Alliance rallies around Flarion's flash-OFDM technology
By Patrick Mannion
EE Times
January 15, 2002 (4:57 p.m. EST)
MANHASSET, N.Y. — Fourteen companies have formed an alliance to develop and deploy Flarion Technologies' flash-OFDM technology for mobile services based on the Internet Protocol (IP). Flarion's system can transport services from an IP network to a user device at rates of up to 1.5 Mbits/second.
Alan Kuritsky, vice president of marketing at Flarion, said the alliance validates his company's flash-OFDM technology in the eyes of operators through the support of a broad spectrum of mobile players. Alliance members include Certicom; Cisco Systems; Compaq Computer; Decibel Products, a division of Allen Telecom; Enfora; Flarion; Funk Software; GTRAN Wireless; Invertix; LCC International; PacketVideo; Philips; Powerwave and Pentair Electronic Packaging.
Flarion, a spin-off of Lucent Technologies, got its flash-OFDM technology from Bell Labs, and "flash" refers to its fast-hopping technology, wherein a signal hops from tone to tone at the rate of roughly 10,000 times per second. Every user signals across the band on all tones, effectively turning OFDM into a spread-spectrum technology.
Kuritsky said an operator can be up and running with flash-OFDM with 1.25 MHz of spectrum, Flarion's RadioRouter basestation, a power supply and a T1 line for backhaul. The system uses Mobile IP for mobility between links and operates in the 800-MHz band, with 1.9 GHz on the horizon.
"With flash-OFDM, users experience an 'always-on' broadband desktop experience in a fully mobile wide-area network, just like they do today on their corporate LAN or at home with a broadband connection, without limitations to content, security or applications," Kuritsky said. With the network, mobile operators can offer tiered class-of-service and ensure efficient use of the network in a flat-rate billing business model, he said.
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