Alvarion-led group targets 10-fold capacity boost

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Alvarion-led group targets 10-fold capacity boost

BuNGee group gains EU funding to explore new mobile architectures

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 14 March, 2010

Alvarion is leading an EU-funded project to achieve a tenfold increase in mobile broadband capacity, which could revolutionize the economics of systems like WiMAX, and the ability of wireless network to handle huge quantities of data traffic in urban centers.

The group is called BuNGee (Beyond Next Generation Mobile Broadband) and focuses on capacity density, with a target of achieving 1Gbps per square kilometer without a linear increase in network costs. The project has funding of $6.4m, mainly from the European Commission, and will involve operators, vendors, universities and research organizations, mainly from Europe.

Despite that regional base, Israel-based Alvarion is taking the lead, drawing on its experience with the earliest available true mobile broadband system, WiMAX. Its CTO, Dr Ze'ev Roth, will be BuNGee's project coordinator and the primary focus will be on new network deployment strategies, including novel approaches to backhaul design; sub-rooftop backbones; and new networked and distributed MIMO and interference techniques.

Other technologies of interest in the area of capacity include autonomous architectures with "very aggressive spatial and spectral reuse", and protocol suites that could help with autonomous ultrahigh capacity deployments. Next generation antenna platforms will be vital, and several antenna companies are involved in the team, including Cobham Antenna Systems and Microwave Antennas from the UK.

The project will conduct its work until June 2012 and towards the end of the period, will undertake live tests of its technology results in Barcelona. Participants include that city's Centre Tecnologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya as well as universities in the UK and Belgium, Polish operator PTC, and vendors like Thales of France, backhaul specialist Siklu of Israel and Arttic of Belgium. Others are expected to join soon. The proof of concept will rely on "below-rooftop deployment of base stations leveraging existing structures like utility poles, in coordination with self-backhauling of these base stations by wireless links", using licensed or unlicensed spectrum.