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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here

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To: Dexter Lives On who wrote (12638)	9/21/2003 4:50:25 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) of 12823

Rob, it is interesting to observe the rapid pace at which the IC and cellular companies have joined in development of UWB and WiMAX/802.16/802.20. There are several trends that are adding fuel to the "wireless broadband revolution" that include: 1] Mutli-mode radio designs. These include hard-wired and software configurable and software defined radio designs. 2] Use of OFDM/OFDMA/TDD-FDD. This shows up in 802.11a/.11g (OFDM based), and in 802.16a, 802.20 and TD-SCDMA. 3] Use of MIMO and smart antenna designs. This has shown up as products outside of the standards so far but is incorporated into 802.16a/.16e, 802.20 and TD-SCDMA and probably 802.11n. 4] All CMOS/SOI single chip or two chip IC designs. The de facto standard includes the use of an on-chip ARM processor, SRAM and/or flash memory and memory and Ethernet controllers. The newest designs also include hardware DES+ other encryption. This architecture is showing up in 802.11 ICs and in the upcoming 802.16a/.16e IC designs. I haven't seen any proposed ICs for 802.20 or TD-SCDMA yet. This architecture opens up possibilities for widespread use of wireless mesh networking and for a common development platform for QoS and system management. WiFi brought wireless broadband to mass production. But a large improvement in range and bandwidth densities/area or cell will be gained more through the use of MIMO and advanced smart antenna designs including smart targetable arrays. The EE article you posted a few days has an interesting discussion. I agree with Atheros's comments as far as cost effectiveness of digital signal processing methods vs. analog switched antenna or other differentiation methods. But that is something that has already begun to change. Antenna arrays have already been developed that can be mass produced using common high frequency circuit board techniques. Microwave MEMs are entering the market to do the switching. It is a matter of time and volume ramp before these and other advanced antenna methods go down in cost to be able to deliver signal differentiation to meet mass market price points. The antenna array deigns, for example, are said to be producible for about 30c-50c each in 500K+ quantity.

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