The companies have entered into an exclusive development and marketing agreement for the new product. The reference design is available now.
