Iospan completes NLOS fixed broadband wireless field trials

Iospan Wireless is proceeding with a system platform for next-generation non-line-of-sight fixed broadband wireless systems and declaring success for its initial field trials of Multiple Input, Multiple Output-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing [MIMO-OFDM] technology.

The company contends the trials demonstrated the technology’s ability to deliver symmetric multi-megabit data rates using a 50-foot cellular base station antenna and a compact indoor CPE located nearly four miles away in a stuccoed San Francisco Bay-area apartment.

“This is … a live system that’s up and running and has been running since September of last year,” said Asif Naseem, Iospan’s vice president of marketing and business development. “We’ve had a host of national and international service providers, as well as system vendors, who have gone though and looked at it.”

Major wireless service providers--Sprint, WorldCom and Nucentrix--have delayed deployments until next-generation NLOS, self-installable technology is developed to cut costs and increase ease of use. But they have reacted positively to Iospan’s trials.

“In private conversations they’re saying this is precisely what’s required to make fixed wireless happen in North America and elsewhere,” Naseem said.

Naseem believes Sprint will conduct trials this year and begin redeploying advanced wireless next year, despite reports that the company might sell its wireless spectrum or use it for mobile purposes.

Iospan’s reference design delivers a minimum of 1 Mbps downstream and 500 Kbps upstream. It takes advantage of multiple antennas at both the send and receive sites and uses a 2 MHz delivery slot that it aggregates into a 6 MHz channel. The base station uses two antennas, while the receive site has three antennas integrated into the CPE.

“We have six streams coming into the CPE, and the CPE decides which one is the best one to pick from,” Naseem said.

Iospan has no plans to build and market a hardware-based system.

“Our products are chips, reference design, system software and professional services that go with it,” Naseem said, noting that vendors then incorporate the key elements into their systems.

Iospan has a different outlook that many other system developers, because it was once a system vendor, thus “we’ve really designed our subsystems, our chips and reference designs from a complete-system point of view,” Naseem said.